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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access originally published online on March 20, 2006
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2006 57(2):425-448; doi:10.1093/bjps/axl001
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Evolutionary Essentialism

Denis Walsh

Department of Philosophy and Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, 215 Huron Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A2 denis.walsh{at}utoronto.ca

According to Aristotelian essentialism, the nature of an organism is constituted of a particular goal-directed disposition to produce an organism typical of its kind. This paper argues—against the prevailing orthodoxy—that essentialism of this sort is indispensable to evolutionary biology. The most powerful anti-essentialist arguments purport to show that the natures of organisms play no explanatory role in modern synthesis biology. I argue that recent evolutionary developmental biology provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Developmental biology shows that one must appeal to the capacities of organisms to explain what makes adaptive evolution adaptive. Moreover, the specific capacities in question are precisely those that, according to Aristotle, constitute the nature of an organism.

  1. Essentialism
    1.1 Aristotelian biological kinds

  2. Evolutionary anti-essentialism
    2.1 Taxonomic anti-essentialism
    2.2 Explanatory anti-essentialism

  3. Adaptation
    3.1 Stability
    3.2 Mutability
    3.3 Phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution

  4. The natures of organisms
  5. Conclusion


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