Book Outline

PART 1: PROBLEMS

1:  Scientific Classification’s “Aboutness”

1.1 The Realist Presumption

1.2 Focus on Biological Categories

1.3 A Path Forward

2:  Essentialism Rising

2.1 Realisms

2.2 A Problem for Scientific Realism

2.3 The Appeal of Structure

3:  Biological Complications

3.1 Species

3.2 Cell Types

3.3 Tissues & Organs

4:  Biochemical Complications

4.1 Complications of “Structure”

4.2 A Potential Response

4.3 Proteins: an Embarrassment of Structural Riches

4.4 Enantiomers: a Poverty of Structure

PART 2: SOLUTIONS

5:  A New Hope: the HPC Approach

5.1 Unlikely Beginnings

5.2 The Fall and Rise of Cluster Views

5.3 The Accommodation Thesis

5.4 Applications

5.5 Concerns About Mechanism

5.6 Concerns About Scope & Specificity

6:  Epistemic Alternatives

6.1 Purely Epistemic Approaches 

6.2 Hybrid Approaches

6.3 Natural Kinds Eliminativism

6.4 Taking Stock

7:  Shifting the Focus: the Stable Property Cluster Approach

7.1 Grounding the Epistemic Utility of Natural Kinds?

7.2 Stability

7.3 Natural Kindness as a Status

8:  Objections & Pointed Questions

8.1 Domain & Context Transcendent Kinds

8.2 Anything Goes!

8.3 Doing Without Causal Mechanism

8.4 Explanatory Weakness

8.5 Insufficient Scope

PART 3: APPLICATIONS & CONCLUSIONS

9:  Some Previous Cases Reexamined 

9.1 Enantiomers

9.2 Biological Macromolecules

9.3 Cell Types

9.4 Species Taxa (Among Others)

10:  Tissues & Organs

10.1 The Stratification of Tissue Types

10.2 Stability & Mechanism

10.3 Organ Categories

11:  De-Extinction

11.1 The Very Idea

11.2 Intermittent Instantiation

11.3 Can the Biology Help?

11.4 A Pragmatic Approach via SPC Kindness

12:  Ecosystems

12.1 Ecosystem Types and Tokens

12.2 Ecosystems in Scientific Practice

12.3 Candidate Approaches

12.4 Applying the SPC Account

13: Human Kinds

13.1 Looping Effects

13.2 Race

13.3 Sex & Gender

14:  Between Realism & Naturalism 

 [ under construction ]

14.1 Hacking's Challenge

14.2 Degrees of Reality?

14.3 Open Questions