Contemporary discussions of the success of science often invoke an                  ancient metaphor from Plato's Phaedrus: successful theories should "carve                  nature at its joints." But is nature really "jointed"? Are there natural                  kinds of things around which our theories cut? The essays in this volume offer                  reflections by a distinguished group of philosophers on a series of intertwined                  issues in the metaphysics and epistemology of classification. The contributors                  consider such topics as the relevance of natural kinds in inductive inference; the                  role of natural kinds in natural laws; the nature of fundamental properties; the                  naturalness of boundaries; the metaphysics and epistemology of biological kinds; and                  the relevance of biological kinds to certain questions in ethics. Carving Nature at                  Its Joints offers both breadth and thematic unity, providing a sampling of                  state-of-the-art work in contemporary analytic philosophy that will be of interest                  to a wide audience of scholars and students concerned with classification.

Carving Nature at Its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science (Topics in Contemporary Philosophy) PDF

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