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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Metaphysics & ontology
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Natural Kinds and Genesis - The Classification of Material Entities (Hardcover)
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Natural Kinds and Genesis - The Classification of Material Entities (Hardcover)
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Total price: R2,225
Discovery Miles: 22 250
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In Natural Kinds and Genesis: The Classification of Material
Entities, Stewart Umphrey raises and answers two questions: What is
it to be a natural kind? And are there in fact any natural kinds?
First, using the everyday understanding of things, he argues that
natural kinds may be understood as classes or as types, and that
the members or tokens of such kinds are individual continuants. A
continuant is essentially a being-in-becoming, a material thing
which changes and yet remains the same, in virtue of its nature or
essence, as long as it exists. In the primary sense of the term,
then, a natural kind is a class whose members closely resemble one
another substantially, in virtue of their essences. Alternatively,
it is a type whose tokens exemplify it in virtue of their essences.
To answer the second question, one must make use of relevant
scientific theories as well. Umphrey agrees with scientific
essentialists that there are natural kinds, but he argues that most
of the chemical, physical, and biological kinds posited in current
theories are not natural kinds in the primary sense of the term.
The natural-kinds realism he affirms is thus quite restricted: it
requires the existence of enduring things which closely resemble
one another in virtue of their essences, and such things exist,
apparently, only if they have come into being, or emerged, in the
course of symmetry-breaking events. Natural Kinds and Genesis will
be of interest to philosophers of science and to those interested
in the metaphysics of natural kinds and their members.
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