Case Studies for a General Account of Biological Kinds

不同流派的生物学家通过丰富的分类和分组，在各自的领域联合起来进行解释和预测。有些动物是熊猫，这解释了为什么它吃竹子，它们特殊的饮食偏好有助于预测，随着竹林的破坏，它们将会减少。另一个例子是哺乳动物的通气肺通过对动物模型的研究来解释人类生理学。哲学家们把这种具有解释性和预见性的丰富范畴称为“自然种类”。这个概念是最近哲学辩论的焦点。在物理科学中，自然种类通常是通过分类对象的底层结构来接近的。例如，某种东西是金，因为它有一种特殊的原子结构。相比之下，来自生物科学的分类在很大程度上抵制这种结构性的处理。似乎并不是所有熊猫都有一个共同的“底层结构”。在生物学哲学中，大部分注意力都集中在有魅力的类别上，比如物种，以及如何解释它们的客观性。这个项目的目的将是检查三个范围的案例研究：细胞/组织类型，器官类型和微生物生态学。这些案例基本上没有引起哲学上的注意。关注它们的目的是构建一个更普遍和灵活的生物种类说明。期望对更广泛的生物学实践的密切观察将导致对生物分类的更好理解及其对不同的解释和预测项目的贡献，这些项目对我们很重要。PI将聘请两名生物学和哲学专业的本科生作为研究助理，他们将协助收集案例研究的材料，并根据他们的特定才能和兴趣进行平行的研究项目，从而获得宝贵的研究学习经验。

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.