Natural Kinds

What makes something the kind of thing it is? And do certain objects have a special status in the scheme of things? According to Aristotle, some things (and particularly plants and animals) are what they are in virtue of their intrinsic properties: in more modern terms, they are members of "natural kinds" and therefore have a special status. Furthermore, it is the job of the natural scientist to discover those intrinsic properties. In this work, the author defends a modern version of Aristotle's view. He carefully analyzes the notion of natural kind, and then uses it to attack a number of connected philosophical problems. He writes about the natural sciences, the social sciences, the nature of scientific laws, the semantics of general names, ontology and metaphysics, and the philosphy of biology.