Carving Nature at Its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science
Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, and Matthew H. Slater
Abstract
Contemporary discussions of the success of science often invoke an ancient metaphor from Plato’s Phaedrus: successful theories should “carve nature at its joints,” but is nature really “jointed?” Are there natural kinds of things around which our theories cut? This book offers reflections by a group of philosophers on a series of intertwined issues in the metaphysics and epistemology of classification. The chapters consider such topics as the relevance of natural kinds in inductive inference; the role of natural kinds in natural laws; the nature of fundamental properties; the naturalness of bo ... More
Contemporary discussions of the success of science often invoke an ancient metaphor from Plato’s Phaedrus: successful theories should “carve nature at its joints,” but is nature really “jointed?” Are there natural kinds of things around which our theories cut? This book offers reflections by a group of philosophers on a series of intertwined issues in the metaphysics and epistemology of classification. The chapters consider such topics as the relevance of natural kinds in inductive inference; the role of natural kinds in natural laws; the nature of fundamental properties; the naturalness of boundaries; the metaphysics and epistemology of biological kinds; and the relevance of biological kinds to certain questions in ethics.
Keywords:
success of science,
successful theories,
metaphysics,
epistemology of classification,
natural kinds,
inductive inference,
natural laws,
fundamental properties,
naturalness of boundaries,
biological kinds
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262015936 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262015936.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Joseph Keim Campbell, editor
Michael O'Rourke, editor
Matthew H. Slater, editor
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