Publication Details

Abstract

Anti-essentialism is a consensus in biology. Nevertheless, attempts to restore essentialism not only in philosophy of science, but also in philosophy of biology have begun to appear in the past two-three decades. In this study, we compare two neoAristotelian concepts of biological essence: the concept of historical essences (Sýkora 1995) and the concept of evolutionary essences (Walsh 2006). While criticism of anti-essentialism is much the same in both approaches (typological essentialism is not Aristotelian essentialism), the two neo-Aristotelian concepts of essence differ substantially. These differences are the subject of a detailed discussion in this study.