“The Unity of the - 麻省理工学院人工智能研究专业

“The Unity of the
Generative Power”:
Modern Taxonomy and
the Problem of Animal
一代

Justin E. H. 史密斯
Concordia University

Much recent scholarly treatment of the theoretical and practical underpin-
nings of biological taxonomy from the 16th to the 18th centuries has failed to
adequately consider the importance of the mode of generation of some living
entity in the determination of its species membership, as well as in the deter-
mination of the ontological proªle of the species itself. 在本文中, I show
how a unique set of considerations was brought to bear in the classiªcation of
creatures whose species membership was thought to be entirely determined by
descent from parents of the same kind, in contrast with creatures whose gener-
ation could proceed spontaneously or through budding. Concretely, the rele-
vance of mode of generation to the practice of taxonomy means that we must
rethink the role of the early modern botanists in the development of a univer-
sal science of applied taxonomy. I argue that the task of classifying ‘higher’
biological kinds—those united, in Kant’s language, through their generative
power—is one with its unique set of problems, arising as much from classical
anthropology as from natural philosophy, and that the conception of zoologi-
cal species that emerged in the early modern period was a consequence of these
问题, and not primarily of the ‘applied metaphysics’ of classiªcatory
实践.

1. 介绍
Beginning in the mid-16th century, a number of German and Italian natu-
ralists innovated new techniques for the classiªcation of at least a subset of
biological kinds. Authors such as Leonhart Fuchs and Hieronymus Bock
were among the ªrst to move beyond the relatively haphazard botanical
works of ancient authors such as Theophrastus’s De causis plantarum, to no-
tice that the ancients were merely describing the species available in their
own Mediterranean environment, and instead to come up with a universal

科学观点 2009, 卷. 17, 不. 1
©2009 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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科学观点

method for categorizing new species that would not be tethered to any
特别的, contingent geographical circumstances. Their crucial concep-
tual innovation consisted in overcoming a concern for the ecological con-
texts of living kinds, and focusing instead on morphological analysis. 这
involved the conceptual, and often literal, removal of plant specimens
from their contexts, with dried and mounted plant holotypes attached to
the pages of many herbaria. These holotypes would then serve as the stan-
dards against which the species membership of some controversial speci-
men might be checked, in the same way that one might check a timepiece
whose accuracy is in doubt against an atomic clock.

Lorraine Daston has argued that the establishment of botanical holo-
types was an important part of not just the project of early modern taxon-
奥米, but of a new sort of Adamic metaphysics, in which a dubbing cere-
mony would bring it about that a class of entities is subsequently, to speak
with Kripke, rigidly designated by a name. “Instead of using names to
subsume particulars under what John Locke called ‘general ideas’,” Daston
writes,

the general idea, or what in logic as well as in natural history has
for millennia been called the ‘species’, has here been mapped onto a
particular individual. This is a radical solution to the several prob-
lems of how to compress the many into one, to render the abstract
via the concrete, and to tether words to things. . . . Of course the
botanists, who haltingly and heatedly debated the codes of botani-
cal nomenclature that eventually laid down the type method for
preserving the stability of names, were primarily concerned with
实践, not philosophy. Yet it was precisely their gradual articu-
lation of a set of practices (出版, labeling, traveling, referenc-
英, compiling) centered on a collection of objects (type specimens),
那是, an art of transmission, that turned the code articles on no-
menclatural types into a remarkable act of applied metaphysics.
(Daston 2004, p. 157)1

1. Daston, in contrast with Atran, does not wish to ascribe a theoretically foundational
role to botany in particular, nor does she see zoology as secondary or derivative. Thus she
notes that she is focusing on botany only “in part because of signiªcant divergences in
practices by circa 1850, and in part because important technical advances in the preserva-
tion of specimens in botanical and zoological collections have different chronologies”
(Daston 2004, Footnote 8). Yet presumably, if the practices of the botanists resulted in an
‘applied metaphysics’, this metaphysics was something more than a metaphysics of plants.
那是, the claim being made here is that practices in botany had important consequences
for classiªcation in general.

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

Modern taxonomy, on Daston’s account, arises out of the work of the early
modern botanists—the period that interests her most is the 19th century,
yet she sees the practices of this period as emerging out of a gradual pro-
cess that begins as early as the 16th century—who established prototypes
in authoritative books, by means of either drying and mounting, or sim-
ply reproducing in ‘künstliche Conterfeytung’ [‘artiªcial counterfeiting’, 那
是, artistic reproduction], a suitable specimen.

A number of other scholars have similarly attached a great deal of im-
portance to the work of the early modern botanists, particularly the Ger-
芒斯, for the development of the theoretical underpinnings of modern
natural history. Scott Atran, 例如, in his Cognitive Foundations of
Natural History, argues that the German ‘fathers of botany’ succeeded in
“ªx[英] a medium of communication and establish[英] a shared reposi-
tory about the living world. In so doing, they managed to go beyond com-
mon sense by transcribing folk understanding in a manner that could be
transmitted across local boundaries of time and place. The idea of a world-
wide system became conceivable” (Atran 1991, p. 128).

在本文中, I propose to critically reassess key aspects of this account
of the emergence of the modern biological species concept. 尤其, 我
will argue that the conceptual innovations of the botanists have been too
quickly extended to the domain of zoology, on the presumption that
plants and animals constitute one single ontological category and thus
that what works in botany may readily be seen to apply in the classiªca-
tion of zoological kinds. Quite the contrary, I will argue that many of the
distinctive concerns about animals characteristic of the history of Chris-
tian thought and current still in the 17th century simply do not apply to
植物, and vice versa. The reason for this difference has to do in large part
with the perceived differences in the way plants and animals are gener-
ated, and with the metaphysical implications, drawn out in the following
sections, of these different modes of generation.

2. The Separate Cases of Botany and Zoology in the 16th Century
Atran justiªes treating living beings as one homogeneous ontological class
on the grounds that “[A]nthropological data show the universal presence of
similarly structured plant and animal taxonomies even in the absence of
any evidence for a totalizing organic theory” (同上。, p. 73). Yet even if
knowledge of plants and of animals is very similar in relation to knowl-
edge of artifacts, and even if domain-speciªc reasoning about plants and
animals yields similar classiªcatory practices across cultures, there are a
number of important theoretical differences between plants and animals
in the Western tradition of natural philosophy. At least since Aristotle,

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科学观点

special pleading for the worthwhileness, and often the propriety, of zoo-
logical investigations has had to accompany the investigations themselves.
Thus the Greek philosopher explains in the De partibus animalium that
“[瓦]e must avoid a childish distaste” for zoological researches, “[F ]or in
all natural things there is something wonderful” (PA 645a 15–24). 和
Konrad Gesner repeats this admonition in his 1551 work De Quadru-
pedibus when he notes that “[米]inutorum animalium contemplatio non
spernenda [东方]” (Gesner 1551). Edward Tyson laments as late as 1699
that “we’ve ransacked both the Indies” in search of rare and exotic
植物,while neglecting what is most noble in nature—the animals (Tyson
1699).

What is the source of the childish distaste, and of the simultaneous be-
lief of a self-avowed enlightened minority that the study of animals is in
fact not childish but noble? Botany and medicine—and decidedly not zo-
ology—were two branches of a common project until the 17th century,
while zoology was scarcely on the agenda. Botany was preoccupied with
ªnding useful herbs, and there was no analogous perception of the useful-
ness of animals. To the extent that zoology begins to emerge in the 16th
世纪, it does so as a consequence of a concerted campaign of principled
arguments—fueled by the recent translation and publication of Aristotle’s
biological treatises by Theodor Gaza in 1483 进而, along with the rest
of the oeuvre, in the great Lyon edition of 1529–39—for the intrinsic
value of coming to know nature itself independently of human concerns.
In the early modern period, the study of animals, as opposed to the an-
thropomorphic use of them for the drawing of moral lessons, continued to
require explicit defense as a project worth undertaking. In this respect, 它
could not have been more different from botany. The relevant differences
between plants and animals, 然后, seem to have more to do with the theo-
retical concerns of Hellenic and Christian anthropology than with the
pretheoretical cognition of life-forms that interests Atran. 简而言之, 索赔
about animals have often functioned as stealthy claims about human be-
ings themselves. Since the ancient period, consideration of animals, 在
works such as those of Aelian and the earlier Stoics, was motivated by a
concern for moral ediªcation rather than, as was the case with plants, 为了
the extraction of use-value. Animals were a reºection of human character-
istics to be learned from; plants were a resource to be exploited. Thomas of
Chobham gives a vivid statement of the traditional role of animals as
moral teachers in an early 13th-century treatise:

The Lord created different creatures with different natures not only
for the sustenance of men, but also for their instruction, so that
through the same creature we may contemplate not only what may

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

be useful to us in the body, but also what may be useful in the soul
. . . there is no creature in which we may not contemplate some
property belonging to it which may lead us to imitate God. . . . 为了
the whole world is full of diverse creatures, like a manuscript full of
different letters and sentences in which we can read whatever we
ought to imitate or ºee from. (Thomas of Chobham 1988, p. 275)

Beyond the morally salutary beneªts of thinking about animals, even in
the perception of their basic biological features we might discern a deep-
seated tendency to regard animals, but not plants, as sharing a similar
plight and destiny with human beings qua particular kind of mortal cor-
poreal substance. Animals appear to be made from the same stuff as are
人类; plants do not so appear. As Porphyry reasons in On Abstinence from
Animal Food, “the principles of the bodies of all animals are naturally the
相同的. I do not say this with reference to the ªrst elements of their bodies;
for plants also consist of these; but I mean the seed, the ºesh, 和
conascent genus of humours which is inherent in animals” (Porphyry
1965, p. 139). Animal motion, 而且, appears to be governed by
intentionality, the growth of plants does not. While plant reproduction
involves the propensity of individuals to produce in new individuals the
characteristics typical of a kind, the path from parent to offspring is for
the most part not apparent; plants do not, 那是, appear to have ‘babies’
in any meaningful sense. As Theophrastus reasons in the Enquiry into
Plants, the ‘offspring’ of plants are unlike those of animals in that, 作为骗子-
cerns the former, “we should reckon as ‘parts’ even those things to which
the plant gives birth, for instance their fruits, although we do not so
reckon the unborn young of animals” (Theophastrus 1916, p. 5). In ani-
马尔斯, true numerical distinctness pertains to offspring as soon as they are
even discernible; plants are much rather outgrowths or offshoots of their
‘parents’. 最后, there is no meaningful notion of a ‘monstrous’ plant, 不-
ther in antiquity or in the early modern period, 除了, as in the case of
self-moving plants, zoophytes, mushrooms, and other problematic cases in
which the plant is perceived to overlap with the animal kingdom. A plant
is never monstrous in itself, even if it might qualify, along with notewor-
thy gems, rock formations, clouds, ETC。, as ‘marvelous’ or ‘wonderful’.2

2. 当然, plant hybrids and grafting have been known at least since classical antiq-
uity. Thus for example Virgil attests in the second book of the Georgics: “When the trunks
are cleft—how wondrous the tale!—an olive root thrusts itself from the dry wood. 经常,
也, we see one tree’s branches turn harmless into another’s, the pear transformed bearing
engrafted apples, and stony cornels blushing upon the plum” (Bk. II 30–35). As we will
discuss below, hybridity is the marker par excellence of animal monsters. In animals, 尽管,
it is something rare (other than in hearsay and legend), as well as something that violates
the ordinary conceptual categories that shape the folk-scientiªc perception of reality. 在

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科学观点

3. Essence and Aberration in the Aristotelian Tradition
What then is a monster? And why are there no monstrous plants, miner-
作为, or artifacts? As a ªrst stab at a deªnition, we may say that a monster is
a creature that is somehow aberrant. It may be either an aberrant species
relative to the genus level, such as egg-laying or marine mammals, 或者
ºying rodents, or cloven-hooved cud-chewers; or an aberrant organism rel-
ative to the species level, such as mules, tailed humans, or the cat-rat John
Locke claims to have personally seen. 现在, a mixture of the traits of two
separate species may arise in any number of ways, but among the most
commonly supposed causes of trait-mixing is sexual hybridism, 那是,
the mixture of two species’ ‘genetic’ material (to speak anachronistically)
through copulation. The possibility of sexual hybridism, 尽管, carries
with it implications for the ontology of species. 简而言之, if boundaries
may be crossed, then the picture of biological kinds as ªxed and eternal
cannot be maintained.

According to one common view, it is Aristotle who bequeathed to
Western biological thought a conception of living kinds as rigidly and
eternally ªxed, and on this view the preoccupation with monsters in the
early modern period is a result of thinkers using monsters, as Daston and
Park put it, to “challenge natural kinds.”3 Though Aristotle is not men-
tioned by name here, presumably it is against the Aristotelian tradition,
broadly speaking, that the early modern challenge is thought to be made.
Two important points must be made in response to this claim. 第一的, 甚至
if there are early modern antecedents, strictly speaking ‘natural kinds’
were not on anyone’s mind prior to J. S. Mill’s introduction of this term in
the 19th century. 第二, anachronism aside, one of the most valuable con-
tributions of Atran’s work has been to show that biological kinds have
never ªt easily into some broader class of natural beings—in spite of the
habit extending from Locke through Kripke of using, 例如, lead and cats as
interchangeable examples of species or kind—as well as to show that the
conception of biological kinds in the early modern period was not an an-
cient and entrenched inheritance, but a novel conceptual development.

In order to understand this development, it will be useful to brieºy
consider Aristotle’s view of biological kinds, for in the emergence of the
early modern view Aristotle is too often cast in altogether the wrong role.
David Hull, 例如, notoriously charged Aristotle with the responsi-
bility for bringing about ‘2000 years of stasis’ in western biological think-
英 (Hull 1965). If it had not been for the Stagirite’s rigidity, the imp-

植物, hybridity is ‘wondrous’, but still a common enough phenomenon already for farm-
ers in antiquity to be easily accommodated within this reality.

3. See Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park (1998).

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

lication seems to be, pre-Socratic ideas, most notably those of Empedocles,
about the origins of more perfect life-forms from less perfect ones
would have led much more quickly to a Darwin-like theory of natural se-
lection.

But what rigidity? The common view is that Aristotle’s essentialism
consists in two fundamental and connected features. As Atran puts it (在
the course of debunking it), these are (我) the eternal ªxity of species, 和
(二) the doctrine that “any individual necessarily comes to be what it is in
virtue of its species-speciªc properties, 那是, those properties which
deªne the essence of the kind of being that individual is and which there-
fore make the individual the particular individual it is” (Atran 1991,
p. 138). Many have presumed that Aristotle is constrained to support (我)
和 (二) in virtue of his purported commitment to what is often called the
‘typological species concept,’ which, according to Ernst Mayr, “attempts
to assign the variability of nature to a ªxed number of basic types at vari-
ous levels. It postulates that all members of a taxon reºect the same essen-
tial nature, or in other words that they conform to the same type. . . . Vari-
化, 最后,
is considered by the typologist as trivial and
irrelevant” (Mayr 1969, p. 66). But to the extent that Aristotle sees spe-
cies as ‘ªxed’, he does not do so in virtue of a belief in underlying univer-
sals that would require such ªxity, and to the extent that he believes that
individuals come to be what they are by virtue of species-speciªc proper-
领带, he does not believe that this happens of necessity.

What is the textual evidence on which Hull bases his argument, 哪个
is in turn echoed in the presumption of Daston and Park that the early
moderns inherited from antiquity, and ultimately rejected, a rigid doc-
trine of natural kinds? Aristotle provides the classic formulation of his
concept of kind in the De Anima. Creatures, 他说, or at least those
“whose mode of generation is not spontaneous,”

produce others of their kind, animals producing animals and plants
producing plants, in order that they may share, so far as their sev-
eral natures allow, in the eternal and divine. That is the ideal for
which all creatures strive, and which determines their behavior, 所以
far as their behavior is natural. . . . But since mortal things cannot
share continuously in the eternal and divine (because nothing that
perishes can preserve its identity nor remain numerically one), 他们
partake of eternity and divinity in the one way that is open to
他们, and with unequal success; achieving immortality not in
他们自己, but vicariously through their offspring, 哪个, 尽管
distinct individuals, are one with them speciªcally. (De Anima
415a27–b9)

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科学观点

The phrase ‘with unequal success’ is telling here. What Aristotle is in fact
concerned with is the functional and morphological analysis of kinds in
their ecological context. 有, 当然, a theory of ‘underlying’ na-
tures for Aristotle, but in the end, Aristotle’s method is to determine kind
membership by appeal to morphological aspect. As D. 中号. Balme puts it,
Aristotle makes systematics ªrst in zoology, and morphology ªrst in sys-
主题学 (Balme 1986, PP. 291–301). Natures develop, in Aristotle’s
看法, under certain natural conditions, but there is certainly nothing to
ensure that an individual organism will necessarily come to be what it is
simply in virtue of the inner working of its species-speciªc nature. 这是
true that for Aristotle all organisms would turn out as perfect copies of
their fathers, who contribute the active principle to reproduction through
the vehicle of the sperm, if the offspring did not also require the passive
matter contributed by the mother’s menstrual blood in order to develop
into a particular embodied substance, and if the development of the off-
spring were not also inºuenced by environmental factors.

A monster, for Aristotle, is not an abrupt rupture in the order of nature,
but is only a case of steresis or ‘falling short’—and indeed, every organism
falls short of the reproductive ideal to some extent, since organisms are
never exact copies of their fathers. It is against this background that Aris-
totle can claim that women are monsters of sorts—they fall short of the
reproductive ideal, indeed somewhat more so than men, but there is noth-
ing exceptional about this. For Aristotle, in an important sense monstros-
ity is the norm. We might say that for him teratology is just the way one
accounts for the diversity of individuals across a kind: every individual
falls short of exact duplication of its father; fathers achieve eternity ‘with
unequal success’. A very poor stab at eternity would be one in which envi-
ronmental or maternal inºuences bring about a creature that not only does
not bear the particular traits of the father, but does not even appear to bear
the typical traits of the kind to which the parents belong. The kind to
which the parents belong is itself, in any case, only “a universal that repre-
sents a . . . possibility for the future course of optimal individual develop-
ment” (Atran 1991, p. 193). This universal does not have any real being of
its own, but is only the derivative or ‘secondary’ substance through which
particular primary substances may be cognized.

As Atran explains, the species is a naturally occurring “empirical ‘ne-
cessity’ –part of nature’s ontological fold—that is nevertheless conditional
upon an ideal constellation of material circumstances that may never, 在
事实, obtain” (同上。, p. 138). Thus there is nothing guaranteeing that like
will consistently—let alone eternally!—beget like, 即使, for Aristotle,
sexual reproduction amounts to a sort of approximation of eternity for
mortal, sublunar corporeal substances. 的确, if we consider Aristotle’s

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

more general account of the relationship between particular primary sub-
stances and secondary substances, it is remarkable that he can continue to
be considered a rigid ªxist about species. For him, secondary substance
such as humanity or bovinity has its reality only derivatively from the ex-
istence of actual humans or cows. Whether or not this metaphysical pic-
ture constitutes a thorough reversal of the Platonic theory of forms, as is
sometimes claimed, it is clear that for Aristotle there is no eternal, ªxed
standard against which an individual can be compared for the determina-
tion of its qualiªcation for membership in an unchanging kind. The eter-
nity in Aristotle’s account of sexual reproduction is eternity only in so far
as ªnite corporeal substances are capable of it. Which is to say: not much.
Nature only approximates eternity, and environmental circumstances
might very well bring it about that, in the case of some species or other, 它
does so rather poorly.

Aristotle, like any small child, recognizes the relevant ways in which an
entity can be, or fail to be, a member of a biological kind, and recognizes
how these differ from the ways a thing can be, or fail to be, an olive press.
But this recognition does not, in spite of Hull’s excoriation of Aristotle for
the ‘stasis’ he brought about, amount to a belief in the ªxity of kinds, 这
impossibility of cross-species fertility, or transmutation as a result of envi-
ronmental change. The eternal species reiªcation, against which the early
modern preoccupation with monsters was supposedly a revolt, has a quite
different pedigree.

4. Genesis and the Early Modern Legacy of Biblical Zoology
Daston is certainly correct in pointing out the importance of the idea of an
Adamic language for early modern taxonomy. Yet if the modern species
ªxists would invoke scripture in support of their view, and would insist
that their view is the only scripturally correct one, 仍然, ªxism does not
seem to come automatically from Genesis.

There are three signiªcant passages that would serve to solidify ªxist
doctrine in later Christian thought—those describing the Creation,
Adam’s naming of the animals, and Noah’s ark. 显着, God creates
plant life as early as Genesis 1:11, then moves on to the creation of celes-
tial bodies. He ªnally returns to terrestrial life at Genesis 1:20, 并且只有
then properly begins his zoological endeavor:

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving
creature that hath life, and fowl that may ºy above the earth in the
open ªrmament of heaven. And God created great whales, 和
every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth
abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind:

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科学观点

and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, 是
fruitful, and multiply, and ªll the waters in the seas, and let fowl
multiply the earth. And the evening and the morning were the ªfth
天. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature af-
ter his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after
his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after
his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth
upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

The naming ceremony then begins at Genesis 2:19: “And out of the
ground the Lord God formed every beast of the ªeld, and every fowl of the
空气; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: 和
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
Ordinarily, to name is not to reify, but rather to pick out, or to attempt to
pick out, something that is already there. But Adam’s naming ceremony,
in the scriptural tradition, was different, for with his prelapsarian acuity
he was able to zap right in to the essences of the creatures God brought
before him and to name them accordingly. Their names were not arbitrary
sounds meant to stand in for dogs or cats, as we now take words such as
‘dog’ or ‘cat’ to be; 相当, they were the names of the things themselves. 这
animals Adam was thought to have named would come to exhaustively ªll
out the list of animals that there are.

最后, God’s instructions to Noah concerning animals occur at Gene-
姐姐 6:19–20: “And of every living thing of all ºesh, two of every sort shalt
thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male
and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, 的
every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall
come unto thee, to keep them alive.” Plants, sea creatures, 和蠕动
things are not named at all. The latter are taken, unnamed, onto the ark
during the ºood, while presumably the plants and certainly the marine
life do not need to be saved by Noah, as they can simply ride the ºood out.
Creeping things are a residual class—the things Adam did not get around
to naming—, while sea creatures and plants appear in their own way to
constitute their own ontological domains: the ºood, which was meant to
wipe the living world clean, is the natural habitat of the sea creatures;
plants are created two whole days before the creation of all the animals,
and seem to occupy an entirely different part of the Creation, itself as dif-
ferent from the creation of the animals as the creation of the lights in the
ªrmament on the fourth day is from both of these.

It is clear that the most phenomenally salient living beings in the Old
Testament are the beasts of the ªeld and forest, and the fowl. These are the
creatures provided, 可以说, with reserved cabins on the ark. The creep-

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

ing things are stowed indiscriminately, while the plants and the sea crea-
tures are exempted altogether from the effects of God’s wrath. Such luxu-
rious accommodations come with a heavy price, 尽管. For it is the
species with the reserved cabins—the species named by Adam—that
would be expected subsequently to keep to themselves.

If the tone in which early modern natural historians and philologists
alike invoked Adam’s knowledge of the animals was, as we will see, 骗局-
sistently optimistic, one prominent strain of theology had it that such
knowledge is, for fallen man, hopelessly beyond recovery. Thus Martin Lu-
ther writes in his commentary on Genesis 1:26:

Even this small part of the divine image we have lost, so much so
that we do not even have insight into the fullness of joy and bliss
which Adam derived from his contemplation of all the animal crea-
特雷斯. All our faculties today are leprous, indeed dull and utterly
dead. Who can conceive of that part, 可以说, of the divine na-
真实, that Adam and Eve had insight into all the dispositions of all
动物, into their characters and all their powers. What kind of a
reign would it have been if they had not had this knowledge?
Among the saints there is evident in this life some knowledge of
上帝. Its source is the Word and the Holy Spirit. But the knowl-
edge of nature—that we should know all the qualities of trees and
herbs, and the dispositions of all the beasts—is utterly beyond re-
pair in this life. (Luther 1968, 66)

For Luther, the unattainability of knowledge of the essences with which
God imbued animal species at the creation is no ground for presuming
that species are not real. If it had not been for the Fall, knowledge of other
creatures would have endured throughout the generations descended from
亚当.

In spite of the epistemic gap the Fall brought about, Luther is nonethe-
less certain that God caringly created each kind according to its nature.
Gone for him is the universal, naturalistic, and necessary steresis that Aris-
totle posited to account for diversity. In this connection, Luther has reason
to denounce those who would agree with Aristotle that a woman is a man
deformed. Aristotle, Luther maintains, declares that a woman is a monster
of sorts.4 “But let themselves be monsters and sons of monsters—these

4. The extent to which Aristotle actually believes this has been debated extensively in
recent scholarship. We cannot summarize all of this scholarship here, and will be content
to note two of the more interesting recent contributions: Deslauriers (1998); Mayhew
(2004). Both of these authors acknowledge the important theoretical, as opposed to merely
pejorative, role of steresis in Aristotle’s account of sexual reproduction, and of its conse-

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科学观点

men who make malicious statements and ridicule a creature of God in
which God himself took delight as in a most excellent work.”

现在, Luther is hardly known for his defense of women’s equality, so it
is worth asking why this point of Aristotle’s biology in particular man-
aged to bring out whatever latent feminism the minister had in him. 在
his commentary on Genesis, Luther emphasizes that among the animals
that preceded Eve in the order of Creation, Adam could not possibly ªnd
his helpmeet, and that it was for this reason that the female human was
制成. Eve was his “associate in generation and in the conservation of the
speciei]. He describes Adam
conservationis
species” [socia generationis
among the animals, before the creation of Eve, as ‘tentatus’, and it is not
altogether clear whether this means that he is merely being ‘tested’, 或者
whether rather he is ‘tempted’ to ªnd his helpmeet among the nonhuman
species available. 任何状况之下, God prevents any such awkward pairings by
forming a woman out of Adam’s own rib. In forming Eve, God ensures
that future humans will be generated in the manner of the beasts, as op-
posed to being forged from mud: “Neither did God wish for [Adam’s] 的-
scendants to be born in the same way as Adam, 即, from the earth.
相当, he wanted man to have generation just as the other beasts have it
[voluit, ut haberet generationem, qualem aliae bestiae habent].” After this mo-
蒙特, the criterion of species membership, for both men and beasts, 是
清除: “Whatever living thing is generated, is generated from the male and
the female, in such a way that it is brought into the world by the female
[sic ut per foeminam edatur in lucem]” (Luther 1968, 66).

“[H]e who formed man from a clod,” Luther goes on, “today creates
men from the blood of the parents.” Luther thus takes Aristotle to task for
what he sees as the Greek philosopher’s belief that the origins of species
can be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms by appeal to proper cli-
matic and material circumstances: “Thus does Aristotle talk nonsense for
nothing,” Luther writes, “when he says that man and the sun generate
男人. For if heat alone fostered bodies, nevertheless the cause of generation
is quite other. 即, the cause is the verbum Dei, which decrees: “Iam
sanguis tuus ªat masculus, ªat foemella” (同上。). 总共, for Luther, the sexual
reproduction of species, and the permanence of species guaranteed thereby,
is an article of faith, revealed in scripture, and it is a sign of one’s pagan
orientation to suggest that species could have any other origin. To be a hu-
man is to have been reproduced by a male and female human, which is also
the mode of generation of the animals that do not participate in spiritual
生活. Even if knowledge of the essences of other species has been lost as a re-

quences for the metaphysical status of women, without for that reason failing to acknowl-
edge that in the end this account is not independent of broader cultural attitudes.

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

sult of the Fall, we at least know by revelation, Luther thinks, what it is to
be a member of a species: it is to receive species essence from a male and a
female in the process of generation. Each species has been sustained
through sexual reproduction since the Creation, and there has been no
transformation or branching of lineages through hybridism, adaptation,
ETC.

When Luther criticizes Aristotle for describing women as monstrous,
this is because the Protestant reformer wishes to abolish the Greek philos-
opher’s understanding of male and female as occupying different points on
a continuum, as on the model of Aristotelian steresis, and instead to em-
phasize their equality at least to the extent that they are equally part of the
scheme God laid out at the Creation for the perpetual reproduction of
kinds. What Luther overlooks, 当然, is that monstrosity for Aristotle
is mere deformity, and deformity is but a result of falling short of perfect
再生产, reproduction in number as well as kind, of the father. 为了
Luther, 相比之下, a monster could only be produced by crossing the
boundaries of the human species, whereas women, 为了他, are fully hu-
man and indeed fully necessary for the transmission of humanity from one
generation to the next. It is this rigid tethering of species membership to
reproductive lineage that gives us the early modern preoccupation with
monsters not as mere misªrings or fallings-short of an abstract ideal of re-
生产, but rather as violations of the rigid boundaries between kinds
that had been ªxed by God at the Creation.

Luther, on the basis of his reading of scripture, emphasized the reality
and permanence of species, while also arguing that as a result of the Fall
we are forever cut off from knowledge of species essences. Many 16th-
century naturalists would agree with Luther as concerns the ontology of
物种, but would insist that the Adamic grasp of essences was recover-
有能力的, and indeed would be recovered by their own research.5 To cite one of
many examples, in his Neu Kreutterbuch of 1577 Hieronymus Bock writes
那

It is however clear and undeniable that Adam, as the ªrst-created,
did not only clearly and correctly understand all of Earth’s creation
through the pouring in [to him] of divine power and wisdom, 但
also named every creature with its correct name.6

5. For more thorough treatment of the Adamic language in the 17th century, see Katz

(1981); Aarsleff (1982).

6. Bock (1577, Preface, no page numbers). “[D]as ist aber offenbar und unleugbar das
Adam als der Erstgeschaffen alle Geschöpff auff Erden durch eingiessung Göttlicher krafft
und weissheit nit allein recht und wol erkandt sond’ auch ein jedes mit seinem rechten
namen . . . genennt hat.”

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科学观点

A similar view of zoology is offered in the Epistle Dedicatory of the 1658
edition of Edward Topsell’s History of Four-Footed Beasts. This work, the au-
thor claims, is “like to another Paradise, where the Beasts, as they were
brought to Adam, are again described by their Natures” (Topsell 1658).
There is a remarkable though little remarked similarity between reºec-
tions such as this last from an herbarium, 一方面, and those we
ªnd in texts on the biblical languages on the other. 因此, in his Hebrew
grammar, Simon Sturtevant, describing the ªrst parents as the “most
学到了 & rare Linguists,” writes that:

The beasts iourney amaine vpon the ºower fragrant ºoore of the
greene grasse; and there they thus assemble with all kinds of hearbs
and trees alreadie in the Garden: ªrst, on their parts to sweare
submissiue allegeance, and loyall subiection to him and his heires
for euer, and also to receiue ªt names of memorable notation, 到
wit, their Hebrew appellatiue titles, according to their nature &
状况 . . . 亚当 (wisely contemplating the creatures interiour
formes, & prudently foreseeing the forenamed future proprieties)
proceedeth to impose most apt signiªcant names. (Sturtevant 1602,
PP. 4–6)

If there is a long tradition, extending at least back to the Patristic authors,
of portraying Adam as the ultimate philosopher, in the early modern pe-
riod he comes to be seen more precisely as the ultimate natural philoso-
pher, whose philosophical acuity consists in the ability to discern the na-
tures of natural things—that is, of those creatures that are explicitly
mentioned in the Biblical account of Creation.

5. Species Fixism and the Role of the Botanists Reconsidered
In light of the discussion in the previous section, it is worth reconsidering
Atran and Daston’s respective accounts of the origins of species ªxism in
early modern botany. Both scholars take the early modern species concept
to have emerged out of new scientiªc practices among those engaged in
the project of classiªcation, out of an ‘applied metaphysics’, in Daston’s
条款. In Atran’s view, the ªrst steps towards a systematic global class-
iªcation of biological kinds came in the 16th century when botanists such
as Andrea Cesalpino sought to ªx the species as an eternally self-perpetu-
ating entity. As a consequence of the effort to develop a comprehensive
and universal system of classiªcation in the early modern period, 它是, 作为
Atran has argued,

necessary to ªx a criterion for the species even in advance of future
discoveries. Without such a criterion there could be no principled

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

justiªcation for uniting basic-level sorts originating in different
climes within the same genus. Such a criterion must, 所以, 英语-
tablish that morphological characters usually perceived to be con-
stant are, 实际上, those that ought to be constant according to God’s
eternal plan. (Atran 1991, p. 142)

在 1571 the Italian botanist writes that “Eternity can only arise from the
eternal: since the proper work of the vegetative soul is to engender its like,
which makes for the eternity of the species, it is necessary that its sub-
stance not be corruptible. The reason for the eternal lies neither in cor-
ruptible existences taken individually, nor in their totality” (Cesalpino
1571, p. II vii; cited in Atran 1991, p. 139). Species must, 换句话说,
be understood independently of ecological context, and as not subject to
transmutation as a result of any ecological change; the species essence
must be conceived as reliably transmitted from one generation to the next
through sexual reproduction. Variation in a population under new ecolog-
ical circumstances must now be conceived as intraspeciªc phenotypic drift
rather than as transformation of one species into another. A creature’s spe-
cies essence is determined exhaustively by who its parents are. “[F]or like
everywhere engenders like,” as Cesalpino puts it, “according to nature and
of the same species” (Cesalpino 1583, p. 26; cited in Atran 1991, p. 142).
Nearly two centuries later, Linnaeus would put it even more unambigu-
乌斯: “The law of nature is constant, indeed supremely so, so that like is
always generated from like, nor will ªerce eagles ever generate a docile
dove.”7

Whereas for traditional biology, including that of Aristotle, 监狱-
mary interest had always been in determining and grouping species ac-
cording to morphological aspect and ecological proclivity, natural history
after Cesalpino, and then more clearly after Linnaeus, gradually came to
focus on determining species’ genealogically-related afªnities (Atran
1991, p. 80). For Cesalpino, essence is communicated through reproduc-
的, through like’s begetting of like, and it is this process that ensures the
eternity of species, rather than merely approximating to eternity, as was
the case for Aristotle:

Eternity can only arise from the eternal: since the proper work of
the vegetative soul is to engender its like, which makes for the eter-
nity of species, it is necessary that its substance not be corruptible.
The reason for the eternal lies neither in corruptible existences

7. Linnaeus (1757, p. 26). “Constans, immo constantissima, naturae lex est, quod simi-

les procreentur a similibus, nec imbellem feroces progenerent aquilae columbam.”

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科学观点

taken individually, nor in their totality. (Cesalpino 1571, p. II viii;
cited in Atran 1991, p. 139)

On Atran’s view, Cesalpino’s metaphysics of plant kinds is a consequence
of certain exigencies in the project of systematic classiªcation. Plant kinds
came to be seen as ªxed, and plant essences as reliably and unchangingly
transmitted from one generation to the next, in a way that was no longer
concerned with the kind’s ecological context, in large part because con-
ceiving them in this way was useful to the project at hand. Though she has
very different concerns than Atran, Daston also asserts that early modern
botanical name-ªxing was a consequence of an unwitting endeavor in ap-
plied metaphysics. We have already seen Daston’s account of early modern
botany as the project of reversing the unfortunate consequences of Babel,
and of thus, 理想地, returning to the utopian state of affairs in which
Adam was able to perceive the essences of living kinds directly and to call
them by their true names. 当然, these botanists overlooked the fact,
easily veriªable by a quick reading of Genesis, that Adam did not, 和我们一样
have seen, name the plants, but only the animals.8 And Atran has perhaps
overlooked the fact that the species concept that takes shape in Cesalpino’s
work on plants is there in some form in Luther’s account of humans and
animals several decades earlier, 那是, in the work of an author with no
particular interest in developing a global system of the classiªcation of liv-
ing kinds, but only in interpreting the Old Testament.

Luther’s ontology of species agreed with that of the systematists, 但
his account of our knowledge of species was wholly at odds with theirs. 在
the 17th century, 尽管, some naturalists came to agree with Luther that
species essences are both (我) ªxed for all time, 和 (二) as a result of our in-
herent ignorance, essentially unknowable. Thus for the pious natural phi-
losopher John Ray, the number of species was ªxed once and for all, 和
variation within a species, much as for today’s ‘creation scientists’, 能
never lead to transmutation:

8. This is certainly not to say that early modern naturalists were intentionally misread-
ing scripture, but only that a certain deep-seated theoretical distinction between plants
and animals was overlooked by many of them, often in consequence of an overriding inter-
est in the former. 当然, no naturalist ever falsely claimed that Adam in fact named the
植物, and that in this sense early modern botany directly continues the Adamic project;
rather what happens is that plants come to stand in for the living world in general, 和
what is said of them is assumed mutatis mutandis to be applicable in other domains such as
zoology, even though at precisely the same time reºections about the entities of interest to
zoology are taking place far outside the bounds of natural philosophy, in the tradition of
scriptural commentary.

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

[D]ifferences that issue from the same seed, be it in an isolated
plant or in an entire species, are accidental and not the signs of a
speciªc character. . . . The same is true of the animal world . . . 这
number of species in nature is certain and determined: God rested on
the sixth day, interrupting his great work—that is, the creation of new
物种.

Though species are eternal, for Ray, their essences are unknowable:

The correct and philosophical division of any genus is by essential
差异. But the essences of things are unknown to us. 因此, 在
place of these essential characters, characteristic accidents should be
用过的 . . . . [那] join together plants that are similar, and agree in
primary parts, or in total external aspect, and which separate those
that differ in these respects. . . . The essences of things are wholly
unknown to us. Since all our knowledge derives from sensation, 我们
know nothing of things that are outside us except through the
power that they have to affect our senses in some particular way,
and by the mediation of these impressions to cause a particular im-
age to arise in the intellect. If the essences of things are immaterial
形式, it is admitted by everyone that these are not encountered in
any sensible means. (Ray 1696a, p. 30F)

But the Lutheran ontology and epistemology of animal kinds would prove
a difªcult pair of beliefs to sustain together. If essences cannot be known,
then one might reasonably protest that we have no good reason to think
there are such things.

One of the most important weapons in the arsenals of nominalists, 和
later of materialists, in arguing against the reality—and a fortiori the
ªxity—of species, would be the purported empirical evidence for species
transmutation, whether in the course of an individual organism’s life or as
a consequence of sexual hybridism. 一般来说, a thinker’s position on the
possibility of hybridism serves as a good index of his position on the real-
ity of universals. Thus Ray believes that species are ‘ideas’ in the divine
头脑, and denies any true transmutation, but only intraspeciªc pheno-
typic drift. He maintains that biological kinds:

are not transmutable, and the forms and essences of these are either
certain speciªc principles, 那是, certain very small particles of
事情, distinct from all others, and naturally indivisible, or certain
speciªc seminal reasons enclosed by means of an appropriate vehi-
克莱. (Ray 1696b, ch. 6; cited in Atran 1991, p. 164)

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科学观点

相比之下, many who prefer to ‘lay notions by’ and focus on particulars,
相比之下, are more inclined to recognize the possibility of true transmu-
站. In the Novum Organon, Francis Bacon notes that there are natural
beings “which appear to be composed of two species, or to be the rudi-
ments between one and the other.” He offers as examples of these “Moss,
which is something between putrescence and a plant,” and “Flying Fishes,
between ªshes and birds,“ 和, ªnally, “Bats, between birds and quadru-
peds.” He goes on to suggest that sometimes these transitional individuals
may emerge by way of degeneration: “plants,“ 他写, “sometimes de-
generate to the point of changing into other plants” (Bacon 1870, p. 283).
And in the Sylva sylvarum, Bacon indicates that, while reason recoils from
the prospect of bleeding across species lines, nonetheless empirically we
are forced to acknowledge that it happens. 并且显着, the kingdom
of nature from which the clearest evidence comes is the vegetable, 并不是
the animal:

The rule is certain, that plants for want of culture degenerate to be
baser in the same kind; and sometimes so far as to change into an-
other kind . . . This work of the transmutation of plants into one
其他, is inter magnalia naturae; for the transmutation of species is,
in the vulgar philosophy, prounounced impossible: and certainly it
is a thing of difªculty, and requireth deep search into nature; 但
seeing there appear some manifest instances of it, the opinion of
impossibility is to be rejected, and the means thereof to be found
出去. We see, that in living creatures, that come of putrefaction,
there is much transmutation of one into another; as caterpillars turn
into ºies, &C. And it should seem probable, that whatsoever crea-
真实, having life, is generated without seed, that creature will
change out of one species into another. (Bacon 1854, p. 142F)

We have already seen from Ray the explicit claim that species essences are
held ªxed in place through the transmission of seeds or essence-bearing
particles from generation to generation through the process of sexual re-
生产. Bacon’s tack is not to deny that a preexisting seed or principle
would ensure continuity of species, but rather to emphasize that in those
cases where there is no such preexisting principle, transmutation is unde-
niable. Margaret Cavendish, similarly, who does not believe “that all natu-
ral things are produced by the way of seeds or eggs,” observes “that there
are productions of and from creatures of quite different kinds; as for exam-
普莱, that vegetables can and do breed animals, and animals, minerals and
vegetables, 等等: Neither do I so much wonder at this, because I
observe that all creatures of nature are produced but out of one matter,

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

which is common to all” (Cavendish 2001, p. 66F). To acknowledge, 然后,
that a creature could be generated de novo from a new and fortuitous ar-
rangement of existing matter, rather than from some preexisting princi-
普莱, is tantamount to acknowledging the reality of species transmutation.
毕竟, the transmutation of excrement into ºies is clearly as much of a
change as the transmutation of one species of plant into another species of
plant.

While some, such as Bacon and Cavendish, could distinguish between
those higher creatures that reproduce through the transmission of a preex-
isting principle, and those lower creatures that emerge from inorganic
事情, the central tenet of Cartesian embryology was that all reproduc-
tion is a thermomechanical process like any other, that fetuses develop
through a series of what Descartes calls ‘minor causes’ at work in the raw
materials of the uterus. Nicolas Malebranche sharply saw the consequences
of such an account of embryology for the ontological problem of species.
In The Search after Truth of 1676, he notes that Cartesian embryology is ad-
equate to account for reproduction in general but wholly unable “to ex-
plain why a mare does not give birth to a calf, or a chicken lay an egg con-
taining a partridge or some bird of a new species” (Malebranche 1962,
p. 243).

确实, for some such as Locke, who adopted a broadly Cartesian
view of reproduction to accompany his thoroughgoing nominalism, 这是
exactly what started happening. “I demand,” Locke asks,

what are the alterations that may, or may not, be in a horse or lead,
without making either of them to be another species? In determin-
ing the species of things by our abstract ideas, this is easy to re-
solve: but if any one will regulate himself herein, by supposed real
essences, he will I suppose be at a loss; and he will never be able to
know when any thing precisely ceases to be of the species of horse
or lead. (洛克 [1690] 1975, p. 13)

The unknowability of essences, for Locke, is also, 同时地, 和-
pelling reason to hold to the possibility of species transmutation. 洛克
speaks in the Essay of creatures that “have shapes like ours, but are hairy,
and want Language, and Reason. . . . If it be asked,” Locke reasons,
“whether these be all Men, or no, all of humane Species; ‘tis plain, 这
Question refers only to the nominal Essence: For those of them to whom
the deªnition of the Word Man, or the complex Idea signiªed by that
姓名, agrees are Men, and the other not. But if the Enquiry be made con-
cerning the supposed real Essence; and whether the internal Constitution
and Forme of these several Creatures be speciªcally different, it is wholly
impossible for us to answer” (洛克 [1690] 1975, p. 450F). Elsewhere in

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科学观点

the same work, Locke again attempts to draw empirical evidence in favor
of his nominalism from what he takes to be the common natural phenom-
enon of cross-species reproduction. “I once saw a Creature,” he maintains,

that was the Issue of a Cat and a Rat, and had the plain Marks of
both about it; wherein Nature appear’d to have followed the Pat-
tern of neither sort alone, but to have jumbled them both together.
To which, he that shall add the monstrous Productions, that are so
frequently to be met with in Nature, will ªnd it hard, 即使在
race of Animals to determine by the Pedigree of what Species every
Animal’s issue is; and be at a loss about the real Essence, which he
thinks certainly conveyed by Generation, and has alone a right to
the speciªck name. (洛克 [1690] 1975, p. 451F)

Here Locke offers us a paradigmatic statement of his nominalism, and he
takes the apparent ºuidity of species boundaries as evidence for the truth
of this theory. For Locke, important empirical evidence for the non-reality
of species, or at least purported empirical evidence, is what he takes to be
the common phenomenon of cross-species reproduction or hybridism. 为了
他, one potential hybrid is that between humans and apes; “if History lie
不是,“ 他写, “Women have conceived by Drills; and what real Species,
by that measure, such a Production will be in Nature, will be a new Ques-
化” (洛克 [1690] 1975, p. 451F).

传统上, hybridism was thought to be possible in sufªciently sim-
ilar creatures. 因此, a claim to the possibility of hybrid offspring in early
biology may give us insight into a perception of similarity, and into taxo-
nomic links that may otherwise have remained unelaborated. Thus in the
12th century, in his De animalibus, Albertus Magnus identiªes the ‘hybrid’
as any quadruped that is dual-genused, and maintains this is possible “for
animals which have the same gestation period, an appropriately sized
uterus, and are not very far apart as to shape” (Albert the Great 1999,
书 22, p. 1511). For Aristotle similarly, as we might expect, given our
revisionist sketch of his view of the species category, hybridism is gener-
ally obstructed only as a result of the “gestation-periods of man, sheep,
狗, and ox, which are wildly different, and none of these animals can pos-
sibly be formed except in its own proper period” (GA 769b 24–6). Tell-
英利, 然而, Aristotle also mentions earlier in the De generatione
animalium a version of the old adage, Ex Africa semper aliquid novi, 两者都不
afªrming nor denying that the ever new kinds supposedly generated in
Libya are so as a result of rampant cross-species fertility: “One says that
the proverb pertaining to Libya, according to which Libya always pro-
duces something new, owes to the animals of different families uniting: 作为
water is scarce, they meet in the small number of places that have sources,

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Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

and they couple, even if they are not of the same species” (GA 746b6–11;
see also HA 606b19). Where Aristotle denies the possibility of hybrids, 它
is not because kinds naturally and necessarily keep to themselves, 但仅
for ‘mechanical’ reasons having to do with disparate gestation periods, ETC.
In the 17th century, some adopted the view that continuity of species
membership could be guaranteed only by preexisting seeds from which
future organisms would unfold, while acknowledging that where a fetus
develops strictly de novo, it’s species membership can be no more meta-
physically well-founded than that of spontaneously generated ºies or eels
arising, as Aristotle put it, from nothing more than the right combination
of heat and moisture. 一些, such as Bacon and Cavendish, thus took the
view that lower life forms that do not unfold from seeds are capable of
transmutation and cross-fertility; as Bacon explains elsewhere in the Sylva
sylvarum: “For it is the seed, and the nature of it, which locketh and
boundeth in the creature, that it doth not expatiate. So as we may well
conclude, that seeing the earth of itself doth put forth plants without seed,
therefore plants may well have a transmigration of species” (Bacon 1854,
p. 142F). For higher organisms, 相比之下, continuity of species is se-
cured by the fact that these are not generated out of inorganic matter, 但
rather from seeds. Roughly speaking, the distinction between higher and
lower maps fairly smoothly onto a basic division between living kinds fa-
miliar to us from Genesis, between those animals that Adam got around
to christening, and those that were left to slither namelessly.

6. Must Like Always Generate Like? Modern Taxonomy and the
Metaphysics of Sexual Generation
We noted early on that in the plant world, there are no monsters except to
the extent that a plant is perceived as partaking of animal nature. Mon-
sters pose distinctly conceptual problems, as opposed to simply being
signs of moral corruption or harbingers of the apocalypse, where there is
some particular conceptual need to keep species boundaries ªxed and
uncrossable. This is why Aristotle, WHO, as we have seen, understands spe-
cies in terms of their ecological context and morphological aspect,
and who understands monsters naturalistically—indeed understands every
creature as monstrous to the extent that none is ever an exact reproduction
of its father—is also not troubled by the prospect of hybridism. Species
ªxism, we have seen, is sometimes described as a product of the distinctly
modern taxonomical project spearheaded largely by the German botanists.
但是, it is animals, and not plants, that most early modern naturalists
are intent on saving from the prospect of transmutation through hybrid-
ism or otherwise, and that the nominalists and materialists are intent on
subjecting to such a fate. Why is this? 这里, I believe we will not ªnd the

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科学观点

answer by looking at the stated claims of early modern zoology, but must
instead return to the traditional Christian anthropological scheme in
which animals, and decidedly not plants, have been understood. 再次, 在
Genesis, only brutes and fowl are taken on the ark: not ªsh, nor plants,
and insects are evidently allowed on, but without having earlier been
named—that is, on one interpretation, without having had their species
essences ªxed by Adam. And into the 17th century, it remains the case that
the transmission of species essence through sexual reproduction is vigi-
lantly guarded only for brutes and fowl, while the other creatures are per-
mitted to reproduce after their own manner.

Atran’s account of the development of systematic taxonomy in botany
is rich and thought-provoking, but again, in order to understand the full
range of concerns that entered into early modern reºections on the status
of animal species, we would do well not to extend too quickly the implica-
tions of early modern botany to early modern zoology. In Atran’s view,
scholars are wrong to trace the cognition of life-forms—especially plant
life-forms—to their assumed social functions. 例如, one inºuential
学习 (Witkowski, Brown and Chase 1981) maintains that life-form con-
cepts such as ‘tree’ and ‘herb’ develop originally, not from perceptions of
differences in size or gross morphology of plants, but from extensions of
such functional concepts as ‘wood’ and ‘weed’; but for Atran, the evalua-
tion of life-forms is not invariably based upon an evaluation of functional
因素. Children do not learn the concept ‘wood-use’ along with the con-
cept ‘tree’. 反而, they pick out, 姓名, and place into taxonomies just
what they ªnd phenomenally compelling.

But Atran’s point overlooks the obvious fact that, notwithstanding evi-
dence as to the cross-cultural, pretheoretical ways in which life-forms are
cognized, in the Western tradition animals and plants are put to very dif-
ferent theoretical uses. To the extent that plants are, to borrow Lévi-
Strauss’s oft-borrowed phrase, ‘good to think with’, they are so principally
to the extent that they make it into a human culture’s gardens, kitchens,
or medicine cabinets. Animals, 相比之下, as Thomas of Chobham re-
minds us, are themselves good to think with, whether we see much of them
或不. It is worth noting in this connection that a good number of the an-
imals that made it into Gesner’s De Quadripedibus, as also in the medieval
bestiaries, were charismatic megafauna—not to mention unicorns9—pre-
served in Africa but unknown in post-Ice Age Europe other than through
the moral fables told about them.

But the suitability of animals as a source of salutary moral lessons un-

9. For a judicious treatment of the enduring importance of unicorns in late-17th-

century natural philosophy, see Ariew (1998).

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100

Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

doubtedly arises in the ªrst place from a perceived likeness to humans that
是, 到底, rooted in a shared history of evolution. They share our
plights as mortal corporeal substances that have offspring, IE。, that liter-
盟友, if not perfectly, reproduce themselves. It is precisely with respect to
those living beings in which this feature is not easily observable that seed-
less generation is allowed by many early modern authors, and in which,
relatedly, authors such as Bacon and Cavendish are more ready to concede
the possibility of species transmutation. While of course early modern
botanists were aware of the mechanics of plant reproduction from seeds
and spores, as Bacon reminds us phenomenally plants simply do not seem
to be the sort of entity for which it makes sense to speak of parent and off-
春天.

This phenomenal difference between plants and animals is crucial for
our understanding of the concept of ‘monster’ as it was invoked in early
modern natural philosophy. In order to be identiªed as a monster, a crea-
ture must be identiªed as different with respect to species essence from at
least one of its parents. What is generally reported in the Philosophical
Transactions is not simply the sighting of a monster of indeterminate age,
but the witnessing of a monstrous birth to some particular parents or oth-
呃. A monster, in short, can only be one in relation to its parents, and at
that level of the scale where there is no meaningful application of the con-
cepts of ‘parent’ and ‘offspring’, there is also no logical possibility for the
identiªcation of an aberrant individual. Like Grendel, every monster has a
母亲 (as well as a father), one who need not love it, but who must at
least be recognizable as its progenitor.

For Dan Sperber (at least in his early work), approaching the question
of monsters from the perspective of cognitive anthropology, to recognize
that a creature is deviant is already to recognize that it is a deviant some-
thing-or-other, and even if it requires special treatment in ritual, or moral
condemnation, this does not mean that it presents distinctly cognitive
problems for any given system of classiªcation. Sperber emphasizes that
the way animals are classiªed need not necessarily be based, as it is in
scientiªc biology, on lineage. What counts as a monster has everything to
do with the class of creatures to which it is compared, and a creature’s par-
ents are only the most obvious comparison class in a taxonomic system
that sees ancestry as the sole criterion for species membership. 因此
Sperber argues that

the notion of a species in folk taxonomies need not be deªned by
the only criterion acceptable to modern zoological thinking: the re-
production of like by like. The natural mode of reproduction, 核素-
tainly well observed in all societies for the greater part of their

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科学观点

101

fauna, may be the object of a generalisation which, however impor-
坦特, remains external to the principle of taxonomic classiªcation.
(Sperber 1986, 152)

The way a being is classiªed, 换句话说, is not exclusively determined
by consideration of who its parents were—Sperber notes for example that
in French folk taxonomy mules constitute their own ‘species’, 虽然
everyone knows full well they are the product of a horse and a donkey. 这
mule is not, on this way of thinking, a ‘misªring’ of nature, it is not a
sorry excuse for a horse, nor yet a bad representative of the donkey-kind. 它
has the mule essence, fully and properly, and this independently of its an-
cestry. To cite another example, from Bulmer and Tyler’s famous work on
taxonomy among the Karam of New Guinea, the Karam “believe that
metamorphoses sometimes occur between taxa, each of which also repro-
duces after its kind, which suggests that they do not see separate ancestry
and reproductive isolation as necessary features of the units they distin-
guish” (Bulmer and Tyler 1968, p. 335).

In his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Ernst Cassirer notes that what distin-
guishes the modern conception of biological genera and species, as op-
posed to ‘primitive’ schemes for carving up nature such as that of the
Karam, “derives not from simple sensation, from the material content of
our visual and tactile impressions, but from the form of their causal coor-
dination and connection, hence from acts of causal inference” (Cassirer
1925, p. 180). In his treatise On the Different Races of Men, Kant explains
similarly: “In the animal kingdom, the natural classiªcation into genera
and species is based on the common law of reproduction, and the unity of
the genera is nothing than a unity of the generative power, valid for a cer-
tain number of animals” (康德 [1775] 1964, italics added; cited in Cassirer
1925, p. 180). It is only when the biological world is carved up into kinds
thought to pass along species essences through the causal chain of sexual
reproduction that animal species come to be seen as ªxed and eternal. 这是
only on such a view of species, 而且, that anomalous creatures appear-
ing to blend traits of more than one species at once begin to appear as rup-
tures in an otherwise rational system. Such a view of species is one that
ªrst emerges in a certain way of thinking about animals, and not plants: A
way of thinking that is rooted in the tradition of Christian anthropology,
and of which Luther’s Old Testament exegesis is one signiªcant instance.
In this tradition, animals are of interest principally as a mirror held up to
人类, rather than in their own right. This mirroring effect is made
possible by certain phenomenally salient respects in which animals really
are like human beings, and plants are not.

The early modern preoccupation with monsters, 反过来, 不是, 作为

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102

Modern Taxonomy and the Problem of Animal Generation

Daston and Park have argued, a challenge to some ancient, rigid doctrine
of natural kinds, but rather an unavoidable consequence of a system of
classiªcation of animals based, in Kant’s terms, on the common law of re-
生产. This law appears to have its origins much more in Genesis
and the tradition of scriptural commentary than in Aristotle, on whom it
has commonly been blamed, and it appears to be valid, as Kant notes, 仅有的
for a certain number of animals. Monsters can arise only where this law is
perceived to hold: what is monstrous arises from a monstrous birth, 和
not from a spore or a bubble of slime. The preoccupation with monsters
was not, in Cassirer’s sense, ‘primitive’: not based on visual impressions,
nor yet on affective factors such as ‘wonder’, but on the apparent rupture
the creature signaled in the causal coordination of nature, 那是, 在里面
system of sexual reproduction of higher biological kinds.

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