Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-b4m5d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-14T11:46:45.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Letting Go of “Natural Kind”: Toward a Multidimensional Framework of Nonarbitrary Classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

David Ludwig
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article uses the case study of ethnobiological classification to develop a positive and a negative thesis about the state of natural kind debates. On the one hand, I argue that current accounts of natural kinds can be integrated in a multidimensional framework that advances understanding of classificatory practices in ethnobiology. On the other hand, I argue that such a multidimensional framework does not leave any substantial work for the notion “natural kind” and that attempts to formulate a general account of naturalness have become an obstacle to understanding classificatory practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 31 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†.

Previous versions of this article were presented at PSA 2016, the Filosofie van Wetenschap en Technologie Reading Group, and the workshop “Classification in Biological Practice” at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I would like to thank all participants and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Laura Franklin-Hall, Muhammad Ali Khalidi, P. D. Magnus, and Matthew Slater all answered questions about their accounts of natural kinds and prevented at least some misrepresentations of their views. Marc Ereshefsky read an earlier draft, and his comments greatly improved the manuscript.

References

Albuquerque, Ulysses, and Alves, Rômulo. 2016. Introduction to Ethnobiology. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Eugene. 2011. “Ethnobiology: Overview of a Growing Field.” In Ethnobiology, ed. Anderson, Eugene and Pearsall, Deborah, 1–14. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atran, Scott. 1981. “Natural Classification.” Social Science Information 20 (1): 37–91..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atran, Scott 1987. “The Essence of Folkbiology: A Reply to Randall and Hunn.” American Anthropologist 89:149–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atran, Scott 1990. Cognitive Foundations of Natural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Atran, Scott, and Medin, Douglas. 2010. The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bach, Theodore. 2012. “Gender Is a Natural Kind with a Historical Essence.” Ethics 122:231–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartol, Jordan. 2016. “Biochemical Kinds.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67:531–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bautista, Francisco, and Zinck, Alfred. 2010. “Construction of an Yucatec Maya Soil Classification.” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 6:1–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berlin, Brent. 1992. Ethnobiological Classification. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlin, Brent, Breedlove, Dennis, and Raven, Peter. 1966. “Folk Taxonomies and Biological Classification.” Science 154:273–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berlin, Brent, Breedlove, Dennis, and Raven, Peter 1968. “Covert Categories and Folk Taxonomies.” American Anthropologist 70:290–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bokulich, Alisa. 2014. “Pluto and the ‘Planet Problem.’” Perspectives on Science 22:464–90.Google Scholar
Bolker, Jessica. 2013. “The Use of Natural Kinds in Evolutionary Developmental Biology.” Biological Theory 7:121–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. 1991. “Realism, Anti-foundationalism and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds.” Philosophical Studies 61:127–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. 2010. “Homeostasis, Higher Taxa, and Monophyly.” Philosophy of Science 77:686–701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bulmer, Ralph. 1967. “Why Is the Cassowary Not a Bird? A Problem of Zoological Taxonomy among the Karam of the New Guinea Highlands.” Man 2:5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bulmer, Ralph 1970. “Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg-Head.” Échanges et Communications. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Bursten, Julia 2016. “Smaller than a Breadbox.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. doi:10.1093/bjps/axw022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conklin, Harold. 1954. “The Relation of Hanunóo Culture to the Plant World.” PhD diss., Yale University.Google Scholar
Conklin, Harold 1962. “Lexicographical Treatment of Folk Taxonomies.” In Readings in the Sociology of Language, ed. Fishman, Joshua, 414–33. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Craver, Carl. 2009. “Mechanisms and Natural Kinds.” Philosophical Psychology 22:575–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, Jared. 1966. “Zoological Classification System of a Primitive People.” Science 151:1102–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diéguez, Antonio. 2013. “Life as a Homeostatic Property Cluster.” Biological Theory 7:180–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupré, John. 1981. “Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa.” Philosophical Review 90:66–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupré, John 2002. “Is ‘Natural Kind’ a Natural Kind Term?” Monist 85:29–49.Google Scholar
Ellen, Roy. 2006. The Categorical Impulse. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Ereshefsky, Marc. 2010. “Microbiology and the Species Problem.” Biology and Philosophy 25:553–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ereshefsky, Marc, and Reydon, Thomas. 2015. “Scientific Kinds.” Philosophical Studies 172:969–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Estrada-Medina, Héctor, et al. 2013. “Maya and WRB Soil Classification in Yucatan, Mexico.” ISRN Soil Science. doi:10.1155/2013/634260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Laura. 2007. “Bacteria, Sex, and Systematics.” Philosophy of Science 74 (1): 69–95..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin-Hall, Laura. 2015. “Natural Kinds as Categorical Bottlenecks.” Philosophical Studies 172:925–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gannett, Lisa. 2010. “Questions Asked and Unasked.” Synthese 177:363–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godman, Marion. 2013. “Psychiatric Disorders qua Natural Kinds.” Biological Theory 7:144–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffiths, Paul. 2004. “Emotions as Natural and Normative Kinds.” Philosophy of Science 71:901–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 2007. “Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 61:203–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunn, Eugene. 1982. “The Utilitarian Factor in Folk Biological Classification.” American Anthropologist 84:830–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunn, Eugene 1987. “Reply to Atran.” American Anthropologist 89:147–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunn, Eugene 2007. “Ethnobiology in Four Phases.” Journal of Ethnobiology 27:1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalidi, Muhammad Ali. 2013. Natural Categories and Human Kinds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalidi, Muhammad Ali 2015. “Natural Kinds as Nodes in Causal Networks.” Synthese. doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0841-y.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. 2007. “Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35:293–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kripke, Saul A. 1972. “Naming and Necessity.” In Semantics of Natural Language, ed. Davidson, Donald and Harman, Gilbert, 253–355. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lampman, Aaron. 2004. “Tzeltal Ethnomycology.” PhD diss., University of Georgia.Google Scholar
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ludwig, David. 2016a. “The Objectivity of Local Knowledge.” Synthese. doi:10.1007/s11229-016-1210-1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ludwig, David 2016b. “Overlapping Ontologies and Indigenous Knowledge: From Integration to Ontological Self-Determination.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 59:36–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ludwig, David 2017. “Indigenous and Scientific Kinds.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68:187–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacLeod, Miles, and Reydon, Thomas. 2013. “Natural Kinds in Philosophy and in the Life Sciences.” Biological Theory 7:89–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magnus, P. D. 2012. From Planets to Mallards: Scientific Enquiry and Natural Kinds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magnus, P. D. 2015. “Taxonomy, Ontology, and Natural Kinds.” Synthese. doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0785-2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Mellor, David. 1977. “Natural Kinds.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 28:299–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nanay, Bence. 2011. “Three Ways of Resisting Essentialism about Natural Kinds.” In Carving Nature at Its Joints, ed. Campbell, Joseph Keim, O’Rourke, Michael, and Slater, Matthew H., 175–99. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
O’Malley, Maureen. 2014. Philosophy of Microbiology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. 1973. “Meaning and Reference.” Journal of Philosophy 70:699–711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radder, Hans. 2012. The Material Realization of Science. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reydon, Thomas. 2015. “From a Zooming-in Model to a Co-creation Model.” In Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice, ed. Kendig, Catherine, 59–73. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ruphy, Stephanie. 2010. “Are Stellar Kinds Natural Kinds?” Philosophy of Science 77:1109–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, Matthew. 2013. “Cell Types as Natural Kinds.” Biological Theory 7:170–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, Matthew 2015. “Natural Kindness.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66:375–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suárez, Javier. 2016. “Bacterial Species Pluralism in the Light of Medicine and Endosymbiosis.” Theoria 31:91–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svanberg, Ingvar, and Łuczaj, Łukasz. 2014. Pioneers in European Ethnobiology. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis.Google Scholar
Tsou, Jonathan. 2013. “Depression and Suicide Are Natural Kinds.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 36:461–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Umphrey, Stewart. 2016. Natural Kinds and Genesis: The Classification of Material Entities. Lanham, MD: Lexington.Google Scholar
Wilson, Robert, Barker, Matthew, and Brigandt, Ingo. 2007. “When Traditional Essentialism Fails.” Philosophical Topics 35:189–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winther, Rasmus Gr⊘nfeldt. 2015. “Mapping Kinds in GIS and Cartography.” In Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice, ed. Kendig, Catherine, 197–216. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar