A Study On The Essence Of Natural Kinds

Natural kind is the most important research object of metaphysics and scientific study, and to classify natural things is also one of the main goals of scientific research. A kind is natural in the sense that it corresponds to a grouping or ordering that does not depend on human behaviors. If natural kinds exist, then what will be its classification methods that philosophers would take, that is, we should know whether natural kinds have essence? The answer to this question may roughly divide philosophers into two groups. Natural kind essentialists hold that natural kinds have its essence. They can be viewed as the class defined by the common essential properties. For the members of that class, the essential property is necessary and sufficient. Or rather, people can make the scientific laws which truly apply to those classes. The proponents are Aristotle, Kripke and Putnam etc.The anti-essentialists, including Locke, Mellor, Dupre, argue that there is no need to appeal to essences. They think that, to classify natural things relies on human beings, or they believe the existence of essence on accounts of Natural kinds is a simple gratuitous assumption. What’s more, essentialists regard natural kinds immutable or static, on the contrary, examples of species are mutable in biology. This paper investigates the argumentations between the natural kind essentialists and anti-essentialists at each stage. As Darwin’s evolutionism proposed and the mutation of species were generally accepted, the biological species in terms of natural kinds caused a great controversy among biologist and philosopher of biology. Species are not viewed as natural kinds with members, instead, individuals are made up with each organism. Isotopes of element may change over time, but that does not mean chemical elements are not natural kinds at all. For comparison, the biological species are always changing in morphology and genetic structure. It is difficult to find a biological characteristic for all the members of a species. The essentialists are facing the great challenge now. Thus, they need to seek a possible defense immediately.