Abstract
In the April 1986 issue of Philosophy, James Franklin argues in 'Aristotle on Species Variation' that Aristotle holds that natural kinds form a continuous series, which Franklin takes to be a dense series, and thus one composed of an infinite number of natural kinds. Franklin's interpretation conflicts with the interpretation, commonly offered of Aristotle's natural kinds, which maintains that they form a finite series of contiguous and discrete kinds.1 I have also defended the more common interpretation in a recent examination of Aristotle's views on the continuity of natural kinds.2 Franklin's defence of his interpretation divides up fundamentally into two parts. Aristotle simply holds that natural kinds form a continuous series in two passages in his biology, Historia Animalium VIII.1.588b4-14 and De Partibus Animalium IV.5.681aI0-15, and there is no evidence from elsewhere in the corpus that explicitly rules out or conflicts with these two passages. If considered in isolation, the HA and PA passages make a reasonable case for Franklin's interpretation. Furthermore, Aristotle does employ a sense of 'continuous' (suneches), which, if applied to kinds, would yield a dense series of kinds. In Physica VI .2.232b24-25 he defines the 'continuous' as that which is 'divisible into items always divisible', which is the sort of continuity formed by magnitudes, motions and times. If Aristotle extends this sense of continuity to kinds, then kinds as infinitely divisible would certainly seem to form a series in which any two given kinds would always have another kind between them, no matter how close they may seem to be in the series. Thus an infinite series of kinds would ensue. A basic feature of Aristotle's metaphysics provides, however, a serious obstacle to Franklin's interpretation, in the form of Aristotle's doctrine of infinity. All the relevant evidence from elsewhere in the corpus supports the traditional view that Aristotle denies the existence of any actual infinity. Since Franklin's view
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