Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

The theological and philosophical origins of the

concept of biological species

Kircher and species

The theological and philosophical origins of the

concept of biological speciesfrom Athanasius Kircher to John Ray

Kircher and species

The theological and philosophical origins of the

concept of biological speciesfrom Athanasius Kircher to John Ray

John Wilkins, the latterSchool of Historical and Philosophical Studies

University of Melbourne

Kircher and species

Prior work… why do we have a concept of species?

Kircher and species

Outline

Kircher and species

Outline

1. The standard narrative

Kircher and species

Outline

1. The standard narrative

2. The prescientific notion of kinds

Kircher and species

Outline

1. The standard narrative

2. The prescientific notion of kinds

3. Kircher and the Ark

Kircher and species

Outline

1. The standard narrative

2. The prescientific notion of kinds

3. Kircher and the Ark

4. Ray and the Philosophical Language

Kircher and species

Outline

1. The standard narrative

2. The prescientific notion of kinds

3. Kircher and the Ark

4. Ray and the Philosophical Language

5. Biological species

Kircher and species

The Standard Narrative

Kircher and species

The Standard NarrativeThere is a standard historical narrative about the concept of species in biology and philosophy of biology:

Kircher and species

The Standard NarrativeThere is a standard historical narrative about the concept of species in biology and philosophy of biology:

๏ From Plato to before Darwin, everybody thought species were

Kircher and species

The Standard NarrativeThere is a standard historical narrative about the concept of species in biology and philosophy of biology:

๏ From Plato to before Darwin, everybody thought species were

๏ Fixed (unchanging)

Kircher and species

The Standard NarrativeThere is a standard historical narrative about the concept of species in biology and philosophy of biology:

๏ From Plato to before Darwin, everybody thought species were

๏ Fixed (unchanging)

๏ Essential (had a necessary common core of characters that every member exhibited)

Kircher and species

The Standard NarrativeThere is a standard historical narrative about the concept of species in biology and philosophy of biology:

๏ From Plato to before Darwin, everybody thought species were

๏ Fixed (unchanging)

๏ Essential (had a necessary common core of characters that every member exhibited)

๏ based on Greek philosophy and the Bible

Kircher and species

The Standard NarrativeThere is a standard historical narrative about the concept of species in biology and philosophy of biology:

๏ From Plato to before Darwin, everybody thought species were

๏ Fixed (unchanging)

๏ Essential (had a necessary common core of characters that every member exhibited)

๏ based on Greek philosophy and the Bible

๏ Pre-Darwinians were “special creationists”

Kircher and species

The Standard NarrativeThere is a standard historical narrative about the concept of species in biology and philosophy of biology:

๏ From Plato to before Darwin, everybody thought species were

๏ Fixed (unchanging)

๏ Essential (had a necessary common core of characters that every member exhibited)

๏ based on Greek philosophy and the Bible

๏ Pre-Darwinians were “special creationists”

๏ This narrative is bolstered by Darwin’s Origin of Species from the 3rd edition onwards (“Historical Sketch”)

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

Kircher and species

E.g., Mayr’s narrative

See Powers, Jack. "Finding Ernst Mayr’s Plato." Studies in History and Philosophy of

Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical

Sciences (forthcoming)

Kircher and species

The prescientific notion of species

Kircher and species

The prescientific notion of species

Species, the term

๏ Just an ordinary Latin word๏ Used in technical and ordinary senses

Logical and philosophical uses (appearances, predicates)

If a Latin writer wishes to talk about a “kind”, they would use species or genus

๏ Which the translators of the Vulgate did.

๏ Genus from gens (family or stock)

Cannot assume that because one writer (Aristotle as translated) uses the term species they apply it to “our” species.

Kircher and species

The prescientific notion of species

Species, the term

๏ Just an ordinary Latin word๏ Used in technical and ordinary senses

Logical and philosophical uses (appearances, predicates)

If a Latin writer wishes to talk about a “kind”, they would use species or genus

๏ Which the translators of the Vulgate did.

๏ Genus from gens (family or stock)

Cannot assume that because one writer (Aristotle as translated) uses the term species they apply it to “our” species.

Species: The particular thing among many to which the looks are turned; hence, a particular sort, kind, or quality, a species.

Genus: Of an assemblage of objects (persons, animals, plants, inanimate or abstract things) which are related or belong together in consequence of a resemblance in natural qualities; a race, stock,class, sort, species, kind.

A Latin Dictionary. Founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary. revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by Charlton T. Lewis, Ph.D. and Charles Short, LL.D. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1879.

Kircher and species

Kircher and the problem of kinds

Early scientific revolution

Jesuit polymath, Athanasius Kircher published De Arca Noë in 1675

Needs to fit all the “kinds” (Latin: species) on the Ark

c310 quadrupeds and several score bird species on the Ark

Proposes thousands of species of animals by hybridisation or spontaneously generated

Athanasius Kircher c.1602–1680

Kircher and species

The origins of species that were not on the Ark

Hybrids and geographical varieties

๏ Idea found in Aristotle’s History of Animals

๏ Repeated in Pliny’s Natural History, and thence by all educated Europeans

๏ The giraffe, for example, was held to be a hybrid of the camel and leopard (hence camelopard)

Kircher and species

As a general rule, wild animals are at their wildest in Asia, their boldest in Europe and most diverse in form in Libya [Africa]; in fact, there is an old saying. ‘Always something fresh in Libya.’

It would appear that in that country animals of diverse species [homophulê] meet, on account of the rainless climate, at the watering places, and they pair together; and that such pairs breed if they be nearly of the same size and have periods of gestation of the same length. For they are tamed down in their behaviour towards each other by extremity of thirst. ... Elsewhere also offspring are born to heterogeneous pairs; thus in Cyrene the wolf and the bitch will couple and breed; and the Laconian hound is a cross between the fox and the dog. They say that the Indian dog is a cross between the tiger and the bitch, not the first cross, but a cross in the third generation; for they say that the first cross is a savage creature. They take the bitch to a lonely spot and tie her up—and many are eaten, unless the beast is eager to mate. [History of Animals VIII.28 606b16–607a7]

Aristotle on hybrids

Kircher and species

Pliny on hybridsThe noble appearance of the lion is more especially to be seen in that species which has the neck and shoulders covered with a mane, which is always acquired at the proper age by those produced from a lion; while, on the other hand, those that are the offspring of the pard, are always without this distinction. The female also has no mane. The sexual passions of these animals are very violent, and render the male quite furious. This is especially the case in Africa, where, in consequence of the great scarcity of water, the wild beasts assemble in great numbers on the banks of a few rivers. This is also the reason why so many curious varieties of animals are produced there, the males and females of various species coupling promiscuously with each other. Hence arose the saying, which was common in Greece even, that “Africa is always producing something new.” [Natural History VIII 17.42]

Kircher and species

Abbott on hybrids… this may be said of Africke in generall, that it bringeth forth store of all sorts of wild Beasts, as Elephants, Lyons, Panthers, Tygers, and the like: yea, according to the Proverbe, Africa semper aliquid apportat novi; Often times new and strange shapes of Beasts are brought forth there [Africa]: the reason whereof is, that the Countrie being hott and full of Wildernesses, which haue in them litle water, the Beastes of all sortes are enforced to meet at those few watering places that be, where often times contrary kinds haue conjunction the one with the other: so that there ariseth new kinds of species, which take part of both. Such a one is the Leopard, begotten of the Lyon and the Beast called the Pardu, and somewhat resembling either of them. [A briefe description of the whole world, 1599]

Kircher and species

Abbott on hybrids

Kircher and species

Abbott on hybridsRev. George Abbott was one of the translators of the KJV

Kircher and species

Abbott on hybridsRev. George Abbott was one of the translators of the KJV ๏ See God's Secretaries: The Making of the

King James Bible by Adam Nicolson 2005. Nicholson thinks this is a new proto-evolutionary theory, being unaware of the prior passages of Aristotle and Pliny.

Kircher and species

Abbott on hybridsRev. George Abbott was one of the translators of the KJV ๏ See God's Secretaries: The Making of the

King James Bible by Adam Nicolson 2005. Nicholson thinks this is a new proto-evolutionary theory, being unaware of the prior passages of Aristotle and Pliny.

๏ The saying in Latin was cited by Erasmus nearly a century earlier in his Adages (III vii 10).

Kircher and species

Spontaneous generationThe standard view was that simple organisms would generate spontaneously (generatio equivoca), but also many complex organisms too

๏ Augustine interpreted Genesis that way (De Genesi ad Litteram)

๏ Great Chain of Being: no clear boundary between living and nonliving

๏ Kircher thought insects, worms, molluscs would form spontaneously

Lull, Logica Nova, 1512

Kircher and species

Kircher’s explanatory targetSo Kircher’s problem reduced down to accommodating the “large” or “complex” animals on the Ark

For this he needed to have what in logic was called an infimae species, the lowest kind

Then he could calculate the size and arrangements on the Ark:

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

So Kircher ended up with what we might call basic or created kinds

Kircher and species

So Kircher ended up with what we might call basic or created kinds

๏ And the term he used was, of course, species

Kircher and species

So Kircher ended up with what we might call basic or created kinds

๏ And the term he used was, of course, species

๏ This, although theologically motivated (the Ark was held to be historical because the Scripture was veridical), was intended to be a matter of natural history

Kircher and species

So Kircher ended up with what we might call basic or created kinds

๏ And the term he used was, of course, species

๏ This, although theologically motivated (the Ark was held to be historical because the Scripture was veridical), was intended to be a matter of natural history

๏ Part of the Counter-Reformation: allegory giving way to literalism in response to Lutheran challenges

Kircher and species

So Kircher ended up with what we might call basic or created kinds

๏ And the term he used was, of course, species

๏ This, although theologically motivated (the Ark was held to be historical because the Scripture was veridical), was intended to be a matter of natural history

๏ Part of the Counter-Reformation: allegory giving way to literalism in response to Lutheran challenges

๏ Kircher’s source was mostly likely Conrad Gesner

Kircher and species

Publishes Historiae Animalium in 1551–1558

Uses woodcuts to describe many species (including a number of fabulous ones)

One famous image is done by Albrecht Dürer; the rhinoceros

Conrad Gesner

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher’s copy of Gesner’s rhino (Breidbach and Ghiselin 2006)

Kircher and species

What a real rhinoceros looks like (it always pays to check the sources)

Kircher and species

Clearly Kircher is trying to keep up with the latest natural history in a period in which such information is becoming unmanageable

๏ Most of his “species” are from Gesner, particularly the birds

๏ However, he represents the fin de siècle of an older tradition that spans the bestiary tradition and modern natural history

Kircher and species

Naturalists used the term “species” in an ordinary way from the 1500s (Gesner, Bauhin, Androvani)

Shortly before Kircher’s Arca Noë, Bp John Wilkins (no close relation) wrote his Essay toward a real character and a philosophical language (1668).

๏ Attempted to categorise all things in an artificial language (The Universal Language Project)

๏ Included lists of species, drawn up by the botanist John Ray

๏ Forced all species into predetermined linguistic categories

The invention of species

Bp John Wilkins 1614–1672*

* No close relation

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

Kircher and species

John Ray and the first biological concept of species

John Ray 1627–1705

Kircher and species

John Ray and the first biological concept of speciesRay got a lot of criticism from other naturalists, and so he decided to do empirically based taxonomy, writing the first complete Flora of a region (Cambridgeshire)

John Ray 1627–1705

Kircher and species

John Ray and the first biological concept of speciesRay got a lot of criticism from other naturalists, and so he decided to do empirically based taxonomy, writing the first complete Flora of a region (Cambridgeshire)

Later (1686) wrote that he needed a definition of the kinds/species to justify his work

John Ray 1627–1705

Kircher and species

John Ray and the first biological concept of speciesRay got a lot of criticism from other naturalists, and so he decided to do empirically based taxonomy, writing the first complete Flora of a region (Cambridgeshire)

Later (1686) wrote that he needed a definition of the kinds/species to justify his work

In order that an inventory of plants may be begun and a classification of them correctly established, we must try to discover criteria of some sort for distinguishing what are called “species”. After long and considerable investigation, no surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species ... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa.

John Ray 1627–1705

Kircher and species

After Ray

Kircher and species

After RayRay’s was the first biological (i.e., specifically natural historical) definition of species

Kircher and species

After RayRay’s was the first biological (i.e., specifically natural historical) definition of species

Ray was very devout and thought, as did Kircher, that species were created (probable origin of special creationism)

Kircher and species

After RayRay’s was the first biological (i.e., specifically natural historical) definition of species

Ray was very devout and thought, as did Kircher, that species were created (probable origin of special creationism)

Linnaeus (mid 18thC) adopted Ray’s creationism

Kircher and species

After RayRay’s was the first biological (i.e., specifically natural historical) definition of species

Ray was very devout and thought, as did Kircher, that species were created (probable origin of special creationism)

Linnaeus (mid 18thC) adopted Ray’s creationism

Buffon adopted Kircher’s notion of local varieties as devolution from a premiere souche, or primary stock, in the late 18thC [Still in use by modern creationists]

Kircher and species

Biologising species

Kircher and species

Biologising speciesUsed as a diagnostic criterion, assuming an underlying biological (“physiological”) generative power.

Kircher and species

Biologising speciesUsed as a diagnostic criterion, assuming an underlying biological (“physiological”) generative power.

๏ Adanson (1727–1806) and Jussieu (1748-1836) also focused on distinguishing features, or “characters”.

Kircher and species

Biologising speciesUsed as a diagnostic criterion, assuming an underlying biological (“physiological”) generative power.

๏ Adanson (1727–1806) and Jussieu (1748-1836) also focused on distinguishing features, or “characters”.

Adopted by Linnaeus, Lamarck, and later by Cuvier:

Kircher and species

Biologising speciesUsed as a diagnostic criterion, assuming an underlying biological (“physiological”) generative power.

๏ Adanson (1727–1806) and Jussieu (1748-1836) also focused on distinguishing features, or “characters”.

Adopted by Linnaeus, Lamarck, and later by Cuvier:

๏ Lamarck 1809: “Any collection of like individuals which were produced by others similar to themselves is called a species.”

Kircher and species

Biologising speciesUsed as a diagnostic criterion, assuming an underlying biological (“physiological”) generative power.

๏ Adanson (1727–1806) and Jussieu (1748-1836) also focused on distinguishing features, or “characters”.

Adopted by Linnaeus, Lamarck, and later by Cuvier:

๏ Lamarck 1809: “Any collection of like individuals which were produced by others similar to themselves is called a species.”

๏ Cuvier 1812: “those individuals that originate from one another or from common parents and those which resemble them as much as one another.”

Kircher and species

Biologising speciesUsed as a diagnostic criterion, assuming an underlying biological (“physiological”) generative power.

๏ Adanson (1727–1806) and Jussieu (1748-1836) also focused on distinguishing features, or “characters”.

Adopted by Linnaeus, Lamarck, and later by Cuvier:

๏ Lamarck 1809: “Any collection of like individuals which were produced by others similar to themselves is called a species.”

๏ Cuvier 1812: “those individuals that originate from one another or from common parents and those which resemble them as much as one another.”

The key concepts are resemblance and generation.

Kircher and species

Biologising speciesUsed as a diagnostic criterion, assuming an underlying biological (“physiological”) generative power.

๏ Adanson (1727–1806) and Jussieu (1748-1836) also focused on distinguishing features, or “characters”.

Adopted by Linnaeus, Lamarck, and later by Cuvier:

๏ Lamarck 1809: “Any collection of like individuals which were produced by others similar to themselves is called a species.”

๏ Cuvier 1812: “those individuals that originate from one another or from common parents and those which resemble them as much as one another.”

The key concepts are resemblance and generation.

Species has a “life” after Ray, which leads to modern debates directly.

Kircher and species

Obligatory Darwin comment

Philosophers and historians of biology are required by the Guild Rules to mention Darwin

Was Mayr right? Did Darwin change our notion of species?

No.

Thank you

Kircher and species

Fin