EssentialisminBiology.docxVIP

Essentialism in BiologyJohn S. WilkinsPhilosophy, University of Sydney, Australia, email: john@wilkins.id.auAbstract Essentialism inphilosophy is the position that things, especially kinds of things, have essences, or sets of properties, that all members of the kind must have, and the combination of which only members of the kind do, in fact, have. It is usuallythought to derive from classical Greek philosophy and in particular from Aristotle’s notion of “what it is to be” something. In biology, it has been claimed that pre-evolutionary views of living kinds, or as they are sometimes called, “