Lagrange wrote:

I don't know about current scientists, Timocrates, but Darwin in his "Origin of Species" saw that categorization not as intrinsic but as arbitrary in the end, and he saw it as an implication of his theory.  He denied the idea of species as something real to organisms.  The idea of species was more as a useful way for us humans to categorize life that is "different enough" in contrast with the different variations of organisms that differ only slightly from each other.  The difference between actual speciation and that of mere variations was a difference of degree and not of type. 
 

See my above post. Despite all of Darwin's virtues as a practical zoologist he was neither an ontologist nor a logician (if essentialism is established elsewhere then it's hard to escape the conclusion that at the very least an individual has its species essentially even if the 'species' demographic group it is included has no clear boundaries).
 

DanielCC wrote:

See my above post. Despite all of Darwin's virtues as a practical zoologist he was neither an ontologist nor a logician (if essentialism is established elsewhere then it's hard to escape the conclusion that at the very least an individual has its species essentially even if the 'species' demographic group it is included has no clear boundaries).

This is by no means clear to me unless you further specify what's meant. The modern evolutionary synthesis, as far as I can tell, teaches that everything that lives is little but the variation of the same basic cellular mechanisms and their arrangement. In principle, with some provisos, under the right conditions and with enough time anything can produce any shape over successive generations.

DanielCC wrote:

As I touched on re Ellis' view, the 'arrangement' or 'configuration' of which you speak is itself an instance of a universal property and presumably one which its possessor has essentially (even if there will only be one instance of it in the natural course of things). As the OP pointed out, in his case as an objection, this would imply there would be as as many species as there are geneticaly differentiated individuals.

I am quite fine with this (animals being something like the manifestation of genetic forms), but one usually means something more robust by this when one speaks of 'species'. I'm concerned more as to whether 'cat' in the usual sense represents a determinate form shared by everything called cat which arose as a distinct and essential differentiation from evolutionary predecessors (and which may, or may not, depending on the account, be the only ligitimate source for future things rightly called 'cat). I clearly have no interest in denying living forms in some sense.

Yes, you are really mostly fields of stuff, Shade. I do enjoy a debate with an electron cloud of mostly nothingness.

But if your gods in science say you are, then so be it and believe it.

iwpoe wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

If essentialism is established elsewhere then it's hard to escape the conclusion that at the very least an individual has its species essentially even if the 'species' demographic group it is included has no clear boundaries).

This is by no means clear to me unless you further specify what's meant. The modern evolutionary synthesis, as far as I can tell, teaches that everything that lives is little but the variation of the same basic cellular mechanisms and their arrangement. In principle, with some provisos, under the right conditions and with enough time anything can produce any shape over successive generations.

Daniel: quite right.

Poe: The modern synthesis forces no such doctrine upon us - though I bet it is popular:

Everything that lives:
Since evolution is about biological forms, not individuals, its relevance to the essence or nature of an individual or primary substance is at least obscure. It only *requires* us to admit an inidividual living thing has the potential to produce variable offspring. And, it requires that the variance be severely limited. 'Plant a radish, get a radish[y thing], not a brussel sprout.' (The Fantasticks)

little but the variation of the same basic cellular mechanisms:
That many species have much the same matter is no big to-do: iodine and xenon differ by very little, materially. Salt differs from a lump of sodium and a cloud of chlorine by, well, no matter at all.

with some provisos, under the right conditions: All those come from 'beyond' the material compoments - an escape-hatch physicalists and reductionists have been driving their trucks through since Epicurus' 'arrangement' and 'swerve'. I think the major proviso, however, is:

anything can produce any shape over successive generations: There is no empirical evidence for such a strong claim. What we see is individual organisms produced from other organisms, and there is a variation, even an articulation, over the generations. dogs and cows have some common ancestor, one that is not the ancestor also of hermit crabs. The natural history of life on earth is individual, just as its members are. And it's a mere speculation how, for example that humans could eventually generate plankton, and nobody has a clue what pressures could be put upon our population to do the thing. My impression (from Stephen Jay Gould) is that that natural history is unrepeatable.

Pardon if I sound sharp. I had fires to put out mere weeks after joining.

Chris-Kirk