SOME GRAMMAR OF GROUPS, WITH AN APPLICATION TO SPECIES

This talk attempts an old-fashioned philosophical analysis of ordinary ideas expressed by a family of very general collective nouns, such as, in alphabetical order, assemblage, category, class, cluster, collection, family, genus, grouping, group, kind, set, sort, species, and type. This will be called the family of nouns for groups.

The analysis is conducted for its own intrinsic interest. It is then briefly applied to a contretemps involving at least three parties. (1) Philosophers of biology, who maintain that species are individuals, and “therefore” not sets, and “therefore” not natural kinds. (2) Philosophers of biology, who maintain that species are (a) sets (with histories), and (b) natural kinds. (3) Post-Kripkean philosophers who maintain that natural kinds have essences, but biological species do not, and, “therefore,” species are not natural kinds.

I am an outlier who holds that (a) for both logical and scientific reasons, the once useful concept of a natural kind is obsolete. (b) The concept of a species was transformed from a timeless logical one into a timeless classificatory one shortly before 1700. A century later, shortly before 1800, it was transformed into a historico-classificatory concept. Thus at about the same time, species and languages became thought of as historical entities. This conceptual process culminated when species became genealogical in 1859. (c) The ordinary language of the family of nouns for groups is surprisingly well adapted for expressing the corresponding gains in knowledge and the understanding of life. (d) The contretemps among philosophers of stripes (1)-(3) is the result of the meticulous construction of idle concepts. Their philosophies of biology are often sound, but they are decked out in infelicitous outerwear.