John S Wilkins

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• PhD
• Honorary Research Fellow at University of Melbourne

Are species worth saving? Can they be resurrected by technology? What is the use of species in biomedicine? These questions all depend on a clear definition of the concept of 'species', yet biologists have long struggled to define this term. In this accessible book, John S. Wilkins provides an introduction to the concept of 'species' in biology, ph...

It’s not enough to just list the clusters in the living world. One also needs to group clusters together within larger clusters. This process is sometimes referred to as ‘ordering the world’, and is called taxonomy, from the Greek word for ‘order’, taxis. In traditional taxonomy, begun in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and formalised in t...

Are species worth saving? Can they be resurrected by technology? What is the use of species in biomedicine? These questions all depend on a clear definition of the concept of 'species', yet biologists have long struggled to define this term. In this accessible book, John S. Wilkins provides an introduction to the concept of 'species' in biology, ph...

Textbook histories are how most scientists learn about the past of the ideas and disciplines they employ, and any textbook will tell you that the idea of species goes back to the classical era if not earlier. In a way this is true, but textbook histories are written by scientists, not historians, and they often repeat untested or false ideas for re...

What are species worth? Do they have inherent value or are they just of value to human beings? Do they have rights? Does their integrity as species have moral worth, and do we have a duty to preserve them, or to modify them? Are species of utilitarian or instrumental value? These are the questions that the third great topic of philosophy seeks to a...

Are species worth saving? Can they be resurrected by technology? What is the use of species in biomedicine? These questions all depend on a clear definition of the concept of 'species', yet biologists have long struggled to define this term. In this accessible book, John S. Wilkins provides an introduction to the concept of 'species' in biology, ph...

There are, says Professor Julia Sigwart, an American mollusc specialist (malacologist), species makers and species users. The former are the taxonomists, and they identify, name and record species in technical journals and store the type specimens (the original specimen that ‘bears’ the name) in museums and other collections. There are way too few...

As I have noted, terms for species are at best polysemic (that is, they are a single word in a language with multiple and often incompatible meanings), and at worst species is a term with no meaning of any real scientific importance. Now we will consider several replacement concepts, and the evolutionary and genetic considerations that make them se...

Are species worth saving? Can they be resurrected by technology? What is the use of species in biomedicine? These questions all depend on a clear definition of the concept of 'species', yet biologists have long struggled to define this term. In this accessible book, John S. Wilkins provides an introduction to the concept of 'species' in biology, ph...

If there is an issue in a science, philosophers will attend to it. This is not new, either. Since the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century, many if not most of the problems that philosophers have addressed or formulated have arisen out of science one way or another. Books on ‘the philosophy of botany’ or ‘the philosophy of natural hist...

Every textbook of biology will supply a number of ‘modes of speciation’, the ways in which new species evolve. But the issues in dispute among the biologists themselves are rather odd. The adoption of evolutionary theory by biologists has had a great impact on how species are understood. From the idea that kinds of living beings were created and at...

One of the things that is often said about the frankly catastrophic loss of biodiversity in the world today is that extinction is a natural process of the living world, and this is quite true. Extinction does not naturally occur at a constant rate, however. It ranges from near instantaneous (as when a 12-km-wide rock hits the planet, causing a Very...

Are species worth saving? Can they be resurrected by technology? What is the use of species in biomedicine? These questions all depend on a clear definition of the concept of 'species', yet biologists have long struggled to define this term. In this accessible book, John S. Wilkins provides an introduction to the concept of 'species' in biology, ph...

The title of this book is Understanding Species, and I have spoken at length about what we understand species to be and to mean. Now, though, I would like to ruminate for a bit on the ‘understanding’ part. To understand something is not necessarily to have the One True Answer. Human knowledge, and especially its concepts, is in a state of flux at a...

Species as a concept is the outcome of theological and philosophical considerations, not empirical or scientific need. It still holds political import for the religious movement of dominionism, with great impact on environmentalist and conservationist politics in the United States and elsewhere in the world. This chapter will argue that having a “t...

Much of the species problem lies in trying to find necessary and sufficient theoretical criteria for both their explanation and delimitation. I argue in this chapter that species are instead “operative concepts”, built up by the collective experience and context of subdisciplines of systematics as the field develops, relying on assays and criteria...

Scientists and philosophers routinely talk about phenomena, and the ways in which they relate to explanation, theory and practice in science. However, there are very few definitions of the term, which is often used synonymously with "data", "model" and in older literature, "hypothesis". In this paper I will attempt to clarify how phenomena are reco...

Life and significance of John Ray

We argue that the logical outcome of the cladistics revolution in biological systematics, and the move towards rankless phylogenetic classification of nested monophyletic groups as formalized in the PhyloCode, is to eliminate the species rank along with all the others and simply name clades. We propose that the lowest level of formally named clade...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/replication/

First published Wed Dec 5, 2001; substantive revision Tue Sep 25, 2018 The problem of replication and reproduction arises out of the history of genetics [see the entry gene for a historical review]. It is tied to the concept of the gene and its generalization in an evolutionary context [see the entry evolution]. Richard Dawkins introduced the notio...

2nd edition, expanded, of my 2009 Species: A history of the idea https://www.crcpress.com/Species-The-Evolution-of-the-Idea/Wilkins/p/book/9781138055742

People (and not merely religious people) often have beliefs that are widely regarded as silly by the experts or by the general population. This leads us to ask why believers believe silly things if they are widely thought to be silly, and then why believers believe the specific things they do. I propose that silly beliefs function as in-group and o...

Переклад з англ. Н.I. Петруньок.Автор ставить за мету обгрунтувати такi положення: (1) що твердження Фейєрабенда базуються на лiберальному епiстемiчному iндивiдуалiзмi як рiзновидi рацiоналiзму; (2) що його дадаїстська не-програма може процвiтати лише за специфiчних умов; (3) що сучасний стан науки в суспiльствi, далекий вiд чогось, що бодай трохи...

To naturalize religion, we must identify what religion is, and what aspects of it we are trying to explain. In this paper, religious social institutional behavior is the explanatory target, and an explanatory hypothesis based on shared primate social dominance psychology is given. The argument is that various religious features, including the high...

This chapter is concerned primarily with the educational roles and academic contributions of programs in history and philosophy of science (hereafter HPS) in Australasia. It focuses mainly on those that are most relevant to the overall project of writing a history of philosophy in Australasia. The philosophy of science has always been an important...

In this chapter we introduce the notion of a natural classification and the role classification plays in sciences. We consider the difference between taxonomy and systematics, and introduce the question of theory-dependence of observation. The philosophical background of classification is introduced, along with the question of essentialism and natu...

Classification is a disputed territory in every science. Sometimes this is a professional matter, as when a term’s meaning or application is disputed by competing schools or alliances. This, while it has more to do with professional authority and the dynamics of a discipline than natural kind terms, affects the way science is done more than one mig...

In this chapter, we consider what homologies and analogies are, in biology and other contexts. A homology is a relation from one set of objects or parts to another, a relation of identity no matter what differences of appearance or function exist in the parts or objects. Similarity relations are arbitrary, while homological relations are not. Homol...

In this chapter we describe a way to conceptualize science as a field of possibilities from active conceptualization (theorization) to passive conceptualization (classification), and from active observation (experiment) to passive observation (pattern recognition of phenomena), setting up the scene for later chapters.

In this chapter we consider how abandoning the full Theory-Dependence of Observation Thesis (TDOT) affects our view of classification. We define a scientific Theory (capital-T) as something distinct from the notion that phenomena are observed based on prior criteria of salience to an observer, and adopt the Bogen—Woodward notion of a phenomenon as...

What classifications contribute to the inferential process in science is that they allow us to locate the mass of data points observed without Theory in a broader pattern, and they guide Theory-building. Classification is not, in and of itself, Theory-building; nor is it free of Theory when Theory is available. However, if we have no Theory, or the...

In this chapter we consider monstrous classifications, or misclassifications, which rely more upon facts about the observers and their predilections than upon the facts about the objects classified. Trashcan categories are common in science, but are aphyletic in biological terms. We consider what is a natural classification, concluding that it is o...

In this chapter we consider the sociological and phenomenal aspects of classification. The tribalism of taxonomy and systematics is discussed, leading to the tasks of classification, to order taxa and objects so that inferences can be made from them. Classing and ordering objects are distinct actions. We consider the iconographical representations...

The various existing definitions of monophyly have resulted in confusion within the systematics community. The divergence in terminology started with the work of Willi Hennig who attempted to introduce a precise definition of phylogenetic relationship in 1950, a term that he had synonymised with monophyly by 1953, thereby creating a new definition....

Discussing the generally ignored issue of the classification of natural objects in the philosophy of science, this book focuses on knowledge and social relations, and offers a way to understand classification as a necessary aspect of doing science . © John S. Wilkins and Malte C. Ebach 2014. All rights reserved.

This chapter distinguishes between two mindsets about science—the deductivist mindset and inductivist mindset—and explores the cognitive styles relating to authority and tradition in both science and pseudoscience. The deductivist tends to see problems as questions to be resolved by deduction from known theory or principle. The inductivist sees pro...

Essentialism in philosophy is the position that things, especially kinds of things, have essences, or sets of properties, that all members of the kind must have, and the combination of which only members of the kind do, in fact, have. It is usually thought to derive from classical Greek philosophy and in particular from Aristotle’s notion of “what...

Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? We consider this problem for beliefs in three different domains: religion, morality, and commonsense and scientific cl...

Genes are thought to have evolved from long-lived and multiply-interactive molecules in the early stages of the origins of life. However, at that stage there were no replicators, and the distinction between interactors and replicators did not yet apply. Nevertheless, the process of evolution that proceeded from initial autocatalytic hypercycles to...

Charles Darwin, in his discussions with Asa Gray and in his published works, doubted whether God could so arrange it that exactly the desired contingent events would occur to cause particular outcomes by natural selection. In this paper, I argue that even a limited or neo-Leibnizian deity could have chosen a world that satisfied some arbitrary set...

The vision of natural kinds that is most common in the modern philosophy of biology, particularly with respect to the question whether species and other taxa are natural kinds, is based on a revision of the notion by Mill in A System of Logic. However, there was another conception that Whewell had previously captured well, which taxonomists have al...

Creationism is usually regarded as an irrational set of beliefs. In this paper I propose that the best way to understand why individual learners settle on any mature set of beliefs is to see that as the developmental outcome of a series of “fast and frugal” boundedly rational inferences rather than as a rejection of reason. This applies to those wh...

It’s an old question in biology: what is a species? Many different answers have been given over the years, and there are indefinitely many “definitions” in the literature. Adding to R. L. Mayden’s list of 22 definitions (Mayden, 1997) , I counted 26 in play since the Modern Synthesis (2009a), and a new one, which I call the “polyphasic” concept (ba...

Creationists oppose the idea that species can evolve indefinitely and charge evolutionary biologists with failing to define their terms properly. In this article I want to trace briefly the history of the idea of species and show that it is in fact a virtue of biology that it tries to make its terms follow the evidence rather than to define them al...

Arguments against essentialism in biology rely strongly on a claim that modern biology abandoned Aristotle's notion of a species as a class of necessary and sufficient properties. However, neither his theory of essentialism, nor his logical definition of species and genus (eidos and genos) play much of a role in biological research and taxonomy, in...

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Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? In this chapter we apply this argument to beliefs in three different domains: morality, religion, and science. We iden...

This chapter discusses the species concepts debate and the revival of the study of logic in the early nineteenth century. It discusses the use of the notions of genus and species in logical discussions and suggests that the genera plus differentia definition remained widely accepted by logicians until the introduction of the new set theory and form...

This chapter discusses the beginnings of the modern synthesis and modern species debate. Ronald A. Fisher is famous as the founder of the modern synthesis between Mendelian genetics and Darwinian natural selection. His work, Genetical Theory of Natural Selection introduced mathematical models to genetics and selection and addressed questions about...

This chapter discusses the history of the species concept and the philosophical foundations of classification. The species concept is divided into universal and biological taxonomic notions. The universal taxonomy began with Plato and held that species are any distinguishable or naturally distinguished categories with an essence or definition. The...

This chapter discusses the modern views of the species concepts. It presents several classes of fundamental concepts such as reproductive isolation concepts, evolutionary concepts, phylogenetic concepts, and ecological concepts. Reproductive isolation concept involves the genetic isolation of adaptive genes and gene complexes. The evolutionary spec...

This chapter discusses the biological species concepts debates during the medieval period. The period was characterized by a revival of the universals debate and nominalist school. The nominalists rejected the view that universals are real things that exist apart from the substance of the things that are within them. William of Ockham, the most inf...

This book considers the historical and several philosophical and biological claims about the species concept. From Aristotle through to the end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the notion of species has not remained static. Aristotle's notions were modified by neo-Platonists. The generative conception of species began as early as the fourth...

During the so-called eclipse of the Darwinism period, in which neo-Lamarckian ideas overtook Darwin's mechanism of natural selection, species were often thought to be types again. This chapter focuses on the non-Darwinian ideas that became prominent after the period of Darwinism. It discusses orthogenetic Lamarckism, bathmism, and the Baldwin Effec...

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species discusses why species evolve to be distinct from parental forms, and how they have done so. Darwin's definition of species is simply that they do not interbreed or, in the case of “unisexual” organisms, that natural selection keeps them isolated in the “proper type” suited to the conditions of life in which...

The complex idea of “species” has evolved over time, yet its meaning is far from resolved. This work takes a fresh look at an idea central to the field of biology by tracing its history from antiquity to today. The book explores the essentialist view, a staple of logic from Plato and Aristotle through the Middle Ages to fairly recent times, and con...

Progress and the Tree of HistoryDiscovering the PastTeleological ThinkingReferences and Further Reading

Charles Darwin’s name is going to be heard, read about, or spoken a lot this year, as it is the second centenary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. And as great as his contribution to science and the modern world is, we might ask ourselves whether we are making rather too much of this man. Is Darwin...

An oft-repeated claim is that there is information in some biological entity or process, most especially in genes (Downes 2005). Some of these claims derive from the Central Dogma, population genetics, and the neo-Darwinian program. Others derive from attacks upon evolution, in an attempt to show that “information cannot be created” by natural sele...

It is often claimed that species are the units of evolution, but this is not defined or clearly explained. In this paper I will argue that species are phenomenal objects that stand in need of explanation, but that they are not objects required by any theory of biology. I further define, or rather describe, species as the genealogical cluster of var...

In 1988, David Hull presented an evolutionary account of science. This was a direct analogy to evolutionary accounts of biological adaptation, and part of a generalized view of Darwinian selection accounts that he based upon the Universal Darwinism of Richard Dawkins. Criticisms of this view were made by, among others, Kim Sterelny, which led to it...

Over the past few years, blogging ('web logging') has become a major social movement, and as such includes blogs by scientists about science. Blogs are highly idiosyncratic, personal and ephemeral means of public expression, and yet they contribute to the current practice and reputation of science as much as, if not more than, any popular scientifi...

Pierre Trémaux's 1865 ideas on speciation have been unjustly derided following his acceptance by Marx and rejection by Engels, and almost nobody has read his ideas in a charitable light. Here we offer an interpretation based on translating the term sol as "habitat," in order to show that Trémaux proposed a theory of allopatric speciation before Wag...

In December 2004, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a colloquium on a /Systematics and the Origin of Speciesa to celebrate Ernst Mayra (TM)s 100th anniversary and to explore current knowledge concerning the origin of species. In 1942, Ernst Mayr, one of the twentieth centurya (TM)s greatest scientists, published Systematics and the Origin...

Species concepts for bacteria and other microbes are contentious, because they are often asexual. There is a Problem of Homogeneity: every mutation in an asexual lineage forms a new strain, of which all descendents are clones until a new mutation occurs. We should expect that asexual organisms would form a smear or continuum. What causes the intern...

Without Abstract

Speciation is an aspect of evolutionary biology that has received little philosophical attention apart from articles mainly by biologists such as Mayr (1988). The role of speciation as a terminus a quo for the individuality of species or in the context of punctuated equilibrium theory has been discussed, but not the nature of speciation events them...