green numbers give full details.     |    back to list of philosophers     |     expand these ideas

Ideas of John Dupré, by Text

[British, fl. 1993, At Stanford and Birkbeck, and the Professor at Exeter University.]

1993 The Disorder of Things
Intro p.3 The possibility of prediction rests on determinism
Intro p.5 Natural kinds are decided entirely by the intentions of our classification
1 p.18 All descriptive language is classificatory
1 p.26 Presumably molecular structure seems important because we never have the Twin Earth experience
1 p.27 Borders between species are much less clear in vegetables than among animals
1 p.30 Wales may count as fish
1 p.32 Phylogenetics involves history, and cladism rests species on splits in lineage
1 p.34 Cooks, unlike scientists, distinguish garlic from onions
2 p.37 Species are the lowest-level classification in biology
2 p.39 Even atoms of an element differ, in the energy levels of their electrons
2 p.40 Kinds don't do anything (including evolve) because they are abstract
2 p.42 The theory of evolution is mainly about species
2 p.43 Ecologists favour classifying by niche, even though that can clash with genealogy
2 p.53 It seems that species lack essential properties, so they can't be natural kinds
2 p.55 A species might have its essential genetic mechanism replaced by a new one
3 p.67 Natural kinds don't need essentialism to be explanatory
Ch 1 p.18 We should aim for a classification which tells us as much as possible about the object