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Article

Species, essence and explanation.

Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences - 1 Dec 2012

Lewens Tim

Abstract excerpt

Michael Devitt (2008, 2010) has argued that species have intrinsic essences. This paper rebuts Devitt's arguments, but in so doing it shores up the anti-essentialist consensus in two ways that have more general interest. First, species membership can be explanatory even when species have no essences; that is, Tamsin's membership of the tiger species can explain her stripyness, without this committing us to any...

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Methodology Data sources Editorial policy Privacy About Contact Helena Bioinformatics

Identifiers

PMID: 23107092
DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2012.09.013

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PubMed metadata and Literature Corpus relationships. Corpus snapshot updated 7 Sept 2026. Manifest publication-graph-cohort-2026-09-07.1.

Source receipt: pubmed, retrieved 7 Sept 2026.

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