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Full Idea
In Abelard's view a natural kind is a well-defined collection of things that have the same features, so that natural kinds have no special status, being no more than discrete integral wholes whose principle of membership is similarity.
Gist of Idea
Natural kinds are not special; they are just well-defined resemblance collections
Source
report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2
Book Ref
'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.8
A Reaction
I take a natural kind to be a completely stable and invariant class of things. Presumably this invariance has an underlying explanation, but Abelard seems to take the Humean line that we cannot penetrate beyond the experienced surface.
| 10397 | Abelard's mereology involves privileged and natural divisions, and principal parts [Abelard, by King,P] |
| 10396 | If 'animal' is wholly present in Socrates and an ass, then 'animal' is rational and irrational [Abelard, by King,P] |
| 10395 | Abelard was an irrealist about virtually everything apart from concrete individuals [Abelard, by King,P] |
| 15384 | Only words can be 'predicated of many'; the universality is just in its mode of signifying [Abelard, by Panaccio] |
| 8481 | The de dicto-de re modality distinction dates back to Abelard [Abelard, by Orenstein] |
| 15385 | Abelard's problem is the purely singular aspects of things won't account for abstraction [Panaccio on Abelard] |
| 15383 | Nothing external can truly be predicated of an object [Abelard, by Panaccio] |
| 10398 | Natural kinds are not special; they are just well-defined resemblance collections [Abelard, by King,P] |