Abstract
The world as we experience it is not a constantly changing mosaic of sensations in which no order can be discerned, but one which evinces a particular regularity from day to day and year to year. For modern science this regularity rests on the principle of the uniformity of nature, which states that natural change is lawful or takes place according to rules. In conjunction with the other two principles fundamental to modem science, it claims that changes in the world are the result of causes contiguous with their effects operating in a regular fashion on a perpetually existing substance. In this way modern science attempts to explain change in terms of non-change: perpetually existing (types of) causes operate on a perpetually existing substance in a regular manner.
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References
Cf. p. 162, note 24 and the accompanying text. Note that, as is in keeping with the principle of substance, hard gold and liquid gold are not conceived to be different kinds, but to be different states of the same kind. In this regard, cf. Locke (1690), III. vi. 13.
As expressed by Kitcher with respect to biological species, “statements ascribing to members of a species appropriately chosen properties would be candidates for laws about the species” (1984, p. 313). Cf. also Bigelow et al. (1992, p. 380): “[I]t makes no sense to speak of a natural kind, e.g. being an electron, independently of the laws which govern its behaviour.” David Hull’s treatment of this question (1981, p. 141) is vitiated by his failure to distinguish between laws and principles, and his consequent ascription of an explanatory function to the former.
A question taken up by van Brakel (1986, pp. 306–307).
In this way we can understand Kitts’ and Kitts’ claim that “it is not the discovery of some common property, ostensive or otherwise, which leads us to suppose that species have essences. The search for essences is prompted by theoretical necessity.” (1979, p. 621), as well as Wilkerson’s saying “It is precisely because gold has a certain atomic number that it has certain properties (its being malleable, fusible, etc.); it is precisely because an oak has a certain genetic constitution that it has certain properties (a characteristic way of growing and reproducing itself), and so on.” (1988, p. 29; see also p. 41).
See Locke (1690, 1I1. iii. 15), where real essence is depicted as “the real internal, but generally (in substances) unknown constitution of things, whereon their discoverable properties depend.” The nominal essence of a thing, on the other hand, is a complex abstract idea of the thing, the idea the name of the thing stands for. Thus: “the nominal essence of gold is that complex idea the word gold stands for, let it be, for instance, a body yellow, of a certain weight, malleable, fusible, and fixed.” (ibid., III. vi. 2).
As expressed by Mackie (1976, p. 78): “Since we can equate Locke’s real essences with what we should now call the molecular and atomic structure of things, we may say that many real essences that were unknown in Locke’s day are now pretty thoroughly known by chemists and physicists.”
Cf. ibid., p. 85: “Locke’s main purpose would have been better served if he had identifiied the nominal essence rather with the set of characteristics of which the complex idea in question is the idea .... This way of putting it still secures the point behind Locke’s talk about an idea, namely that these characteristics count as the nominal essence because we know them and use them as criteria of recognition, we associate the name ‘gold’ with the conjunction of them: it is a human mental operation that groups these characteristics and no others together and uses them in classification. By contrast the real essence of gold is the real internal constitution which all pieces of gold have, and on which all these defining characteristics in fact depend, but which we may well know little or nothing about, though we surmise that there is something of the sort.”
Virtually the same distinction as that presented here has been made by F. A. Paneth between what he terms simple and basic substances: see his (1931), pp. 150ff. In this regard see also Mackie (1976), pp. 91, 96: “If we have framed and confirmed a theory about the atomic structure of what we now recognize as gold, and then consider ... the counterfactual possibility that something with this same internal constitution was ... not shining yellow in colour, not malleable, not fusible, not soluble in aqua regia, and so on, ... we would express this by saying that gold might not be yellow, etc., whereas if we contemplate the counterfactual possibility that something with a different internal constitution had all these features, we would say not that (some) gold might have a different internal constitution, but only that something else might look and behave like gold.”
Cf. Wilkerson (1988, p. 41): “Whereas the internal or microscopic properties directly determine the superficial or macroscopic, the converse is just not true.”
A distinction similar to that made here between the principle of evolution and the empirical and theoretical aspects of biology has been made by Wassermann (1981, p. 416), where he views the so-called theory of evolution “as a hypertheory which explains classifiable evolutionary phenomena in terms of subordinate classifiable theories of ‘evolution-specific mechanisms.’”
“Thus, despite superficial appearances to the contrary, it is supposed that the members of a species have some underlying trait which serves to distinguish them from the members of other species and, most significantly, serves as the foundation for an explanation of their exclusive relationship to their species. Since the discovery of the structure of genetic material it has been possible to get at this underlying trait not only through the manifest properties and the reproductive behavior of organisms, but more directly by means of chemical techniques.” (Kitts Kitts, 1979, p. 622).
Here we intend that such a change not merely be one in what is termed the ‘junk DNA’ of the organism.
In this regard, cf. Harré (1970b), p. 300: “Some core of its totality of qualities, as manifested, serves as the nominal essence of a thing, that is as that set of its manifested qualities which are required to remain unchanged for it to be reidentified as the same thing.”
In fact, the present distinction between accidents, nominal essences and real essences parallels Aristotle’s distinction between accidents, properties and essences. Cf. Post. Analy., 96b.
This seeing of reality as consisting of different levels makes of modem science what John Blackmore (1982, 1983) calls an indirect philosophy or epistemology. While this characteristic is not shared by Aristotelian science, it is by Platonic science, where the world of ideas lies on a deeper level than does the world of sense. One might want to argue that there is also a difference of level in Aristotle, the (final) cause (essence) lying at a deeper level than its effect or effects (properties of the thing). Nevertheless, there is an important sense in which the Platonic and physicalistically-based modem-scientific philosophies or worldviews are similar to one another and different from the Aristotelian. First, the former both question the viability of sense-impressions as a source of information regarding the deeper-level ontology and in this way are anti-empiricist in their orientation; and second, their deeper-level ontologies are conceived of as constituting whole hidden worlds consisting of entities existing in and of themselves which are in some way more real than the entities populating the world perceived by the senses.
Cf. Whewell (1847, Part 2, p. 14): “It is absolutely necessary to every advance in our knowledge, that those by whom such advances are made should possess clearly the conceptions which they employ: but it is by no means necessary that they should unfold these conceptions in the words of a formal Definition.” Cf. also Campbell (1920), pp. 52–53, as cited in Chapter 1: “If we boldly refuse to pay any attention to logical canons our difficulties vanish at once. Our words then are not instruments by means of which the process of thought is conducted, but merely convenient means of recalling to our minds thoughts which have once passed through them or of calling up in the minds of others thoughts which are passing through our own. [Our objector] raised his diffiiculty first by asking for a defiinition. We should have refused to give one. No student of science has ever felt the smallest need for a formal defiinition of silver; our words are perfectly effective in calling up the thoughts we desire without one, and in admitting the right of anyone to ask for one we were encouraging a very dangerous delusion.”
In this regard see Boyd (1991), pp. 142–143: “Thus some paradigmatic cases of natural kinds ... are counterexamples to the claim that ... natural kinds must be defined by necessary and suffiicient conditions. I conclude that the requirement that natural kinds have such definitions is to be diagnosed as a holdover from traditional empiricist linguistic precision.”
Cf. Whewell (1847), Part 1, p. 494: Natural Groups given by Type not by Definition. [T]hough in a Natural Group of objects a defiinition can no longer be of any use as a regulative principle, classes are not, therefore, left quite loose, without any certain standard or guide. The class is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of Defiinition we have a Type for our director. “A Type is an example of any class, for instance, a species of a genus, which is considered as eminently possessing the characters of the class. All the species which have a greater affinity with this Type-species than with any others, form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it in various directions and different degrees.” As expressed by Ruse (1976, p. 251): “[I]n his recognition that the biologist must work with types and not necessary and sufficient conditions Whewell’s thought here, as so often elsewhere, contains seeds of the directions to be taken by modern scientists.” Note that this notion of type differs from that of Linnaeus (cf. Stearn, 1971, pp. 246, 247). Many who argue against ‘essentialism’ in science conceive of essences in Aristotelian terms, i.e. in terms of definitions providing necessary and sufficient conditions; an example is Sober (1980, pp. 379–381).
In this regard, see Caplan (1981), p. 136: “Genotypes are the ‘hidden’ substrates that allow the grouping of organisms into sets of creatures. [T]he point of attending to similarity of phenotype, behavior, chemistry, or any other organic property is to facilitate inferences about the genetic factors that produce these properties.” And he continues: “One might disagree about the utility or possibility or validity of looking to genotypic similarity as a defiinition of species identity, but, this does seem to be what biologists do.”
Cf. Wittgenstein’s characterization of a paradigm as “something with which comparison is made” (1953,§50); in this regard see also Kripke (1972), p. 122.
In this way they can resemble Weber’s ideal types, as referred to in the previous chapter. If one wishes to trace them back in the history of ideas, the connection can undoubtedly be made to Plato’s notion of ideas.
Thus: “The trait in virtue of which the type is selected is typicality, not of phenotype, but, of genotype. ... Often it is unclear how representative any organism is of the population it is being used to exemplify. But uncertainty over the adequacy of evidence presented by a given specimen does not show that illustrating a typical genotype cannot be the valid function of type-specimens. It only shows that this representativeness is hard to ascertain.” Caplan (1981), p. 137. In this regard cf. Locke (1690), Iv. vi. 4: “No proposition can be certainly known to be true, where the real Essence of each Species mentioned is not known.” And ibid., III. vi. 50: “For if we know not the real essence of gold, it is impossible we should know what parcel of matter has that essence, and so whether it be true gold or no.”
An inorganic example is given by Harré (1970b, pp. 198–199): “Diamond, black carbon and graphite manifest different characteristics, but they are all carbon because they are alike in the electronic structure of their atoms, that is they have identical constitutions, and belong to the same natural kind.”
“Thus, whenever we speak of ‘silver’ or ‘iron,’ we are implying that certain laws are true, namely the laws asserting the association of the properties of silver and iron. If very high electrical conductivity was not associated with a brilliant white colour and solubility in nitric acid to give a solution in which ammonia forms a precipitate soluble in excess — and so on — we should not speak of silver; and if strong paramagnetism was not associated with the power of combining with carbon to form alloys which can be tempered, we should not speak of iron.” (Campbell, 1920, p. 43).
For an influential contribution to this confusion, see Quine (1969), p. 118: “Kinds can be seen as sets determined by their members.”
An argument for species being ‘individuals’ may be found e.g. in Dupré (1981) or Hull (1981); an argument for their being classes (sets) may be found e.g. in Caplan (1981). The general (mis)identification of kinds with classes or sets is explicit in Ruse: “Ghiselin and Hull argue that species are not natural kinds at all: They are not classes with members.” (1987, p. 230).
Just as, we might say, the problem of induction is a problem for formal logic, not for modern science.
In Dilworth (1992), pp. 207–210.
As referred to in note 18, p.160, with respect to Sober. In this regard see also Mellor (1977), esp. pp. 306, 309–310; and Dupré (1981), esp. pp. 88–89.
Thus the philosophical discussion is not one “of the ontological status of species” (Caplan, 1981, p. 136), but of their conceptual status. This widespread misconception may also be found e.g. in Sober, where he treats it as a question of fact “[w]hether species are natural kinds or spatio-temporally extended individuals.” (1980, p. 360).
On this point, and others of relevance to the present chapter, see the discussion in Whewell (1847) Part 1, pp. 469–542.
In this regard cf. Wittgenstein (1953), §79: “The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what to-day counts as an observed concomitant of a phenomenon will tomorrow be used to defiine it.” For Campbell’s views on this issue, see his (1920), pp. 45–55. See also Kant (1783), Ak. 267.
Cf. Graves (1971), p. 45. Crompton (1992, pp. 146, 147) also uses the term “grounding” in essentially this way.
Thus, as expressed by Harré, a taxonomic principle “should be treated as a proposition immune from falsification for the time being” (1970b, p. 216). Here of course we are assuming such a principle to be one for classification according to natural kind.
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Dilworth, C. (1996). Natural Kinds. In: The Metaphysics of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 173. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8621-4_8
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