Carving Nature at its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science
Publication Date
10-2011
Description
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? The essays in this volume offer reflections by a distinguished group of philosophers on a series of intertwined issues in the metaphysics and epistemology of classification.
The contributors 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. Carving Nature at Its Joints offers both breadth and thematic unity, providing a sampling of state-of-the-art work in contemporary analytic philosophy that will be of interest to a wide audience of scholars and students concerned with classification.
ISBN
9780262015936
Keywords
Natural Kinds, Philosophy of Science, Classification, Metaphysics
Disciplines
Metaphysics | Philosophy of Science
Publisher
MIT Press
City
Cambridge, MA
Department
Philosophy
Files
Recommended Citation
Campbell, Joseph Keim; O'Rourke, Michael; and Slater, Matthew H., "Carving Nature at its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science" (2011). Faculty Books. 14.
https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/books/14
Comments
Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, volume 8