Darwin and the Nature of Species David N. Stamos Darwin and the Nature of Species i SUNY series in Philosophy and Biology David Edward Shaner, editor Darwin and the Nature of Species David N. Stamos State University of New York Press Published by State University of New York Press, Albany ©2007 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2384 Production by Michael Haggett Marketing by Susan M. Petrie Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stamos, David N., 1957- Darwin and the nature of species / David N. Stamos. p. cm. – (SUNY series in philosophy and biology) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6937-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7914-6937-9 (hardcover : alk. paper ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6938-5 (pbk. : alk paper) ISBN-10: 0-7914-6938-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Species–Philosophy. 2. Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882. I. Title. II. Series. QH83.S748 2007 578'.012–dc22 2005036225 10987654321 In memory of my mentor and friend the late Robert H. Haynes, who enjoyed to the last what he called “the opiate of Darwinism.” This page intentionally left blank. Contents  Preface ix Acknowledgments xix 1. A History of Nominalist Interpretation 1 2. Taxon, Category, and Laws of Nature 21 3. The Horizontal/Vertical Distinction and the Language Analogy 37 4. Common Descent and Natural Classification 65 5. Natural Selection and the Unity of Science 81 6. Not Sterility, Fertility, or Niches 107 7. The Varieties Problem 131 8. Darwin’s Strategy 153 9. Concept Change in Scientific Revolutions 187 10. Darwin and the New Historiography 207 Notes 231 References 249 Index 267 vii This page intentionally left blank. Preface  Looking back, I think it was more difficult to see what the problems were than to solve them. —Charles Darwin (letter to Charles Lyell, September 30, 1859) The year 1859 marks the beginning of an enormous earthquake, an earth- quake that shook the world and continues to shake it to this very day. The earthquake and the consequent tremors were not caused by the gradual shift and strain of conflicting ideas, but by a sudden impact, the publica- tion of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. It started a revolution in thinking, an enormous paradigm shift, the implications of which are still being worked out. Interestingly, at the very core of that revolution is the concept of species. It is important, then, to know exactly what Darwin did with that concept. The problem, however, is that for a variety of reasons scholars (biologists, philosophers of biology, and professional historians of biology) have provided interpretations that just don’t fit the facts. A large part of the reason, as we shall see, was caused by Darwin himself. At any rate, the problem of Darwin on the nature of species, what was the prevail- ing view and how he tried to change that view, has yet to be adequately understood and appreciated. The time is definitely overdue for a detailed historical reconstruction. This becomes even more important because the concept of species in biology, from the time of Darwin right up to today, is still far from settled. The purpose of this book is basically fourfold: First and foremost, to provide a full and detailed reconstruction of Darwin’s species concept fo- cusing mainly on his mature evolutionary period, to get it right inasmuch as that is possible. In fact the present work breaks entirely new ground and constitutes a major reinterpretation of Darwin on the nature of species, in stark contrast to the literature on this topic, which stretches back over 140 ix [...]... something we discover; and if the latter is the case, it is the further problem of determining their precise nature and of formulating it in a definition The modern species problem has both purely theoretical and eminently practical dimensions Beginning with the former, the species problem can be seen as the central problem of the Modern Synthesis Begun in the 1920s with the marriage of Darwinian natural... but denied that the species category could be defined, simply to better communicate his evolutionary views, given that his audience had a theory-laden definition of species. ” Beatty’s theory has enjoyed the status of being the received view ever since The present book, on the other hand, is the first major-length study of Darwin on the nature of species, and one of its themes is that the received view... of the paleontologist (aside, of course, from discovering new bones) Although himself not a paleontologist, one has to think of the discovery by the physicist and Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez and his team and their explanatory theory, namely, the discovery of high levels of xii PREFACE iridium at the K/T boundary and their theory of extraterrestrial impact to explain both it and the K/T extinction The. .. wolf is a hybrid of the gray wolf and the coyote, and thus not a good species from the viewpoint of either the biological or phylogenetic species concepts And yet from the xiv PREFACE viewpoint of an ecological species concept the government’s efforts have been well spent Because of the biological species concept’s lack of finer discriminations and other problems (including hybridization and its inapplicability... about the mutability of primroses and cowslips, wrote that “If we allow the cowslip and primrose to be two species, and yet allow that one can pass into the other, either directly or through the intermediate oxlip, we abandon the definition of species, as usually given, and fall into the transition -of- species theory Let a few other cases be adduced, between reputed species equally similar, and we... that the context of the passage makes it clear that Darwin is drawing his conclusion not from nature or from his own theory of evolution but from the taxonomic behavior of other naturalists For in the previous paragraph he states that “If a variety were to flourish so as to exceed in numbers the parent species, it would then rank as the species, and the species as the variety” (52) This was not Darwin s... for Darwin are real, such as Canis lupus and Homo sapiens, but not the species category, the class of species taxa and the object of a species definition Sixteen years later John Beatty (1985) added to Ghiselin’s thesis a strategy theory to explain why Darwin would define species nominalistically and yet hold that species taxa are real For Beatty, Darwin simply followed the species designations of his... see is that Darwin did have a distinction between species as a taxon and species as a category Moreover, he provided a number of laws of nature for the species category, not for any particular species taxon but for the class of species taxa as a whole Given that a number of thinkers on the modern species problem argue that the species category is objectively real because there are laws of nature that... (Wayne and Gittleman 1995), the flagship of the U.S conservation program Millions of dollars were spent by the government, capturing, breeding, and reintroducing this species into the wild Although an ambiguous species from the viewpoint of the biological species concept, it is a good species from the viewpoint of the morphological species concept Recent DNA studies, however, have confirmed that the red... into the realm of scientific classification (which at that time put a high premium on natural law) and biology into the unity of science In chapter 6 I examine what was not part of the nature of species on Darwin s view, namely, reproductive isolation between species, fertility within a species, and the occupation of an ecological niche Of particular interest are the reasons Darwin gave for rejecting these . N. Stamos State University of New York Press Published by State University of New York Press, Albany ©2007 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No. Darwin and the Nature of Species David N. Stamos Darwin and the Nature of Species i SUNY series in Philosophy and Biology David Edward Shaner, editor Darwin and the Nature of Species David. the status of being the received view ever since. The present book, on the other hand, is the first major-length study of Darwin on the nature of species, and one of its themes is that the re- ceived