Abstract
Nineteenth-century British entomologist William Kirby is best known for his generic division of bees based on tongues and his vigorous defence of natural theology. Focusing on these aspects of Kirby’s work has lead many current scholars to characterise Kirby as an “essentialist.” As a result of this characterisation, many important aspects of his work, Monographia Apum Angliæ (1802) have been over-looked or misunderstood. Kirby’s religious devotion, for example, have lead some scholars to assume Kirby used the term “type” for connecting an ontological assumption about essences with a creationist assumption about species fixity, which I argue conceals a variety of ways Kirby employed the term. Also, Kirby frequently cautioned against organising a classification system exclusively by what he called “analytic reasoning,” a style of reasoning 20th century scholars often associate with Aristotelian logic of division. I argue that Kirby’s critique of analytic reasoning brought the virtues of his own methodological agenda into sharp relief. Kirby used familiar metaphors in the natural history literature – Ariadne’s thread, the Eleusinian mysteries, and Bacon’s bee and spider metaphors – to emphasise the virtues of building tradition and cooperation in the goals and methodological practices of 19th century British naturalists.
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Acknowledgements
The author would like thank Kelli Carr, Anjan Chakravartty, Michael Ghiselin Bert␣Hall, Sara Scharf, Denis Walsh, Polly Winsor and the JHB’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and insightful suggestions. She also very grateful to Ginny Domka and Paul Farber for their patience and assistance with the preparation of this paper for publication.
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Varma, C.S. Threads that Guide or Ties that Bind: William Kirby and the Essentialism Story. J Hist Biol 42, 119–149 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-008-9156-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-008-9156-x