Scientific enquiry and natural kinds : from planets to mallards / P.D. Magnus.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Magnus, P. D.

Series:

New directions in the philosophy of science

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ontology.

Science--Philosophy.

Science.

Physical Description:

xii, 210 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Summary:

There are certainly some scientific categories which are merely conveniences introduced to organize complicated data, but others correspond to genuine features of the world. These are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and it untangles philosophical puzzles surrounding them. Natural kinds can be practical, and we can identify them without pretending to know the fundamental structure of reality. The account is then put to work to illuminate specific examples, such as the category planet and the fate of Pluto, species like the common mallard and the species category itself, cognition and distributed cognition, animal signals and the threats they signify, and even baked goods. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 How to Think about Natural Kinds 4

A Why history is no help 5

B Some criteria considered 7

B.1 The induction assumption 8

B.2 The essence assumption 18

B.3 The science assumption 19

B.4 The law assumption 21

B.5 Artifacts and artificial kinds 23

B.6 The sharpness assumption 26

B.7 Starting with language 29

B.8 The intrinsic feature assumption 32

B.9 The hierarchy assumption 37

B.10 The scarcity assumption 38

B.11 The implicit simpliciter assumption 39

C Keeping score 45

2 A Modest Definition 47

A First formulation 47

B More or less natural kinds 49

B.1 Lessons from underdetermination 50

B.2 The lessons applied 52

C Induction redux 55

D Natural kinds for settled science 57

D.1 Example: the domain of chemistry 57

D.2 Fungible kinds 61

3 Natural Kinds Put to Work 68

A Eight planets, great planets 68

A.1 Numerology and asteroids 70

A.2 Enter Pluto 71

A.3 The constraints of astronomy 73

A.4 Natural kinds and the fate of Pluto 78

B The abundance of living things 83

B.1 Particular species (buzz, buzz) 85

B.2 The species category 87

B.3 How species are and are not natural kinds 94

C Thinking outside the box 96

C.1 Tasks and processes 96

C.2 Distributed cognition 97

C.3 What the natural kind is not 101

D Further examples 102

4 Practical and Impractical Ontology 103

A An unreasonable dichotomy 103

A.1 Natural kinds and bicameral legislation 105

A.2 Amphibolic pragmatism 109

A.3 The pragmatists' hope of convergence 113

A.4 Engaging the world 115

A.5 The practical as leverage on the real 117

B Deep metaphysics 119

B.1 Bad arguments for realism 120

B.2 Realism and metaphysical depth 123

5 The Menace of Triviality 126

A Cheap similarity 127

B Project-relative kinds 129

B.1 Promiscuous realism 130

B.2 Cooking up natural kinds 133

C Agent-relative kinds 136

C.1 Meerkat threats and alarms 137

C.2 Unicorns and fictobiology 140

C.3 Constellations 142

D Coda on promiscuity 145

6 Causal Processes and Property Clusters 147

A Species as the specimen of an HPC 149

A.1 Worries about polymorphism 151

A.2 Getting over similarity fetishism 156

A.3 Natural kinds and systematic explanation 160

B Species and token histories 165

B.1 The tigers of Mars 166

B.2 Hybrids and separate origin 168

C RE: ducks, the species problem redux 172

D Historical individuals 175

D.1 Sets and sums, a metaphysical non sequitur 176

D.2 Metaphysical puzzles about change 181

D.3 Individualism and HPCs 182

E HPC thinking beyond token causes 183

E.1 The waters of Mars 184

E.2 The Unity Problem 188

F Coda on HPCs 190

7 Conclusion 192.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230369177

0230369170

OCLC:

785873545

Online:

Cover image