Honenberger Phillip
Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, 431 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2015 Apr;50:13-25. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.01.015. Epub 2015 Mar 17.
Marjorie Grene (1910-2009) and David Hull (1935-2010) were among the most influential voices in late twentieth-century philosophy of biology. But, as Grene and Hull pointed out in published discussions of one another's work over the course of nearly forty years, they disagreed strongly on fundamental issues. Among these contested issues is the role of what is sometimes called "typology" and "typological thinking" in biology. In regard to taxonomy and the species problem, Hull joined Ernst Mayr's construal of typological thinking as a backward relic of pre-Darwinian science that should be overcome. Grene, however, treated the suspicion of typological thinking that characterized Hull's views, as well as those of other architects of the New Evolutionary Synthesis, as itself suspicious and even unsustainable. In this paper I review three debates between Grene and Hull bearing on the question of the validity of so-called typological thinking in biology: (1) a debate about the dispensability of concepts of "type" within evolutionary theory, paleontology, and taxonomy; (2) a debate about whether species can be adequately understood as individuals, and thereby independently of those forms of thinking Hull and Mayr had construed as "typological"; and (3) a debate about the prospects of a biologically informed theory of human nature.
玛乔丽·格林（1910 - 2009）和大卫·赫尔（1935 - 2010）是20世纪后期生物学哲学领域最具影响力的人物之一。但是，正如格林和赫尔在近四十年间发表的关于彼此著作的讨论中所指出的，他们在一些基本问题上存在严重分歧。在这些有争议的问题中，就包括有时被称为“类型学”和“类型学思维”在生物学中的作用。在分类学和物种问题上，赫尔赞同恩斯特·迈尔对类型学思维的解释，即它是前达尔文时代科学的一种落后遗迹，应该被摒弃。然而，格林认为，赫尔以及新综合进化论的其他架构者对类型学思维的怀疑本身就值得怀疑，甚至是站不住脚的。在本文中，我将回顾格林和赫尔之间围绕所谓类型学思维在生物学中的有效性问题展开的三场辩论：（1）关于“类型”概念在进化理论、古生物学和分类学中是否可有可无的辩论；（2）关于物种是否可以被充分理解为个体，从而独立于赫尔和迈尔所认为的“类型学思维”形式的辩论；（3）关于以生物学为依据的人性理论前景的辩论。
