Skip to main content

Cell Types as Natural Kinds

Biological Theory volume 7, pages 170–179 (2013)Cite this article

Abstract

Talk of different types of cells is commonplace in the biological sciences. We know a great deal, for example, about human muscle cells by studying the same type of cells in mice. Information about cell type is apparently largely projectible across species boundaries. But what defines cell type? Do cells come pre-packaged into different natural kinds? Philosophical attention to these questions has been extremely limited [see e.g., Wilson (Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, pp 187–207, 1999; Genes and the Agents of Life, 2005; Wilson et al. Philos Top 35(1/2):189–215, 2007)]. On the face of it, the problems we face in individuating cellular kinds resemble those biologists and philosophers of biology encountered in thinking about species: there are apparently many different (and interconnected) bases on which we might legitimately classify cells. We could, for example, focus on their developmental history (a sort of analogue to a species’ evolutionary history); or we might divide on the basis of certain structural features, functional role, location within larger systems, and so on. In this paper, I sketch an approach to cellular kinds inspired by Boyd’s Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory, applying some lessons from this application back to general questions about the nature of natural kinds.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1

Notes

  1. See Mumford (2005) for a useful discussion of these issues.

  2. Just how few is controversial.

  3. Subject, of course, to variations due to cell cycle, context, stimuli, and so on.

  4. One important question that I will not address in much detail here: what is connoted by “natural” as a modifier of “kind”? I persist in using the phrase “natural kind” to signal my acceptance of the continuity between the account of kinds I offer and more traditional accounts. As will become clear in the final two sections, though, “naturalness” will take on a somewhat different cast on my account.

  5. We will take a more critical look at this supposition in the final two sections.

  6. Certain aspects of biological practice—to wit, a broadly historical orientation in biological systematics—also tell against (1). I will circle back to this issue shortly.

  7. In fact, this explanandum (permanence) turns out to have been overemphasized. In eukaryotes, cells maintain their differentiated status only in particular contexts—say, in certain tissue types or in the company of other cells of that type. Outside those contexts, they tend to de-differentiate.

  8. As Maureen O’Malley reminds me, this does not mean that they no longer engage in transcriptional regulation. And indeed, while their transcriptional activities are quite low (below normal detection limits), recent studies suggest that mature erythrocytes contain “diverse and abundant microRNAs” that play important roles in signaling and other maintenance functions (Chen et al. 2008, p. 2).

  9. For further discussion of the difficulties with this approach, see Wilson (2005, pp. 104–107).

  10. Of course, in some corners of biology this is a contentious thesis about species too; for entry into the debate see e.g., Doolittle (1999) and O'Malley et al. (2010).

  11. Some have their origin in the neural crest, some in the mesoderm. I thank Brian Hall for suggesting this example.

  12. I think that matters are somewhat more complex that this brief look allows. For example, our knowledge of cellular diversity in different species—what cells appear grouped across distant evolutionary spans—may well feed back on our classificatory practices in our own species. Trait identification need not be strictly prior to homologue identification.

  13. Though this train of thought is rarely explicitly mentioned, it seems implicit in many late-20th century discussions of natural kinds; it is beyond the scope of this article to attend to its justification.

  14. This is a similarity also noted by Häggqvist (2005), §5), with whose views on HPC kinds I find myself in broad agreement.

  15. I use the idiom of “clusters being instantiated by an object” as a shorthand way of saying that (sufficiently many) properties in the relevant cluster are instantiated by that object (for the relevant purposes). I will address the issue of these qualifications shortly.

  16. I offer a more precise characterization of what I call “cliquish stability” in §5.2 of my ms.

  17. This possibility may depend on two further possibilities: (1) that the same properties can instantiate distinct mechanisms; or (2) that some mechanisms may be exogenous to the cluster (as, e.g., Boyd 1999 seems to allow).

  18. We can go further in pointing out that even adding causal mechanisms doesn’t clearly avoid accidentality: for such mechanisms might only operate on highly contingent bases. See §4.1 of my ms. for more discussion of this point.

  19. See my aforementioned ms., particularly §§5–6, for the full story.

  20. In the full account, I make use of the theoretical apparatus at work in Lange’s (2000, 2009) account of natural laws and the interesting way in which he attenuates this construction in making room for laws in the so-called special sciences (Lange 1995).

  21. The most common histological preparation is rather involved and manipulative: one first dehydrates and fixes cells with formalin, then embeds them in paraffin, slices them with a microtome, mounts the slice on a slide, staining it first with hematoxylin and then eosin (“H&E staining”); see Ross and Pawlina (2011, p. 2) for a significantly more detailed description. Other techniques involve different stains (including antibody-linked fluorescent stains) and sectioning strategies.

  22. That is not to say, of course, that such cells are not epistemically useful in vitro—doubtless, much of our understanding of the structure and function of different cells comes from careful histological work in contexts where the specific cells have lost many of their characteristic functions (being fixed, stained, frozen, metal-coated, or what have you). But the target of these studies is typically the physiological role these cells play in the their “native environments.”

  23. This is one of the reasons I am reluctant to go in the direction of Häggqvist’s “bare projectibilism.”

References

  • Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P (2008) Molecular biology of the cell, 5th edn. Garland, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Arendt D (2008) The evolution of cell types in animals: emerging principles from molecular studies. Nat Rev Genet 9:868–882

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barker MJ (2010) Specious intrinsicalism. Philos Sci 77:73–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bechtel W (2006) Discovering cell mechanisms: the creation of modern cell biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Boal D (2002) Mechanics of the cell. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonner JT (1988) The evolution of complexity by means of natural selection. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R (1988) How to be a moral realist. In: Sayre-McCord G (ed) Essays on moral realism. Cornell University Press, Ithaca

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R (1991) Realism, anti-foundationalism and the enthusiasm for natural kinds. Philos Stud 61:127–148

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd R (1999) Homeostasis, species, and higher taxa. In: Wilson RA (ed) Species: new interdisciplinary essays. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Chakravartty A (2007) A metaphysics for scientific realism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chen S-Y, Wang Y, Telen MJ, Chi J-T (2008) The genomic analysis of erythrocyte microRNA expression in sickle cell diseases. PLoS ONE 3(6):e2360

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Craver CF (2009) Mechanisms and natural kinds. Philos Psychol 22:575–594

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Devitt M (2008) Resurrecting biological essentialism. Philos Sci 75:344–382

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doolittle WF (1999) Phylogenetic classification and the universal tree. Science 248:2124–2128

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis B (2001) Scientific essentialism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Ereshefsky M (2010) Species. In: Zalta EN (ed) Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2010 ed.). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/species/

  • Gall JA, Alcorn D, Butkus A, Coghlan JP, Ryan GB (1986) Distribution of glomerular peripolar cells in different mammalian species. Cell Tissue Res 244:203–208

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghiselin MT (1974) A radical solution to the species problem. Syst Zool 23:536–544

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert SF (2000) Developmental biology, 6th edn. Sinauer, Sunderland

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert SF, Epel D (2008) Ecological developmental biology: integrating epigenetics, medicine, and evolution. Sinauer, Sunderland

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths PE (1997) What emotions really are: the problem of psychological categories. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths PE (1999) Squaring the circle: natural kinds with historical essences. In: Wilson RA (ed) Species: new interdisciplinary essays. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Hacking I (2007) Natural kinds: rosy dawn, scholastic twilight. In: O’Hear A (ed) Philosophy of science. Royal Institute of Philosopy Supplement: 61. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 203–239

    Google Scholar 

  • Häggqvist S (2005) Kinds, projectibility and explanation. Croatian J Philos 5:71–87

    Google Scholar 

  • Hull DL (1978) A matter of individuality. Philos Sci 45:335–360

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hull DL (1998) A clash of paradigms or the sound of one hand clapping. Biol Philos 13:587–595

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knowles MA (2005) Oncogenes. In: Knowles MA, Selby PJ (eds) Introduction to the cellular and molecular biology of cancer. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Lange M (1995) Are there natural laws concerning particular biological species. J Philos 92:430–451

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lange M (2000) Natural laws in scientific practice. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Lange M (2009) Laws and lawmakers. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • LaPorte J (2004) Natural kinds and conceptual change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipton P (1996) Review of H. Kornblith, Inductive Inference and its Natural Ground. Res 56:492–494

    Google Scholar 

  • Machamer P, Darden L, Craver CF (2000) Thinking about mechanisms. Philos Sci 67:1–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacLean N, Hall BK (1987) Cell commitment and differentiation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Millikan RG (2000) On clear and confused ideas. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mumford S (2005) Kinds, essences, powers. Ratio 18:420–436

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Okasha S (2002) Darwinian metaphysics: species and the question of essentialism. Synthese 131:191–213

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Malley MA, Martin W, Dupré J (2010) The tree of life: introduction to an evolutionary debate. Biol Philos 25:441–453

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Putnam H (1975) Is semantics possible? In: Putnam H (ed) Mind, language and reality: philosophical papers, vol 2. Cambridge University Press

  • Ross MH, Pawlina W (2011) Histology: a text and atlas, 6th edn. Wolters Kluwer, Philadelphia

    Google Scholar 

  • Slater MH (2005) Monism on the one hand, pluralism on the other. Philos Sci 72:22–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Slater MH (manuscript) Natural kindness

  • Tosh D, Horb ME (2009) How cells change their phenotype. In: Lanza R (ed) Essentials of stem cell biology, 2nd edn. Academic Press, San Diego

    Google Scholar 

  • Valentine JW (2003) Cell types, numbers, and body plan complexity. In: Hall BK, Olson WM (eds) Keywords and concepts in evolutionary developmental biology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Vickaryous MK, Hall BK (2006) Human cell type diversity, evolution, development, and classification with special reference to cells derived from the neural crest. Biol Rev 81(3):1–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilkerson TE (1995) Natural kinds. Ashgate, Brookfield

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson RA (1999) Realism, essence, and kind: resuscitating species essentialism? In: Wilson RA (ed) Species: new interdisciplinary essays. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 187–207

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson RA (2005) Genes and the agents of life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson RA, Barker MJ, Brigandt I (2007) When traditional essentialism fails: biological natural kinds. Philos Top 35(1/2):189–215

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Ancestors of this paper were presented at the meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB) in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Granada-KLI Workshop on Natural Kinds in Granada, Spain in 2011. I thank the organizers of my session at ISHPSSB (Andrew Reynolds and Hannah Landecker) and the organizers of the Granada Workshop (Thomas Reydon and Miles MacLeod) for the opportunity to present in those fora. I am also very grateful to Ronald Amundson, Jessica Bolker, Werner Callebaut, Marion Godman, Brian K. Hall, Miles MacLeod, Maureen O’Malley, Thomas Reydon, Andrew Reynolds, and two anonymous referees for their questions, comments, and suggestions; any remaining mistakes are of course my own fault. Research support for this paper was provided by a Scholar’s Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (SES-0924376), for which I am very grateful.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA

    Matthew H. Slater

Authors
  1. Matthew H. Slater
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthew H. Slater.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Slater, M.H. Cell Types as Natural Kinds. Biol Theory 7, 170–179 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0084-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0084-9

Keywords

  • Cell types
  • Homeostatic property cluster kinds
  • Natural kinds
  • Stable property cluster kinds