ABSTRACT
Debates over the nature of “natural” kinds have filled philosophical treatises for well over a century. To say something is a “natural kind” is to say it has an essential quality or characteristic – a quality so fundamental and immutable that other things can be matched with it in kind based on that essential feature (or set of features) alone. “Natural kinds” implies a nature that exists independently of all human discourse, interaction, belief, culture, or perception. Not surprisingly, natural kind discourse is often associated with a scientific realist standpoint – a philosophy that believes the primary task of science is to reveal nature’s inherent kinds, whether they be atomic, bacterial, galactic, psychological, biological, and so on.
