Making sense of essentialism

Müller‐Wille, Staffan

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8705.2011.02022.x

Cited by 35 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…While Mayr was "moving more and more in the direction of the history and philosophy of biological science" in the late 60s, 16 Hull enjoyed the possibility of "communicating with a biologist who [he felt] confident will understand what [he is] saying". 17 Mayr also borrowed the term "essentialism" from Hull (Winsor, 2006) and used it to articulate his argument about the static view of species that Darwin allegedly dislodged, an approach historians of biology have now called into question (Müller-Wille, 2011). In addition to his attempt to correct the ills of the past and to demarcate the field, Hull was involved in debates over the nature of species, biological classification, reductionism, presentism, the concept of human nature, and the dynamics of conceptual change.…”

Section: Marjorie Grene and David Hull Contrastedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Canguilhem and Continental Philosophy of Biology

2023

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences is a space for dialogue between life scientists, philosophers and historians -welcoming both essays about the principles and domains of cutting-edge research in the life sciences, novel ways of tackling philosophical issues raised by the life sciences, as well as original research about the history of methods, ideas and tools, which constitute the genealogy of our current ways of understanding living phenomena.The series is interested in receiving book proposals that • are aimed at academic audience of graduate level and up • combine historical and/or philosophical and/or theoretical studies with work from disciplines within the life sciences broadly conceived, including (but not limited to) the following areas: • Anatomy &

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Section: Marjorie Grene and David Hull Contrastedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Canguilhem and Continental Philosophy of Biology

2023

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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“…A growing number of revisionist interpretations of Linnaeus's taxonomic practice show that once the essentialism story is recognized for what it is—a phantasm—the evidence that speaks in favor of an empiricist, inductive approach starts to fall into place (Atran, 1990; Müller‐Wille, 1999, 2007, 2011, 2013; Winsor, 2001, 2006a; Stevens, 2002; Amundson, 2005; McOuat, 2009; Scharf, 2009; Wilkins, 2009; Richards, 2010). With the narrative of Linnaeus's aprioristic philosophy gone, what had appeared to be the scientific exceptions to his method turned out to form the core of his approach.…”

Section: The Essentialism Story and Its Discontentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linnaeus, the essentialism story, and the question of types

Witteveen

2020

TAXON

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According to an influential twentieth-century narrative, Linnaeus's taxonomic endeavors rested on a suspect metaphysical basis of "typological thinking" or "essentialism". Since the beginning of this century, historians and philosophers have shown that this narrative is deeply problematic and fails to be supported by the close study of Linnaeus's actual taxonomic principles and practices. Magnus Lidén has recently argued in Taxon that this revisionist literature on Linnaeus nevertheless preserves a residue of unwarranted attributions of typological thinking aimed at Linnaeus. I argue that this is incorrect and contend that Lidén misinterprets the recent literature on the history of "type concepts" in taxonomy, which has nothing to do with typological thinking. With this article, I hope to show that the historiography of taxonomy is helped, not hindered, by enquiring into Linnaeus's use of certain type concepts and his unfamiliarity with others.

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“…Sober, 1980). Further analysis over the years has helped deflate Mayr's claim that 'essentialism' characterised pre-Darwinian natural philosophy (Winsor, 2006;Müller-Wille, 2011), as well as pointing to the benefits of typological methods in biological investigations (Di Teresi, 2010).…”

Section: Mayr Wild Types and 'Typological Thinking'mentioning

confidence: 99%

The wild type as concept and in experimental practice: A history of its role in classical genetics and evolutionary theory

Holmes

2017

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in

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Wild types in genetics are specialised strains of laboratory experimental organism which principally serve as standards against which variation is measured. As selectively inbred lineages highly isolated from ancestral wild populations, there appears to be little wild or typical about them. I will nonetheless argue that they have historically been successfully used as stand-ins for nature, allowing knowledge produced in the laboratory to be extrapolated to the natural world. In this paper, I will explore the 19th century origins of the wild type concept, the theoretical and experimental innovations which allowed concepts and organisms to move from wild nature to laboratory domestication c. 1900 (resulting in the production of standardised lab strains), and the conflict among early geneticists between interactionist and atomist accounts of wild type, which would eventually lead to the conceptual disintegration of wild types and the triumph of genocentrism and population genetics. I conclude by discussing how the strategy of using wild type strains to represent nature in the lab has nonetheless survived the downfall of the wild type concept and continues to provide, significant limitations acknowledged, an epistemically productive means of investigating heredity and evolutionary variation.

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Making sense of essentialism

Cited by 35 publications

References 26 publications

Canguilhem and Continental Philosophy of Biology

Canguilhem and Continental Philosophy of Biology

Linnaeus, the essentialism story, and the question of types

The wild type as concept and in experimental practice: A history of its role in classical genetics and evolutionary theory

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