display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
4 ideas
| 15702 | Essentialism doesn't mean we know the essences [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism does not entail that people know what the essence is. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 09 'Theory') | |
| A reaction: This is a fundamental and (I would say) fairly obvious point, but it needs to be made to the more passionate opponents of essentialism. |
| 15705 | Essentialism encourages us to think about the world scientifically [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism encourages a 'scientific' mindset in thinking about the natural world, a belief that intensive study of a natural domain will yield ever more underlying properties. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Maybe scientists must be committed to essences, the way mathematicians must be committed to numbers? This idea spendidly opposes the doubts expressed by Popper. |
| 15704 | Essentialism starts from richly structured categories, leading to a search for underlying properties [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: If my speculations are correct, then essentialism starts out strictly as a belief that many categories are richly structured kinds, then additionally becomes a search for underlying inherent properties. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 10 'Figuring') | |
| A reaction: This is her summary of extensive essentialist research among children. She favours the priority of kinds and categories. We actually change taxonomies on the basis of revisions in our accounts of essence. Science negotiates. |
| 15706 | A major objection to real essences is the essentialising of social categories like race, caste and occupation [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: One major argument against the view that essences are real is the rampant essentializing of categories that are socially constructed (such as race, caste and occupation). | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Is essentialism') | |
| A reaction: You can't argue with that. It raises the question of whether the approach of scientific essentialism has any value in the social, rather than physical, sciences. We jokingly essentialise groups of people such as referees or Oxonians. |