| 14049 | We aim to know the natures which are observed in natural phenomena [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: Blessedness lies in knowing the natures which are observed in meteorological phenomena. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 78) | |
| A reaction: This pursuit of 'natures' seems to be at the heart of scientific essentialism. Epicurus demonstrates his proposal, by offering speculations about the natures of all sorts of phenomena (esp. in 'Letter to Pythocles'). |
| 12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: I assign to summary philosophy the operation of essences (as quantity, similitude, diversity, possibility), with this distinction - that they be handled as they have efficacy in nature, and not logically. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a splendid motto for scientific essentialism, in a climate where modal logicians appear to have taken over the driving seat in our understanding of essences. |
| 12550 | If we knew the minute mechanics of hemlock, we could predict that it kills men [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Did we know the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium and a man, ...we should be able to tell beforehand that rhubarb will purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.25) | |
| A reaction: Locke was adamant that we could never know such things, but I take it that we now do know them, and that this is precisely what science aims at. I'm beginning to think that the entire aim of science is to predict nature. |
| 11854 | If there is some trace of God in things, that would explain their natural force [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If the law of God does indeed leave some vestige of him expressed in things...then it must be granted that there is a certain efficacy residing in things, a form or force such as we usually designate by the name of nature, from which the phenomena follow. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], §06) | |
| A reaction: I wouldn't rate this as a very promising theory of powers, but it seems to me important that Leibniz recognises the innate power in things as needing explanation. If you remove divine power, you are left with unexplained intrinsic powers. |
| 11856 | Qualities should be predictable from the nature of the subject [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Whenever we find some quality in a subject, we ought to believe that if we understood the nature of both the subject and the quality we would conceive how the quality could arise from it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], Pref 66) | |
| A reaction: This is the idea that powers are prior to properties, which seems right to me. I take essence to be something like the best explanation of qualities. |
| 12994 | Gold has a real essence, unknown to us, which produces its properties [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The complex idea of gold includes its being something which has a real essence whose detailed constitution is unknown to us, except for the fact that such qualities as malleability depend upon it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 3.10) | |
| A reaction: This is precisely the view of modern scientific essentialism. The underlying idea I take to be the conception of essence as the thing which explains the properties. |
| 12808 | Part of our idea of gold is its real essence, which is not known to us in detail [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is very true that it is part of the complex idea of gold that it is a thing which has a real essence, the constitution of which is not otherwise known to us in detail. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 6.6.345), quoted by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz and Locke on Essences p.201 | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 12807. This is the clearest possible statement of Leibniz's clear-cut scientific essentialism, here presented in opposition to Locke (thought I take the latter to be only bothered by our inability to know the hidden constitution). |
| 8931 | The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method in general. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 34) | |
| A reaction: This would appear to be precisely the idea of scientific essentialism - if he is saying that science seeks to understand the movement (or power) of essences as they occur in nature. |
| 9363 | Science seeks classification which will discover laws, essences, and predictions [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: The scientific search is for such classification as will make it possible to correlate appearance and behaviour, to discover law, to penetrate to the "essential nature" of things in order that behaviour may become predictable. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.368) | |
| A reaction: Modern scientific essentialists no longer invoke scare quotes, and I think we should talk of the search for the 'mechanisms' which explain behaviour, but Lewis seems to have been sixty years ahead of his time. |
| 12307 | Modern science seeks essences, and is getting closer to them [Copi] |
| Full Idea: Modern science seeks to know the real essences of things, and its increasing successes seem to be bringing it progressively nearer to that goal. | |
| From: Irving M. Copi (Essence and Accident [1954], p.715) | |
| A reaction: This is from a notable pioneering paper, which outlined scientific essentialism even before Marcus and Kripke began to offer a modern account of essence to give it backing. Compare Popper, who thinks essences are will-o-the-wisps. |
| 11189 | Dispositional essences are special, as if an object loses them they cease to exist [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: Being gold or being a man is not accidental. ..Such essences are dispositional properties of a very special kind: if an object had such a property and ceased to have it, it would have ceased to exist or have changed (as if gold is transmuted to lead). | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.202) | |
| A reaction: Ruth Marcus is an important founder of modern scientific essentialism, by not only proposing the notion we call rigid designation, but by explicitly defending the essential identities that seem to emerge from modal logic. |
| 12175 | Galilean science aimed at true essences, as the ultimate explanations [Popper] |
| Full Idea: The third of the Galilean doctrines of science is that the best, the truly scientific theories, describe the 'essences' or the 'essential natures' of things - the realities which lie behind the appearances. They are ultimate explanations. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the seventeenth century doctrine which was undermined by Humeanism, and hence despised by Popper, but is now making a comeback, with a new account of essence and necessity. |
| 11192 | If causes are the essence of diseases, then disease is an example of a relational essence [Putnam, by Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Putnam takes causes to be the essence of disease kinds, and they are distinct from the diseases they cause, both in identity and in proper parthood. These are relational properties, so Putnam gives examples of natural kinds with relational essences. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975]) by Neil E. Williams - Putnam's Traditional Neo-Essentialism §4 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a nice point, since scientific essentialism invariable takes itself to be pursuing instrinsic properties when it unravels the essences of natural kinds. Probably the best response is the Putnam has got muddled. |
| 11190 | Archimedes meant by 'gold' the hidden structure or essence of the stuff [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: When Archimedes asserted that something was gold, he was not just saying that it had the superficial characteristics of gold; he was saying that it had the same general hidden structure (the same 'essence', so to speak) as any normal piece of local gold. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Meaning of 'Meaning' [1975], p.235) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the key announcements of the new scientific essentialism, and seems to me to be totally correct. Obviously Archimedes could say 'this is really gold, even if it no way appears to be gold'. |
| 6615 | A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action. |
| 5459 | Essentialists say dispositions are basic, rather than supervenient on matter and natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists say that dispositional properties may be fundamental, whereas for a passivist such qualities are not primary, but supervene on the primary qualities of matter, and on the laws of nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I am strongly in favour of this view of nature. Without essentialism, we have laws of nature arising out of a total void (or God), and arbitrarily imposing themselves on matter. What are the 'primary qualities of matter', if not dispositions? |
| 5461 | The essence of uranium is its atomic number and its electron shell [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The essential properties of uranium are its atomic number, and the common electron shell structure for all uranium atoms. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: For those who deny essences (e.g. Quineans) this is a nice challenge. You might have to add accounts of the essences of the various particles that make up the atoms. There is nothing arbitrary or conventional about what makes something uranium. |
| 13566 | A proton must have its causal role, because without it it wouldn't be a proton [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I assume it is metaphysically impossible for a proton to have a different causal role, ...which is plausible because a proton would appear to have no identity at all apart from its role in causal processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key idea in scientific essentialism, which links essentialism of identity with essentialism in the laws of nature. Could a proton become not-quite-a-proton? |
| 13579 | What is most distinctive of scientific essentialism is regarding processes as natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: What is most distinctive of the scientific version of essentialism is that scientific essentialists are realists about natural kinds of processes, as well as natural kinds of objects and substances. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether other scientific essentialists would agree with this, but I am happy to go along with it. A process like melting or sublimation seems to be a standard widespread phenomenon which is always intrinsically the same, as kinds must be. |
| 13581 | Scientific essentialism is more concerned with explanation than with identity (Locke, not Kripke) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialism is less concerned with questions of identity, and more with questions of explanation, than is the essentialism of Aristotle or of Kripke. It is closest to the kind of essentialism described by Locke. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Locke is popularly held to be anti-essentialist, but that is only because of his epistemological problems. I think Ellis is here misreading Aristotle, and I would ally Aristotle, Locke (cautiously), Leibniz, Ellis and Fine against Kripkeans on this one. |
| 13594 | The ontological fundamentals are dispositions, and also categorical (spatio-temporal and structural) properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We do not claim, as some do, that fundamental dispositional properties are the ontological basis of all properties. On the contrary, there are equally fundamental categorical properties - for example, spatio-temporal relations and structures. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: The source of disagreement between Bird and Ellis. Bird denies the existence of 'categorical properties'. I think I am with Bird. Space and time are as much part of the given as the elements, and then categorical properties result from dispositions. |
| 15951 | Alchemists tried to separate out essences, which influenced later chemistry [Alexander,P] |
| Full Idea: The alchemists sought the separation of the 'pure essences' of substances from unwanted impurities. This last goal was of great importance for the development of modern chemistry at the hands of Boyle and his successors. | |
| From: Peter Alexander (Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles [1985], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: In a nutshell this gives us the reason why essences are so important, and also why they became discredited. Time for a clear modern rethink. |
| 12085 | Reality is directional [Witt] |
| Full Idea: Reality is directional. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked from context! She attributes the view to Aristotle] This slogan beautifully summarises the 'scientific essentialist' view of reality, based not on so-called 'laws', but on the active powers of the stuffs of reality. |
| 11959 | Science works when we assume natural kinds have essences - because it is true [Molnar] |
| Full Idea: Investigations premissed on the assumption that natural kinds have essences, that in particular the fundamental natural kinds have only essential intrinsic properties, tend to be practically successful because the assumption is true. | |
| From: George Molnar (Powers [1998], 11.3) | |
| A reaction: The point is made against a pragmatist approach to the problem by Nancy Cartwright. I take the starting point for scientific essentialism to be an empirical observation, that natural kinds seem to be very very stable. See Idea 8153. |
| 9448 | Location in space and time are non-power properties [Molnar, by Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Molnar argues that some properties are non-powers, and he cites spatial location, spatial orientation, and temporal location. | |
| From: report of George Molnar (Powers [1998], 158-62) by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 11.4 | |
| A reaction: Although you might say an event happened 'because' of an item on this list, this doesn't feel right to me. The ability to arrest someone is a power, but being at the scene of the crime isn't. It's an opportunity for a power. |
| 11930 | One essential property of a muon doesn't entail the others [Molnar] |
| Full Idea: The muon has mass 106.2 MeV, unit negative charge, and spin a half. The electron and tauon have unit negative charge, but electrons are 200 times less massive, and tauons 17 times more massive. Its essential properties are not mutually entailing. | |
| From: George Molnar (Powers [1998], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This rejects a popular idea of scientific essentialism, that the essence is the set of properties which entail the non-essential properties (and not vice versa), a view which I had hitherto found rather appealing. |
| 9215 | Causation is easier to disrupt than logic, so metaphysics is part of nature, not vice versa [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It would be harder to break P-and-Q implying P than the connection between cause and effect. This difference in strictness means it is more plausible that natural necessities include metaphysical necessities, than vice versa. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 6) | |
| A reaction: I cannot see any a priori grounds for the claim that causation is more easily disrupted than logic. It seems to be based on the strategy of inferring possibilities from what can be imagined, which seems to me to lead to wild misunderstandings. |
| 10411 | Two properties can have one power, and one property can have two powers [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: If properties are identical when they confer the same capacities on their instances, different properties seem able to bestow the same powers (e.g. force), and one property can bestow different powers (attraction or repulsion). | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but possibly a misunderstanding. Powers are basic, and properties are combinations of powers. A 'force' isn't a basic power, it is a consequence of various properties. Relational behaviours are also not basic powers, which are the source. |
| 12239 | The real essentialist is not merely a scientist [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: It is incorrect to hold that the job of the real essentialist just is the job of the scientist. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably scientific essentialism, while being firmly a branch of metaphysics, is meant to clarify the activities of science, and thereby be of some practical use. You can't beat knowing what it is you are trying to do. |
| 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. |
| 17479 | The nature of an element must survive chemical change, so it is the nucleus, not the electrons [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: Whatever earns something membership of the extension of 'krypton' must be a property that can survive chemical change and, therefore, the gain and loss of electrons. Hence what makes it krypton must be a nuclear property. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: A very nice illuminating example of essentialism in chemistry. The 'nature' is what survives through change, just like what Aristotle said, innit? |
| 17485 | Maybe water is the smallest part of it that still counts as water (which is H2O molecules) [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: If they do count as water, individual H2O molecules are the smallest items that can qualify as water on their own account. Hydroxyl ions and protons, in contrast, qualify as water only as part of a larger body. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: As Aristotle might say, this is the homoeomerous aspect of water. This is Hendry's own proposal, and seems rather good. |
| 17484 | Maybe the nature of water is macroscopic, and not in the microstructure [Hendry] |
| Full Idea: Some deny that that microstructure is what makes it water; substance identity and difference should be determined instead by macroscopic similarities and differences. | |
| From: Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Micro') | |
| A reaction: Very plausible. Is the essential nature of human beings to be found in the structure of our cells? |
| 17396 | The colour of gold is best explained by relativistic effects due to fast-moving inner-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Many seemingly mundane properties of elements such as the characteristic color of gold ....can best be explained by relativistic effects due to fast-moving inner-shell electrons. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 01 'Under') | |
| A reaction: John Locke - I wish you were reading this! That we could work out the hidden facts of gold, and thereby explain and predict the surface properties we experience, is exactly what Locke thought to be forever impossible. |
| 16760 | Substantial forms were a step towards scientific essentialism [Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Substantial forms might well be viewed as an early step in the development of scientific essentialism. | |
| From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the scholastic view of substantial forms, which is much more physical and causal, rather than Aristotle's more abstract view. The rejection of substantial forms led to the 'Humean' view of laws of nature. |
| 16976 | Scientific essentialists tend to characterise essence in terms of modality (not vice versa) [Tahko] |
| Full Idea: The conception of essence taken for granted in much of the 'scientific essentialist' literature is that essence can be explained in terms of modality (rather than the other way round). | |
| From: Tuomas E. Tahko (The Epistemology of Essence (draft) [2013], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Ellis and Bird] That is, presumably, that they are inclined to say that the essence of gold is a set of necessary properties. Maybe conceptual necessities dictate the properties of gold, and they in turn dictate metaphysical necessities? |