Species

xxix

Prologue

THE RECEIVED VIEW

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana^8
First, then, we have the problem involved in the origin of species. As a pre-
liminary to that, logic demands that we should dene the term. It may be that
logic is wrong, and that it would be better to leave it undened, accepting the
fact that all biologists have a pragmatic idea at the back of their heads. It may
even be that the word is undenable. However, an attempt at a denition will
be of service in throwing light on the difculties of the biological as well of the
logical problems involved.
Julian Huxley^9
The problem of species is a long-standing one in natural history. Since the develop-
ment of modern taxonomy and classication, naturalists, botanists, zoologists, and
all the other various terms for aspects of biology as we have known it or now know it
have tried to dene clearly what it is they are taking about when they talk of “species.”
There is a Received View of the species concept that is largely the result of work pub-
lished by biologists themselves.^10 Polly Winsor^11 traces the origin of the Received View
history to Arthur Cain’s^12 reliance on a 1916 “misinterpretation” of Aristotle^13 and his
subsequent writings on the history of taxonomy.^14 These inuenced both Simpson
and Hull, and also Mayr’s later development of the story.^15 Similar conclusions have
also been reached by Ron Amundson concerning typology^16 —transcendentalism and

(^8) Santayana 1917, 284.
(^9) Huxley 1942, 154.
(^10) There is a tendency in the philosophy of science to refer to an older viewpoint or school of thought
as the “Received View.” The Semantic Conception of Theories presented by Suppe 1977, 1988 is
contraposed to a Received View. Hull himself contrasts his evolutionary view to the Received View
of Popper and Hanson [Hull 1988b, 484]. This tactic does run the risk of falling into the mistake of
assuming a global hegemony of views against the “radical” nature of one’s own, but until recently this
view of species has indeed universally been received even by those who want to defend essentialism
[such as Ruse 1987, 1998]. Amundson 2005 calls a similar tradition the Synthetic Historiography, in
a broader context. Winsor 2003, independently also called something similar to this the “received
view.” Another more restricted term for Mayr’s narrative is “The Essentialist Story” [Levit and
Meister 2006].
(^11) Winsor 2003.
(^12) Cain 1958.
(^13) Joseph 1916; cf. Winsor 2001. In fact, Joseph had not made the misinterpretation claimed, but had
been read wrongly by Cain and Hull, as we shall see below.
(^14) Cain 1959a, Cain 1959b.
(^15) Cain was a student of Mayr’s, according to Winsor.
(^16) Amundson 1998; Amundson 2005.