Biologists of various stripes are united in approaching explanation and prediction in their respective fields via a rich stock of categories and groupings. That some animal is a panda explains why it eats bamboo, and their particular dietary preferences serves to facilitate the prediction that they will decline as bamboo forests are destroyed. Another example is the way in which mammals' ventilation lungs of serves to explain human physiology through the study of animal models. Philosophers have called such explanatorily and predictively rich categories "natural kinds". That concept is the locus of recent philosophical debates.
Within the physical sciences, natural kinds are often approached via the underlying structure of the objects categorized. Something is gold, for example, in virtue of having a particular atomic structure. By contrast, categories from the biological sciences have largely resisted this kind of structural treatment. There simply does not seem to be an "underlying structure" common to all pandas. Within the philosophy of biology, the lion's share of attention has gone to charismatic categories like species and how to account for their objectivity. The aim of this project will be to examine three ranges of case studies: cell/tissue types, organ types, and microbial ecologies. These cases have largely escaped philosophical attention. The aim of focusing on them is to construct a more general and flexible account of biological kinds. It is expected that a close inspection of a wider range of biological practice will lead to a better understanding of biological classification and its contribution to the different explanatory and predictive projects that are important to us.
The PI will employ two undergraduate student research assistants from biology and philosophy who will assist with gathering material for the case studies and who will pursue parallel research projects according to their specific talents and interests and thereby gain a valuable research learning experience.
