Making sense of essentialism

Critical Quarterly

Volumn 53, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 61-77

  Müller Wille, Staffan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84455193606     PISSN: 00111562     EISSN: 14678705     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8705.2011.02022.x     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. From a letter to a publisher, quoted in, Tatyana Tolstaya, Introduction, in Andrei Platonov: The Fierce and Beautiful World: Stories, trans. J. Barnes (New York: New York Review of Books, 2000), ix-xvii (p. xvi).
2. English translation quoted from, François Jacob, The Statue Within: An Autobiography, trans. Franklin Philip (Cold Spring Harbor NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1988), 274.
3. Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 1982), 259
4. cf. 175-177, 639-41.
5. Ernst Mayr, ' When is Historiography Whiggish? ', Journal of the History of Ideas, 51: 2 (1990), 301-309.
6. Mary P. Winsor, ' The Creation of the Essentialism Story: An Exercise in Metahistory ', History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 28: 2 (2006), 149-174.
7. Mayr, Growth of Biological Thought, 38.
8. Staffan Müller-Wille, Botanik und weltweiter Handel. Zur Begründung eines Natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707-1778) (Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1999)
9. for an English summary of the main results of my dissertation, see, Staffan Müller-Wille, ' Collection and Collation: Theory and Practice of Linnaean Botany ', Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38: 3 (2007), 541-562.
10. Marjorie Grene, ' A Defense of David Kitts ', Biology and Philosophy, 4: 1 (1989), 69-72 (p. 69).
11. Searching for 'essentialism' in title or abstract retrieved 119 items in PubMed, the earliest dating from 1985. Most of the articles came from gender studies, group psychology and science studies. The same search on JSTOR retrieved 283 items, the earliest outside the history and philosophy of biology dating from the mid 1980s as well. For an early review essay that associates the work of Judith Butler, Helen Longino and Robin Fox with Mayr's essentialism story, see, Fred Matthews, ' Nature/Nurture, Realism/Nominalism: Our Fundamental Conflict Over Human Identity ', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35: 3 (1993), 647-662.
12. These three phases roughly correspond to those distinguished by, John Beatty, ' The Proximate/Ultimate Distinction in the Multiple Careers of Ernst Mayr ', Biology and Philosophy, 9: 3 (1994), 333-356.
13. Carl Chung, ' Essence, Variation, and Evolution: An Analysis of Ernst Mayr's Distinction between "Typological" and "Population" Thinking ' (PhD, University of Minnesota, 2000)
14. Carl Chung, ' On the Origin of the Typological/Population Distinction in Ernst Mayr's Changing Views of Species, 1942-1959 ', Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 34: 2 (2003), 277-296.
15. Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), 115-122.
16. Chun, ' On the Origin of the Typological/Population Distinction ', 281-285, for a detailed discussion.
17. Quoted from, Chun, ' On the origin of the typological/population distinction ', 285.
18. Winsor, ' Creation of the Essentialism Story ', 156-157.
19. Ernst Mayr, ' Karl Jordan's Contribution to Current Concepts in Systematics and Evolution ', Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London, 107: 1-14 (1955), 45-66 (p. 52)
20. cf., Ernst Mayr, ' Species Concepts and Definitions ', in, Ernst Mayr, (ed.), The Species Problem (Washington DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1957), 1-22 (pp. 2-3>).
21. Ernst Mayr, ' Illiger and the Biological Species Concept ', Journal of the History of Biology, 1: 2 (1968), 163-178 (pp. 163-4).
22. Mayr, ' Karl Jordan's Contribution ', 53.
23. Mayr, ' Illiger and the Biological Species Concept ', 164
24. cf., Mayr, ' Footnotes on the Philosophy of Biology ', Philosophy of Science, 36: 2 (1969), 197-202 (p. 198).
25. David L. Hull, ' Ernst Mayr's Influence on the History and Philosophy of Biology: A Personal Memoir ', History of Biology, 9: 3 (1994), 375-385.
26. Ernst Mayr, ' Origin and History of Some Terms in Systematic and Evolutionary Biology ', Systematic Zoology, 27: 1 (1978), 83-88 (p. 85).
27. Erika Lorraine Milam, ' The Equally Wonderful Field: Ernst Mayr and Organismic Biology ', Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 40: 3 (2010), 279-317 (p. 291); emphasis in the original.
28. David L. Hull, ' The Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy-Two Thousand Years of Stasis (I) ', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 15: 60 (1965), 314-326 (p. 314).
29. David B. Kitts, ' Plato on Kinds of Animals ', Biology and Philosophy, 2: 3 (1987), 315-328
30. Pierre Pellegrin, La Classification des animaux chez Aristote. Statut de la biologie et unité de l'aristotélisme (Paris: Société d'édition 'Les Belles Lettres', 1982)
31. David M. Balme, ' Aristotle's Biology Was Not Essentialist ', in, Allan Gotthelf, and, James G. Lennox, (eds), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 291-303.
32. Hull, ' Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy ', 317-318.
33. Ernst Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 186
34. cf., Mayr, ' Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory in Biology ', in Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal, ed., B. J. Meggers, (Washington DC: Anthropological Society of Washington, 1959), 1-10 (p. 2)
35. Arthur J. Cain, ' Logic and Memory in Linnaeus's System of Taxonomy ', Proceedings of the Linnean Society London, 169: 1-2 (1958), 144-163.
36. Cain's exposition of Linnaeus's taxonomic principles was followed up and further substantiated by, James L. Larson, Reason and Experience: The Representation of Natural Order in the Work of Carl Linnaeus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).
37. Cain, ' Logic and Memory ', 146.
38. cf., Staffan Müller-Wille, ' Collection and Collation ', 546-550.
39. Mary P. Winsor, ' Non-essentialist Methods in pre-Darwinian Taxonomy ', Biology and Philosophy, 18 (2003), 387-400
40. cf., James L. Larson, Interpreting Nature: The Science of Living Form from Linnaeus to Kant (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
41. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1, Plato, 4th edn (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 31.
42. Elliott Sober, ' Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism ', Philosophy of Science, 47: 3 (1980), 350-383 (p. 350).
43. Mayr, ' Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory ', 2.
44. Popper, Open Society and Its Enemies, 25.
45. Sober, ' Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism ', 360-362.
46. Ernst Mayr, ' Joseph Gottlieb Koelreuter's Contributions to Biology ', Osiris, 2nd series, 2 (1986), 135-176 (p. 164).
47. Ernst Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 13.
48. Gregor Mendel, Experiments in Plant Hybridisation, ed., James H. Bennett, (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1965), 45-46.
49. Wilhelm Johannsen, ' The Genotype Conception of Heredity ', American Naturalist, 45: 631 (1911), 129-159 (p. 130).
50. Ernst Mayr, ' Where Are We? ' Cold Spring Harbour Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 24 (1959), 1-14.
51. Staffan Müller-Wille, and, Vitezslav Orel, ' From Linnaean Species to Mendelian Factors: Elements of Hybridism, 1751-1870 ', Annals of Science, 64: 12 (2007), 171-215.
52. Quoted from, Staffan Müller-Wille, ' Hybrids, Pure Cultures, and Pure Lines: From Nineteenth-Century Biology to Twentieth-Century Genetics ', Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38: 4 (2007), 796-806 (p. 801).
53. Ernst Hans Gombrich, Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Phaidon, 1978), 96; originally published 1966.
54. Cf., John C. Greene, ' From Aristotle to Darwin: Reflections on Ernst Mayr's Interpretation in "The Growth of Biological Thought "', Journal of the History of Biology, 25: 2 (1992), 257-284.
55. Müller-Wille, ' The Dark Side of Evolution: Caprice, Deceit, Redundancy ', History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 31: 2 (2009), 183-199.
56. Popper, Open Society, 18.
57. Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, v.