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Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2017

Ian Hacking
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The rosy dawn of my title refers to that optimistic time when the logical concept of a natural kind originated in Victorian England. The scholastic twilight refers to the present state of affairs. I devote more space to dawn than twilight, because one basic problem was there from the start, and by now those origins have been forgotten. Philosophers have learned many things about classification from the tradition of natural kinds. But now it is in disarray and is unlikely to be put back together again. My argument is less founded on objections to the numerous theories now in circulation, than on the sheer proliferation of incompatible views. There no longer exists what Bertrand Russell called ‘the doctrine of natural kinds’—one doctrine. Instead we have a slew of distinct analyses directed at unrelated projects.

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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 61 , October 2007 , pp. 203 - 239
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2007

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69 Hacking, Ian, ‘A Tradition of Natural Kinds’, Philosophical Studies 61 (1991), 109–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My long-postponed book, The Tradition of Natural Kinds (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press), tells more about the dawn, treats the high noon of Kripke and Putnam in respectful detail, and moves on to the present twilight.