Abstract
The process of attaching names (labels) to objects has been of great interest to philosophers since the days of the Greeks. However, in recent times other philosophical problems have seemed to be more interesting, and the subject of naming has been rather neglected. The few contemporary philosophers who have written about it have, on the whole, been quite unaware that the same problem of naming and fixing a name to a specified object has been one of the foremost concerns of taxonomy, one of the sciences. There is, however, one philosopher, David Hull, who did realize it and who attempted in a series of publications to show to what extent philosophy and taxonomy can help each other by reciprocal illumination. There are issues where the philosopher can help the taxonomist to improve his methods and definitions and others where the taxonomist has worked out methods that do the same for the philosophers.
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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Mayr, E. (1989). Attaching Names to Objects. In: Ruse, M. (eds) What the Philosophy of Biology Is. Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, vol 32. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1169-7_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1169-7_12
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