Species

106 Species

the Latin tradition, “genus” means a general kind, while “species” means a special

kind. Taking a hint from Locke and replacing genus with “kind” and species with

“sort” for anyone before Ray, we can see that the problem lay in the ways things

were broken down into kinds and sorts. Of course if you graft a branch from an

apple tree onto a pear tree you have a different “sort” of fruit (examples Zirkle gives

from Theophrastus). That doesn’t mean it’s a new biological kind or sort, but a new

practical one.

Of course, a lot of the mutability of species/sorts is also a claim of biological spe-

cies (in our sense) mutability. There are three kinds in the pre- and early-scientic

literature that I have so far found:

1. Mutability from hybridization—two species can interbreed to form a novel
   one.


2. Spontaneous generation or transmutation of one form (say, a worm) into
   another (say, a goose). This might be seen in modern terms as a part of the
   single species’ lifecycle.


3. New varieties—a species can breed untrue in some characters (even
   Aristotle knew this); by extension you can get new species. This is almost
   always credited to the inuences of the local country—the soil, climate, or
   water—which directly changes the breed.

Only the last is relevant for us, and even here I have my doubts that many peo-
ple thought there would be much change beyond the modern genus level, if that.
Amundson has argued that xism was invented in the mid-seventeenth century.^264
I think he is right, although I suspect Ray, not Linnaeus, is the culprit. But no matter
who invented it, the question is why. The answer is, as Amundson shows, that xism
was an outcome of the generation debates. Spontaneous generation, a view that went
back to Aristotle and earlier, did imply species mutability, since the generated form
could change into a quite different form, as we saw with the Barnacle Goose case
above. When the debate over generation resolved in favor of epigenesis rather than
preformationism, it followed that the generation of an organism had to be controlled
in some manner.^265 Even the preformationists held that something made things
develop according to their kinds—the variety of preformationists known as ovists^266
called it the emboîtement (encasement) of generative forms, and Gasking notes:

the seventeenth century preformationists assumed ... that all living things there were

to be, had in fact been organized at God at creation... when all the created germs had

reached the adult form the species would become extinct. ... it followed from such a

view that there was no true generation; what appears as the formation of a new indi-

vidual was simply the growth of an organised living thing which had been formed at

the beginning of Time.^267

(^264) Amundson 2005, § 2.2.
(^265) Gasking 1967, 34.
(^266) Ovists held that eggs contained the preformed germ, and semen activated it. Spermists held the form
was in the semen.
(^267) Gasking 1967, 42.