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How natural a kind is "eukaryote?".
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2014 Jun;6(6)
Authors: Doolittle WF
Abstract
Systematics balances uneasily between realism and nominalism, uncommitted as to whether biological taxa are discoveries or inventions. If the former, they might be taken as natural kinds. I briefly review some philosophers' concepts of natural kinds and then argue that several of these apply well enough to "eukaryote." Although there are some sticky issues around genomic chimerism and when eukaryotes first appeared, if we allow for degrees in the naturalness of kinds, existing eukaryotes rank highly, higher than prokaryotes. Most biologists feel this intuitively: All I attempt to do here is provide some conceptual justification.
PMID: 24890508 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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