Books about kinds
Tue 30 Sep 2014 08:59 AM
I met Muhammad Ali Khalidi in Paris last Spring. I had regrettably only taken the most cursory of glances at his book, Natural categories and human kinds. The library here had just gotten a copy, so 'just' that it wasn't processed and available for checkout until after I got back.
So I checked it out and took a more careful look at it when I returned. Over the summer, I was invited to write a review for Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. This provided me a copy of my own and an occasion to think more about his view.
I was asked to write a longish essay review which both evaluated the book and connected it to broader issues that I think are important. I have am already on record as to what I think is important about natural kinds, so I use the review to distinguish MAK's view from mine and to argue briefly for my own way of doing things. It's a review and a critical notice all in one, at once other-directed and self-indulgent.
I sent my last draft off to the journal and posted it: Epistemic categories and causal kinds