Table Of ContentEssence in the Age of Evolution
This exciting book defends a controversial position: biological natural kind
essentialism with a neo-Aristotelian twist. It makes an interesting, novel
contribution to the metaphysics of natural kinds and is a great example of
what work in scientifically informed metaphysics, or the metaphysics of
science, should look like.
—Tuomas E. Tahko, University of Helsinki
This book offers a novel defence of a highly contested philosophical
position: biological natural kind essentialism. This theory is routinely and
explicitly rejected for its purported inability to be explicated in the context of
contemporary biological science, and its supposed incompatibility with the
process and progress of evolution by natural selection. Christopher J. Austin
challenges these objections, and in conjunction with contemporary scientific
advancements within the field of evolutionary developmental biology, the
book utilises a contemporary neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of dispositional
properties, or “causal powers”, to provide a theory of essentialism
centred on the developmental architecture of organisms and its role in the
evolutionary process. By defending a novel theory of Aristotelian biological
natural kind essentialism, Essence in the Age of Evolution represents the
fresh and exciting union of cutting-edge philosophical insight and scientific
knowledge.
Christopher J. Austin is Head of Philosophy at Sutton Grammar School,
London, and specialises in the metaphysics of science, with a particular
focus on biology. Recent publications include ‘Dispositions in Evolutionary
Developmental Biology’ in Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Reference
Guide, and ‘A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism’ in Neo-Aristotelian
Perspectives on Contemporary Science.
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Platonism, Naturalism, and Mathematical Knowledge
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Thought Experiments in Science, Philosophy, and the Arts
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Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Revisited
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Science after the Practice Turn in Philosophy, History, and the Social
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Alternative Interpretations of the A Priori
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Essence in the Age of Evolution
A New Theory of Natural Kinds
Christopher J. Austin
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Essence in the Age of
Evolution
A New Theory of Natural Kinds
Christopher J. Austin
First published 2019
by Routledge
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Contents
ContentsContents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Figures viii
Introduction 1
1 Biological Natural Kind Essentialism: Definitions and Desiderata 4
1.1 The Philosophical Theory of Natural Kinds 4
1.2 Natural Kind Essentialism 8
1.3 Aristotelian Biological Natural Kind Essentialism 12
1.4 Toward a Neo-Aristotelian Biological Natural
Kind Essentialism 15
2 Essence and Explanation: Natural Kinds in the Taxonomic Tree 22
2.1 A Natural Taxonomy of Kinds 23
2.2 Natural Kinds and the Species Concept 24
2.3 Two Taxon Questions 28
2.4 Type, Telos, and Taxon 32
3 Powerfully Directed Development: A Dispositional Analysis
of Ontogenesis 38
3.1 Dispositions and the Dynamics of Dependence 39
3.2 The Causal Mechanisms of Morphology 44
3.3 Development, Dispositionally 51
4 Ontogenetic Causal Primacy: The Fount and Flow of
Information 67
4.1 The Case Against Primacy I: Polygeny and
Pragmatism 68
vi Contents
4.2 The Case Against Primacy II: Pleiotropy and
Plasticity 73
4.3 Primus Inter Pares: Causal Relevance vs. Causal
Responsibility 76
4.4 Parity and Pragmatism Revisited 83
4.5 A More Complex Teleology: Mapping Out
Morphospace 87
5 The Essence of Natural Kinds: Unity in Diversity 97
5.1 The No Such Set Objection: Phenotypic and
Genotypic Diversity 98
5.2 Essence and the Effects of Essence 102
5.3 The Form of What Matters 108
6 An Evolutionary Ontology: Priority, Modality, and the
Natural State 118
6.1 The Natural State Model: Being, Backwards 119
6.2 Evolutionary Ontology: A Tale of Two Syntheses 122
6.3 The Nature of Essence 127
Conclusion 136
Index 141
Acknowledgements
AcknowledgementsAcknowledgements
This book represents the culmination of a long-term philosophical research
project which began during my BPhil studies at Oriel College, Oxford, and
extended well beyond my PhD programme at the University of Notting-
ham. During my doctoral studies, which were graciously funded by the Vice
Chancellor’s International Research Excellence Scholarship, I was privileged
to be the student of Stephen Mumford from whose philosophical acumen,
pedagogical guidance, and genuine encouragement I have immeasurably
benefitted. Thanks to a generous grant from the Analysis Trust, I was able to
continue my post-doctoral work on this project in the Power Structuralism
in Ancient Ontologies research group at Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
under the guidance of Anna Marmodoro—an astute mentor, continual col-
league, and true friend without whom this book could not have been writ-
ten. For various reasons, both academic and professional, I am also grateful
to Timothy O’Connor, Harvey Brown, Christopher Shields, Joseph Melia,
Penelope Mackie, Kim Sterelny, James Lennox, Laura Nuño de la Rosa, and
William Jaworski.
On a more personal note, none of my accomplishments—academic or
otherwise—would have been possible without the unfailing and unquestion-
ing support of my parents, James and Toni Austin, to whom the credit for
any virtues I may possess is undoubtedly owed, or without the love of my
dearest Layla, my undeniably better half.
Figures
List of FiguresList of Figures
Chapter 3
3.1 Genetic Regulatory Network 48
3.2 Disc Development 50
3.3 State-Space Modelling 54
3.4 Developmental Trajectory Mapping 56
3.5 Topological State-Space Model 57
Chapter 4
4.1 Topological Morphospace Model 90
Chapter 5
5.1 Hylomorphic Essentialism 111
Introduction
IntroductionIntroduction
For the non-random, the for-something’s-sake is present in the works of
nature most of all, and the end for which they have been composed or have
come to be occupies the place of the beautiful.
(Aristotle, On The Parts of Animals: 645a23–25)
Only a moment’s reflection is required to see that the world which we
inhabit is dizzyingly complex. To observe something as seemingly simple as
the blossoming of a single flower is to gaze upon the subtle operations of a
veritable cosmos unto itself unfurling with microscopic precision an utterly
unique physiochemical creation. And yet, despite the swirling cacophony
of creative contingency which surrounds us, we do not find ourselves lost
at sea. Rather, the workings of our world are anchored in certain stability,
one which grounds and guides our scientific navigation of it—namely, the
presence of recognisably repeatable structural patterns: for though the fruit
of every flower is a truly singular blossom, each belongs to a single sort of
bouquet. Our world, in other words, is one in which the disparity among
the irreplaceable individuals who occupy it is yet underwritten by the exis-
tence of a deeper unity—it is a world whose denizens’ shared structural con-
sistencies discretely partition them into collections known as natural kinds.
Though it is this fact—that our world is divided into discernibly distinct
kinds of things—which serves as the scaffolding for the successes of the
physical sciences, the entire evidential enterprise of the experimentally veri-
fiable regularities of their scientia is itself seemingly supported by a more
metaphysical edifice, one most notably explored and explicated by Aristotle.
According to The Philosopher, the scientific comprehensibility of the world
and its workings is possible precisely because the conceptual categories into
which they are sorted are themselves metaphysically moored in the particu-
larities of its naturally occurring, mind-independent causal structure. On
this view, the morphological mutability of the creatures that compose the
living world and the seemingly infinitely complex variability of their forms
is grounded in a creative capacity which is neither unrestrictedly innovative
nor contingently conscribed: with respect to organismal shape and structure,
