|
|
| Program > 19th Century Philosophy of Science |
| Programme > La philosophie des sciences au XIXe siècle |
|
Mary Pickard Winsor (University
of Toronto) Whewell's Method of Types, the Very Antithesis of Typology |
|
In 1840 William Whewell, the 19th century's greatest philosopher of science (according to Ian Hacking), studied the impressive progress botanists and zoologists were making and judged that they had created a new method, more approporiate for their subject than the method of definition formulated by logicians. Although Whewell labelled this the Method of Types, it stands in direct opposition to essentialist types. Historical examples of taxonomic practice support Whewell's analysis and directly challenge the picture about the dominance of essentialism before Darwin that is now uncritically accepted.
Institute
for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
|
|
|
