Evolutionary Epistemology on Universals as Innate Classificatory Devices

Abstract

After the widespread acceptance of the neo-Darwinian or synthetic paradigm, it might look obsolete and only of historical interest to discuss the problem of ‘type’ in biology. Curiously enough old typological approaches and beliefs are still alive and sometimes fiercely defended by several ‘stamp collector’ taxonomists and many Central and East European physical anthropologists. According to G. G. Simpson (1961),

The basic concept of typology is this: every natural group of organisms, hence every natural taxon in classification, has an invariant, generalized or idealized pattern shared by all members of the group. The pattern of the lower taxon is superimposed upon that of a higher taxon to which it belongs, without essentially modifying the higher pattern. Lower patterns include variations on the theme of the higher pattern and they fill in details, different for different taxa at the same level, within the more generalized, less detailed higher pattern. The most detailed pattern is the species . . . . Variations within a species, the ‘accidents’ of the scholastics, are a nuisance but (or because) they have no taxonomic significance. Numerous different terms have been given to these idealized patterns, often simply ‘type’ but also ‘archetype’, ‘Bauplan’ or ‘structural plan’, ‘Morphotypus’ or ‘Morphotype’, ‘plan’ and others.