Abstract
A popular narrative about the history of modern biology has it that Ernst Mayr introduced the distinction between “typological thinking” and “population thinking” to mark a contrast between a metaphysically problematic and a promising foundation for (evolutionary) biology, respectively. This narrative sometimes continues with the observation that, since the late‐20th century, typological concepts have been making a comeback in biology, primarily in the context of evolutionary developmental biology. It is hard to square this narrative with the historical and philosophical literature on the typology/population distinction from the last decade or so. The conclusion that emerges from this literature is that the very distinction between typological thinking and population thinking is a piece of mere rhetoric that was concocted and rehearsed for purely strategic, programmatic reasons. If this is right, it becomes hard to make sense of recent criticisms (and sometimes: espousals) of the purportedly typological underpinnings of certain contemporary research programs. In this article, I offer a way out of this apparent conflict. I show that we can make historical and philosophical sense of the continued accusations of typological thinking by looking beyond Mayr, to his contemporary and colleague George Gaylord Simpson. I show that before Mayr discussed the typology/population distinction as an issue in scientific metaphysics, Simpson introduced it to mark several contrasts in methodology and scientific practice. I argue that Simpson's insightful discussion offers useful resources for classifying and assessing contemporary attributions of typological thinking.
Highlights
THE MAKING OF “TYPOLOGICAL THINKING”A popular narrative about an episode in the history of evolutionary biology from the mid-20th century to today runs as follows: In the heyday of the modern evolutionary synthesis, Ernst Mayr (1904– 2005) coined the term “typological thinking” for a collection of misguided metaphysical ideas and anti-evolutionary commitments that were shared by many morphologists, anatomists, and paleontologists
Their reliance on concepts of “body plans” and “morphological types” suggested an ontology of idealistic, otherworldly forms—an ontology for which there was no place in modern, Darwinian biology (Mayr, 1959). The alternative to this typological mode of thinking was the “population thinking” of the modern synthesis: an ontology and outlook that eschewed postulating the existence ofspecific types and that constrained the study of evolution to variants of genes, alleles, and genotypes in populations and species. This narrative about how typological thinking was supplanted by population thinking is sometimes continued with the observation that, since the home stretch of the 20th century, there has been a gradual resurgence of talk about body plans, morphological types, and phylotypic stages, primarily in the context of evolutionary developmental biology (e.g., Amundson, 2005; Wagner, 2014)
I have argued that the exposure and rejection of the Essentialism Story should not lead us to reject all attributions of typological thinking as meaningless or misguided
Summary
A popular narrative about an episode in the history of evolutionary biology from the mid-20th century to today runs as follows: In the heyday of the modern evolutionary synthesis, Ernst Mayr (1904– 2005) coined the term “typological thinking” for a collection of misguided metaphysical ideas and anti-evolutionary commitments that were shared by many morphologists, anatomists, and paleontologists. The alternative to this typological mode of thinking was the “population thinking” of the modern synthesis: an ontology and outlook that eschewed postulating the existence of (supra)specific types and that constrained the study of evolution to variants of genes, alleles, and genotypes in populations and species This narrative about how typological thinking was supplanted by population thinking is sometimes continued with the observation that, since the home stretch of the 20th century, there has been a gradual resurgence of talk about body plans, morphological types, and phylotypic stages, primarily in the context of evolutionary developmental biology (e.g., Amundson, 2005; Wagner, 2014). Many of the errors of typological thinking that Simpson identified back in his day no longer apply today
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