Catherine Kendig - Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice

This edited volume of 13 new essays aims to turn past discussions of natural kinds on their head. Instead of presenting a metaphysical view of kinds based largely on an unempirical vantage point, it pursues questions of kindedness which take the use of kinds and activities of kinding in practice as significant in the articulation of them as kinds. The book brings philosophical study of current and historical episodes and case studies from various scientific disciplines to bear on natural kinds as traditionally conceived of within metaphysics. Focusing on these practices reveals the different knowledge-producing activities of kinding and processes involved in natural kind use, generation, and discovery.

Specialists in their field, the esteemed group of contributors use diverse empirically responsive approaches to explore the nature of kindhood. This groundbreaking volume presents detailed case studies that exemplify kinding in use. Newly written for this volume, each chapter engages with the activities of kinding across a variety of disciplines. Chapter topics include the nature of kinds, kindhood, kinding, and kind-making in linguistics, chemical classification, neuroscience, gene and protein classification, colour theory in applied mathematics, homology in comparative biology, sex and gender identity theory, memory research, race, extended cognition, symbolic algebra, cartography, and geographic information science.

The volume seeks to open up an as-yet-unexplored area within the emerging field of philosophy of science in practice, and constitutes a valuable addition to the disciplines of philosophy and history of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Catherine Kendig is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Missouri Western State University.

Series editor: Rasmus Grnfeldt Winther

www.rgwinther.com

This series brings together insights from historians and philosophers to shed light on significant developments in the life sciences. It includes work from a variety of philosophical traditions including analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and pragmatism, among many others. Philosophical topics include individuality, reductionism and holism, fitness, levels of selection, mechanism and teleology, and the nature-nurture debates, as well as explanation, confirmation, inference, experiment, scientific practice, and models and theories vis--vis the biological sciences. Books placing such philosophical themes in their historical and social context are always welcome, as are investigations concerned with values, power, and the future.

The scope of the series includes historical and philosophical studies relating to evolutionary theory, environmental sciences, genomics, molecular biology, systems biology, biotechnology, biomedicine, bioethics, biosemiotics, race and ethnicity, and sex and gender. These areas of the biological sciences are not silos, and tracking their impact on other sciences such as psychology, economics, and sociology, and the behavioral and human sciences more generally is also within this series scope.

Romantic Biology, 18901945

By Maurizio Esposito

Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice

Edited by Catherine Kendig

Organisms and Personal Identity

Individuation and the work of David Wiggins

By Adam M Ferner

Darwinism and Pragmatism

William James on evolution and self-transformation

By Lucas McGranahan

The Biological Foundations of Action

By Derek M Jones

Edited by Catherine Kendig

First published 2016

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 selection and editorial material, Catherine Kendig; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Catherine Kendig to be identified as author of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN: 978-1-848-93540-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-61993-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

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To my loving parents, G. Suzanne and Thomas C. Kendig

JOHN DUPR

CATHERINE KENDIG

Part I
Explaining practices

BERNHARD NICKEL

HASOK CHANG

JACKIE SULLIVAN

Part II
Kinding and classification

THOMAS A. C. REYDON

JOYCE C. HAVSTAD

JORDI CAT

CATHERINE KENDIG

Part III
The nature of natural kinds

SALLY HASLANGER

SAMULI PYHNEN

QUAYSHAWN SPENCER

Part IV
Shaping scientific disciplines

MICHAEL WHEELER

JOSIPA PETRUNIC

RASMUS GRNFELDT WINTHER

Arguably the central question for philosophers of science is whether what science tells us is true. While this may sound a strange question to the outsider, it is entirely possible to argue that what we care about is not the truth of scientific claims, but their utility. The equations of quantum mechanics, one may argue, are very good at telling us what will happen, but whether they also correspond in some way with how things are is a matter of indifference. And indeed, that is just as well, because stepping back and looking at the history of science reminds us that most of the things past scientists have believed we now think of as false. Yet historians show us that these beliefs were in some ways very effective. So very probably our own beliefs will go the same way. Or so the argument goes. Nonetheless, most philosophers reject this argument and believe that in some sense science does indeed give us truth. Such philosophers are known as realists.

More nuanced consideration distinguishes various aspects of realism. Are there really entities that correspond to our word electron? Are the generalizations, perhaps putative laws of nature, that we make about electrons, true and exceptionless? Or, finally, is there something about certain things that makes them, and only them, electrons? Is the boundary between electrons and everything else a real feature of the world, or something we impose on it, as we impose on certain pieces of paper the property of being legal tender. This last question is the question that lies behind the present collection. It has come to be formulated as the question whether electrons form a