Essentialism about kinds: An undead issue in the philosophies of physics and biology?

Abstract

The consensus among philosophers of biology is that traditional forms of essentialism have no place in accounts of biological kinds and classification. Recently, however, several authors have attempted to resurrect essentialism about biological kinds, invoking various views of the nature of kind essences starting a new debate on what kind essentialism should be if it is to apply to biological kinds. In this paper I examine three contemporary forms of biological kind essentialism and conclude that the scope of philosophical work that these are able to do is quite limited.X