
	Where results make sense

Topic: Species (metaphysics)

In the News (Sat 26 Dec 09)

Northern Trust

Marvin Harrison

Peter Chernin

Gary Locke

Match Play

Penelope Cruz

Mickey Rourke

AR Rahman

Danny Boyle

Hugh Jackman

	Species (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
		Species are the fundamental taxonomic units of biological classification.
		The universality of a biological trait in a species is fragile.
		Genealogy is an inter-population structure: species are lineages of populations.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/species (6890 words)

	Evolution and Metaphysics
		Metaphysics is the name given to a branch of philosophical thought that deals with issues of the fundamental nature of reality and what is beyond experience.
		Metaphysical systems come in three main flavors: philosophical systems (overall systems such as Kant's or Hegel's, or more recently Whitehead's or Collingwood's); ideologies, which are usually political, moral or other practical philosophical systems; and religions which in their theologies attempt to create comprehensive philosophical structures.
		A biological species is thus the "pool" of traits that inter-reproduce, with the majority of individuals sharing the majority of traits, but with variation at the extremes for every trait, whether it is height, weight or length of beak or leg.
	www.talkorigins.org /faqs/chance/metaphysics.html (4745 words)

	WHAT ARE METAPHYSICS? - Objectivism Online Forum
		Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the universe as a whole.
		The fundamental distinction has to do with specialization, that is, the results of physics are not at all accessible to ordinary people using their senses, rather, you need extensive specialized training and very specialised equipment.
		A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into what categories of things are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another.
	forum.objectivismonline.net /index.php?showtopic=7428 (2089 words)

	Metaphysics : Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online
		This line of thought (which incidentally had a biological version in the concepts of individual creatures and their species) gave rise to one of the most famous metaphysical controversies: whether universals are real entities or not (see Species; Natural kinds).
		Less obviously, metaphysical issues also intrude on the philosophy of language and logic, as happens when it is suggested that any satisfactory theory of meaning will have to posit the existence of intensional entities, or that any meaningful language will have to mirror the structure of the world (see Intensional entities; Logical atomism).
		And whereas we find everywhere in metaphysics a debate over whether claims should be given a realist or an antirealist interpretation, in the philosophy of science we find a parallel controversy over the status of the entities featuring in scientific theories (see Realism and antirealism; Scientific realism and antirealism).
	www.rep.routledge.com /article/N095 (1758 words)

	Spiritual Metaphysics
		Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that concerns the supreme and ultimate nature of all things in the universe.
		Metaphysics, of course, is God’s realm, containing the secrets science has long sought but, for centuries, have remained entirely elusive.
		Metaphysics was then restructured but remained in three parts, keeping cosmology, changing the name of rational psychology to speculative psychology and adding ontology.
	www.matrixbookstore.biz /metaphysics.htm (1857 words)

	Darwin
		This may not be exactly true according to the Metaphysics of Quality, however, since the correspondance principle no longer applies between the biological and social patterns of value and their underlying Dynamic forces of evolution.
		I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species.
		The Metaphysics of Quality seems to make use of the concepts of classical Darwin thinking from a static quality point of view, but because of the potentiality of Dynamic Quality, existing as a non-event complement to every actuality, the static quality point of view is only a special condition of our perceptions of reality.
	members.tripod.com /~Glove_r/Darwin.html (2933 words)

	Aristotle -- Metaphysics [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
		Any comprehensive account of things must come to terms with the special being of animals and plants: for Lucretius, living things are not marvels but a problem which he solves by dissolving them into the vast sea of inert purposelessness.
		All that belongs to the living thing that is not implied by the definition of its species belongs to it externally, as a result of its accidental interactions with the other things in its environment.
		The animal and plant species take care of their own perpetuation by way of generation, but what the parents pass on to the offspring is an identity which must hold together thanks to a timeless activity of thinking.
	www.utm.edu /research/iep/a/aris-met.htm (8228 words)

	Inside Science No.111
		An emphasis on reproduction and the life cycle would also help resolve a range of incidental problems that had dogged morphological species definitions, such as the obvious morphological difficulty of classifying a caterpillar and a butterfly in the same species or males and females which were markedly different.
		At present it is usually the number of species in a particular habitat this is taken a a measure of the value of the environment in conservation terms.
		But all species definitions have been shown to have their limitations, and perhaps it is unrealistic to assume that we can impose and apply a single definition on a natural world made restless by evolutionary change.
	members.fortunecity.com /templarseries/species.html (3493 words)

	CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Aristotle
		He devotes special attention to the Platonic theory, according to which ideas are the ultimate principles of Being.
		In the "Metaphysics" he takes the stand that the actual is of its nature antecedent to the potential, that consequently, before all matter, and all composition of matter and form, of potentiality and actuality, there must have existed a Being Who is pure actuality, and Whose life is self-contemplative thought (noesis noeseos).
		Mathematics was recognized by Aristotle as a division of philosophy, co-ordinate with physics and metaphysics, and is defined as the science of immovable being.
	www.newadvent.org /cathen/01713a.htm (5714 words)

	Immanuel Kant -- Metaphysics [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
		It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics.
		Their epistemological and metaphysical theories could not adequately explain the sort of judgments or experience we have because they only considered the results of the mind's interaction with the world, not the nature of the mind's contribution.
		The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) is Kant's "search for and establishment of the supreme principle of morality." In The Critique of Practical Reason (1787) Kant attempts to unify his account of practical reason with his work in the Critique of Pure Reason.
	www.iep.utm.edu /k/kantmeta.htm (9445 words)

	Aristotle (384-322 BCE): General Introduction [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
		In reality, it is merely metaphorical to describe the forms as patterns of things; for, what is a genus to one object is a species to a higher class, the same idea will have to be both a form and a particular thing at the same time.
		Species on this scale are eternally fixed in their place, and cannot evolve over time.
		Throughout the list he insists on the "autonomy of will" as indispensable to virtue: courage for instance is only really worthy of the name when done from a love of honor and duty: munificence again becomes vulgarity when it is not exercised from a love of what is right and beautiful, but for displaying wealth.
	www.utm.edu /research/iep/a/aristotl.htm (7037 words)

	Scientia (Rice University) 2002-3
		There are good reasons to think that we humans have cognitive machinery that is specialized for reasoning about social exchange - programs that make thinking about and engaging in social exchange as easy and automatic for humans as spinning a web is for a spider.
		While previous accounts stressed environment as a key factor influencing the rate of progressive transformation in human societies, after 1859, narratives emerged that located the cause of differential development in the differing biological capacity, shaped by natural selection, of human groups to utilize culture and to progress.
		In particular, I wish to trace the late eighteenth-century paradigm shift from preformation to epigenesis in embryology and examine the metaphysical and methodological issues that shift engendered.
	www.ruf.rice.edu /~scientia/02-03 (1707 words)

	Encyclopedia article on Metaphysics [EncycloZine] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-30)
		Metaphysics (Greek words meta = after/beyond and physics = nature) is a branch of philosophy, and related to the natural sciences, like physics, psychology and the biology of the brain; and also to mysticism, religion, and other spiritual subjects.
		Other problems that were considered metaphysical problems for centuries are now typically relegated to their own separate subheadings in philosophy, such as philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.
		The Metaphysics was divided into three parts, now regarded as the traditional branches of Western metaphysics, called (1) ontology, (2) theology, and (3) universal science.
	encyclozine.com /Metaphysics (1399 words)

	Aristotle's Metaphysics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
		Although there is metaphysical structure to the fact that, e.g., this horse is white (a certain quality inheres in a certain substance), the fact that this is a horse is a kind of brute fact, devoid of metaphysical structure.
		In the conceptual framework of Metaphysics Ζ, a universal such as man or horse — which was called a species and a secondary substance in the Categories — is construed as “not a substance, but a compound of a certain formula and a certain matter, taken universally” (Z.10, 1035b29-30).
		The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/aristotle-metaphysics (12935 words)

	Palaeos Systematics: Linnean: What is a Species?
		First of all, the species can be seen either as a theoretical concept used in modeling (simulation) and explanation, or as taxonomic units used to differentiate and classify living organisms (allowing for the fact that many definitions combine both approaches).
		There is the dualistic Platonic theory of "Universals" (Ideal Forms) as transcendent unchanging eternal essences, as opposed to the holistic Aristotelian theory of universals (Forms) as the spirit or soul aspect of an object, the complementary aspect being the body.
		The Creation Science definition of a "species", based on a literal reading of the Hebraic (Mosaic) book of Genesis, is a rather vague and fuzzy version of the Aristotelian position.
	www.palaeos.com /Systematics/Linnean/Species.htm (760 words)

	Metaphysics in the New Age
		The word `metaphysics' is said to originate from the mere fact that the corresponding part of Aristotle's work was positioned right after the part called `physics'.
		But it is not unlikely that the term won a ready acceptance as denoting the whole field of knowledge because it conveyed the purpose of metaphysics, which is to reach beyond the nature (`physics') as we perceive it, and to discover the `true nature' of things, their ultimate essence and the reason for being.
		So metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of existence.
	www.angelfire.com /hi/TheSeer/metaphysics.html (845 words)

	The Internet Classics Archive \| Metaphysics by Aristotle
		These are sometimes called one in this way, but sometimes it is the higher genus that is said to be the same (if they are infimae species of their genus)-the genus above the proximate genera; e.g.
		"Again, some things are one in number, others in species, others in genus, others by analogy; in number those whose matter is one, in species those whose definition is one, in genus those to which the same figure of predication applies, by analogy those which are related as a third thing is to a fourth.
		"'Different' is applied (1) to those things which though other are the same in some respect, only not in number but either in species or in genus or by analogy; (2) to those whose genus is other, and to contraries, and to an things that have their otherness in their essence.
	classics.mit.edu /Aristotle/metaphysics.5.v.html (8346 words)

	SparkNotes: Aristotle: Metaphysics: Books Theta to Nu
		On the other hand, men and women are not of different species because the contrariety that exists between them is on the level of matter, not form.
		Aristotle re-emphasizes the primacy of substance and explains that there are three kinds of substance: two kinds of perceptible substances, perishable or imperishable, which are the subject of natural science, and substance that is immune to change, which is the subject of logic and mathematics.
		The species of chicken is a substance, and there can be no chicken eggs until there is a species called “chicken” for those eggs to become.
	www.sparknotes.com /philosophy/aristotle/section7.rhtml (2017 words)

	The Philosophy of Aristotle - Page 2
		In this method of classification (by descending from genus to species), the last place will be taken by concepts having an individual extension ("this individual is John and no one else"); and the individual is neither species nor genus.
		By ascending the ladder (from species to genus), top place will be taken by a genus which is not a relative species, since there is no concept above it; hence it is called supreme genus.
		How it would be possible to have a metaphysical entity, which on the one hand is pure potency, absolutely indeterminate, and, on the other hand, is naturally disposed to receive any form whatever, is not made clear by Aristotle; and, of course, it is one of the obscure points of his metaphysics.
	radicalacademy.com /philaristotle2.htm (3341 words)

	ARISTOTLE ON THE SEPARATION OF SPECIES-FORM
		Moreover, the notion that metaphysics is an introspective form of inquiry, an analysis of the human conceptual and linguistic framework, introduces a notion of self-reflection that is alien to Aristotle's psychology.
		In stressing the objective character of the priority and 'separation' of the species-forms, and a fundamental continuity with Platonic metaphysics, we are insisting that the difficulties surrounding the relation of form, matter and composite, especially as developed in Metaphysics Zeta, must be faced directly, and not reduced to a bit of linguistic or conceptual tidy-mindedness.
		Aristotle is led to the inevitable conclusion that the formal cause is ontologically prior to the matter and the composite (1029a29-32; 1050b2-6).
	www.mun.ca /animus/1999vol4/fraser4.htm (5837 words)

	Can Leclerc’s Composite Actualities Be Substances? (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-30)
		Substance metaphysics, or the view that the world is composed of individual entities which have properties and are related to each other in various ways, has been under steady attack from various quarters for around 300 years.
		According to what I shall call "substance metaphysics" the world is made up of distinct beings, each of which has an existence in itself, rather than in another; these beings are called "substances".
		The revival of interest in the metaphysics of substance has occurred in recent years by philosophers in the analytic camp who are known as "essentialists".
	www.religion-online.org /showarticle.asp?title=2826 (9894 words)

	20th WCP: Artificial Intelligence and Angelology
		One of the problems facing those who theorize about the independence and irreducibility of consciousness is the fact that it is difficult to conceptualize the essence of consciousness, as distinct from the sensations, feelings, etc. that are often associated with consciousness.
		According to Aquinas, angels continually and unendingly receive habitual impressed species directly from God as a supplement to the connatural knowledge which they have through their own essence.
		So also, the higher angels contain more universal and fewer species than the lower; these species contain in a simpler way everything that is contained in the species of subordinate orders, thus increasing the scope of comprehension and the parameters of influence of the higher orders.
	www.bu.edu /wcp/Papers/Meta/MetaKain.htm (1913 words)

	blog.myspace.com/thetether
		Yet Einstein's special theory of relativity proposed the idea that the space-time continuum is in fact curved, physicists refer to this as time dilution and contraction, but the important point is that any curve is part of a circle.
		This sounds bad enough until it is compared with the Black Death pandemic, which arrived in Europe from Asia in about 1346 and which, by the time it reached the North of Scotland in 1350, had laid waste to between a quarter and half the population" (Ide 514).
		The 'hey don't I know you' mechanism of human immunity is the primary reason that influenza strains that decimate avian populations are not readily transmissible to humans.
	blog.myspace.com /index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=66797389&blogID=227007994 (2226 words)

	Metaphysics in BtVS/AtS
		Demons are like a species of creatures,...they can die of old age (very old age), have little demon ninos, etc. Vampires...actually had to die before they became [demons] (menkhare, Nov 17 11:55 1999).
		Several species of demons we've seen are able to take both physical and incorporeal (non-physical, spiritual) form.
		One possible answer is that the closer a demon species is to being like human beings, the more mortal it is. But Whistler seemed very human, and vampires, who are also pretty human as far as demons go, can live forever if not killed by certain means.
	www.atpobtvs.com /metap.html (3042 words)

	Substance, Matter, and Form
		And in the Metaphysics, Aristotle suggests that a compound cannot be a substance (Z3, 1029a30).
		On their view, the primary substance of the Metaphysics is species form - something that is common to different members of the same species, but is still, in some plausible sense, an individual (“this something”).
		(E.g., the species-form does not exist if there are no specimens of that species.) But it is still separable, in Aristotle’s sense, since it is non-parasitic: it does not depend for its existence on the particular batch of matter it’s in, nor on the accidental characteristics of the compound it’s the form of.
	faculty.washington.edu /smcohen/320/zeta17.htm (1562 words)

	METAPHYSICS BY DEFAULT \| homepage (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-30)
		And this must seem an odd juxtaposition of materials, given that naturalists and metaphysical philosophers lock horns at every crossing.
		We, being audience to many a deadlocked battle, can readily believe that the disciplines of earth and ether are incompatible — or what is worse, we may believe that each discipline prospers only at the expense of the other.
		Metaphysics by Default offers ready aid to the beleaguered ethicist or ecologist, and Chapter 18 explores this potential utility.
	mbdefault.org (448 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)