The Origins Of The Concept Of Species

The Origins Of The Concept Of Species

The concept of “species” is a useful organising tool for science, not a category that exists in nature. “We really do see the patterns in the world we name species. The mistake arises in thinking that our perceptual biases somehow give us the structure of the world”. Usage comes from Athanasius Kircher, a 17C Jesuit who calculated how many kinds of animal could have fitted on to Noah’s Ark, and used the Latin word species for “kind”