Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T02:00:37.470Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Aristotle on Species Variation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

James Franklin
James Franklin
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The whole numbers and the chemical elements vary discretely: 5 is the next number to 4 and there is no number between them; silver is next to gold in the atomic table and there is no element between them. On the other hand, colours vary continuously: between red and yellow there is another colour, orange, between orange and yellow there is another colour, and so on. Between any two colours, no matter how close, there is an intermediate colour–indeed, an infinite number of intermediate colours. A surface may change gradually over time from red to yellow, assuming all the colours in between. Or again, a surface may be red at one edge and yellow at the other, changing gradually (over space) and assuming all the colours in between.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 61 , Issue 236 , April 1986 , pp. 245 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 John Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, III.vi.12.

2 Locke, Essay, III.vi.22. See Ayres, M. J., ‘Locke versus Aristotle on Natural Kinds’, Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981), 247–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Lewin, K., ‘The Conflict Between Aristotelian and Galilean Modes of Thought in Contemporary Psychology’, Journal of General Psychology 5 (1931), 141–177,CrossRefGoogle Scholar repr. in Lewin, K., A Dynamic Theory of Personality (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1935), 1–42, at pp. 4, 10.Google Scholar

4 Sachs, J., History of Botany, trans. Garnsey, H. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890; repr. New York: Russell & Russell, 1967), 42–43, 85–91, 99–101;Google Scholar Morton, A. G., History of Botanical Science (London: Academic Press, 1981), 136, 263.Google Scholar

5 Reiser, O., ‘The Concept of Evolution in Philosophy’, in J. S. Huxley et al., A Book That Shook the World (Pittsburgh University Press, 1958), 38–47, at p. 41;Google Scholar Oldroyd, D. R., Darwinian Impacts (Sydney: University of NSW Press, 1980), 9;Google Scholar Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1963), 5;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Cain, A. J., article, ‘Classification, Biological’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edn (1974), Vol. 4, 684;Google Scholar Hull, D. L., ‘The Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy–Two Thousand Years of Stasis (I)’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 15 (1964–1965), 314–326.Google Scholar

6 Centore, F. F., ‘Neo-Darwinian Reactions to the Social Consequences of Darwin's Nominalism’, Thomist 35 (1971), 113–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Darwin, C., On the Origin of Species, 1st edn (London: Murray, 1859), 484–485.Google Scholar

8 Op.cit.,194.

9 Aristotle, , Historia Animalium, trans. Thompson, D'A. W. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910).Google Scholar

10 Aristotle, , De Partibus Animalium, trans. Ogle, W. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912).Google Scholar

11 Lovejoy, A. O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936).Google Scholar

12 Quoted in Lovejoy, 145.

13 Aristotle, , Metaphysica, trans. Ross, W. D. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edn 1928).Google Scholar

14 Aristotle, , Categoriae, trans. Cook, H. P. (Loeb edn, London: Heinemann, 1962).Google Scholar

15 Thomas Aquinas, In Met. n. 1727.

16 Top. 143b1–3.

17 Euclid, Elements, Book X, especially Definitions II after Proposition 47 and Definitions III after Proposition 84.

18 An. Pr. 46a31–b39; Part. An. 642b5–644al0.

19 Lloyd, G. E. R., ‘The Development of Aristotle's Theory of the Classification of Animals’, Phronesis 6 (1961), 59–81;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Balme, D. M., ‘Aristotle's Use of Differentiae in Biology’, in Articles on Aristotle, Vol. 1, Barnes, J., Schofield, M. and Sorabji, R. (eds) (London: Duckworth, 1975), 183–193.Google Scholar

20 Porphyry, , Isagoge, trans. Warren, E. W. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1975), 34.Google Scholar

21 Kretzmann, N., William of Sherwood's Introduction to Logic (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966), 54;Google Scholar Peter, of Spain, Summulae Logicales, Bocheński, I. M. (ed.) (Turin: Marietti, 1947), 17–18.Google Scholar

22 I am grateful to Dr Denyse Rockey for some useful suggestions.