ABSTRACT
Species in biology are the result of inductively generalizing from individuals, rather than dividing general conceptions into subaltern genera to reach the infimae species. Scientists often use history as part of a program to promote their current scientific views, either by demonizing their opponents in proxy or by demonstrating that they are the culmination of a progressive historical process of discovery. This is not restricted to either side of any debate. Throughout the history of biological thought, species has always been thought to mean the generation of similar form. That is, a living kind or sort is that which has a generative power to make more instances of itself. The overall problem of species derives from its neo-Platonic history as a top-down category of the logic of classification. Although the traditional logic survives until the institution of set theory in the nineteenth century, even Mill is able to twist it to serve biological realities.
