To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  History & Other Humanities  Philosophy, Ethics & Religion

Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change

By: J Laporte
232 pages
Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change
Click to have a closer look
  • Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change ISBN: 9780521825993 Hardback Dec 2003 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 1 week
    £90.00
    #159964
Price: £90.00
About this book Contents Customer reviews Related titles

About this book

According to the received tradition, the language used to refer to natural kinds in scientific discourse remains stable even as theories about these kinds are refined. Hence, scientists discover, rather than stipulate, that sentences like 'Whales are mammals, not fish' are true. In this illuminating book, Joseph LaPorte argues that scientists do not discover that sentences about natural kinds, like 'Whales are mammals, not fish', are true rather than false. Instead, scientists find that these sentences were vague in the language of earlier speakers, and they refine the meanings of the relevant natural-kind terms to make the sentences true. Hence, scientists change the meanings of these terms. This conclusion prompts LaPorte to examine the consequences of this change in meaning for the issue of incommensurability and for the progress of science.

Contents

Introduction; 1. What is a natural kind, and do biological taxa qualify?; 2. Natural kinds, rigidity, and essence; 3. Biological kind term reference and the discovery of essence; 4. Chemical kind term reference and the discovery of essence; 5. Linguistic change and incommensurability; 6. Meaning change, theory change and analyticity.

Customer Reviews

By: J Laporte
232 pages
Media reviews
'LaPorte's book constitutes an exciting and intriguing starting-point for reconsidering reference theory and the nature of natural kinds.' The Philosophical Quarterly
Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksBritish Wildlife Magazine SubscriptionClearance SaleBuyers Guides