Species

36 Species

[a conception of a thing formed by the rst or direct application of the mind to the

individual object; an idea or image] which stand for things, as in saying, man is a spe-

cies, ass is a species, whiteness is a species, animal is a genus, body is a genus; in the

manner in which name is predicated of different names ... and this second intention

thus signies rst intentions naturally, and can stand for them in a proposition, just as

the rst intention signies external things naturally.^12

For Ockham, the general term is the name of a number of concepts formed from
what might later be called “sense impressions.” To say something is a universal is to
say it is the name of a number of individual names, each of which “stands for” the
“external” (to the mind) individual. The second intention term is thus not a universal
in itself, but neither is it an individual; it’s just a name.
Another thing that occurred in the period was the advancement of species to a
predicable. In the later Middle Ages, Porphyry’s tetrad—genus, difference, species,
property, and accident—was much debated^13 and it was not exactly followed by all,
as there was debate over whether species should be considered “predicate-types,”
because, as Green-Pedersen says, the species “can only be predicated about indi-
viduals, and there can be no science about individuals,” a view held consistently
through the Middle Ages.^14 In the fourteenth, and increasingly in the fteenth, cen-
tury, though, the suggestion is made in the commentaries that the species is an addi-
tion (annexum) to the genus. This, in effect, would make species into a class concept
like genus, which it was not before. Abelard, as early as the twelfth century, seems to
accept the Porphyrian/Boëthian taxonomy of classes as including species.

THE HERBALS AND THE BESTIARIES:

MEANING AND MORAL SPECIES

In the later Middle Ages, particularly in the two centuries leading up to the mod-
ern scientic era, bestiaries and herbals developed, acting as precursors to biologi-
cal classication.^15 Herbals were repositories of useful pharmacological knowledge,
arranged alphabetically most of the time, and derived from the tradition of Pliny the
Elder and Dioscorides.
The herbal traditions developed in an attempt to map the classical names of plant
species onto known colloquial names in order to ensure that medical preparations
were reliable.^16 The earliest known herbal is by Crataeus, physician to Mithridates
VI, king of Pontus (111–64 ), but only fragments of it survive in Dioscorides’
work. Herbals underwent a decline in popularity in the later Middle Ages but had a
resurgence with the development of printing in the sixteenth century.
Bestiaries were usually a combination of moral tales, in which animals repre-
sented the virtues or vices, and exotic geography books.^17 Typically, they relied upon

(^12) Quod IV ques. 19.
(^13) Green-Pedersen 1984, 118 –121.
(^14) Green-Pedersen 1984, 120.
(^15) Arber 1938.
(^16) Stannard et al. 1999 , chapters 1 and 2.
(^17) McCulloch 1962.