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Resurrecting Biological Essentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Michael Devitt
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Abstract

The article defends the doctrine that Linnaean taxa, including species, have essences that are, at least partly, underlying intrinsic, mostly genetic, properties. The consensus among philosophers of biology is that such essentialism is deeply wrong, indeed incompatible with Darwinism. I argue that biological generalizations about the morphology, physiology, and behavior of species require structural explanations that must advert to these essential properties. The objection that, according to current “species concepts,” species are relational is rejected. These concepts are primarily concerned with what it is for a kind to be a species and throw little light on the essentialist issue of what it is for an organism to be a member of a particular kind. Finally, the article argues that this essentialism can accommodate features of Darwinism associated with variation and change.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 344 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

This article started with “Some Heretical Thoughts on Biological Essentialism,” an eight-page piece I wrote in 2003, on the basis of little reading, and sent to a number of experts for comment. This had two surprising consequences. First, the volume of response was astounding: initial responses together with follow-up discussions amounted to one hundred pages. Second, given the consensus, I expected the experts to identify deep flaws in these “heretical thoughts.” Yet this did not happen. I was corrected, informed, and guided on many matters and yet my basic argument for biological essentialism seemed to me to survive fairly intact. The experts I am indebted to for their heroic attempts to set me straight at that point are Peter Godfrey-Smith, Paul Griffiths, Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Stich, and particularly, Joseph LaPorte, Karen Neander, and Samir Okasha. The first version of the article was delivered at the University of Queensland in November 2005 and later versions have been delivered at many other universities. The article has benefited greatly from those events and also from the written comments of Matt Barker, Alberto Cordero, Michael Dickson, Marc Ereshefsky, Philip Kitcher, Joseph LaPorte, Mike Levin, Georges Rey, Iakovos Vasiliou, John Wilkins, and Rob Wilson. Finally, my thanks to Macquarie University for the position of Visiting Associate in October and November of 2005, during which the first version of the article was mostly written.

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