• Leontiskos
    5.5k


    Well if you look at the paper they are primarily drawing from Aristotle's zoological works, and the Metaphysics is more subsidiary:

    In part 1 of this study, these questions are addressed via an examination of aspects of Aristotle’s zoological works, specifically his use of the logical terms genos (genus) and eidos (species) in those works, and his brief discussion (in the Metaphysics) of the male-female difference in relation to species definition.From Aristotle to Contemporary Biological Classification: What Kind of Category is Sex?

    But the thesis of the paper is salutary. Sex is a cross-species or meta-species classification. It is something that subdivides species of animals, and therefore requires a level of abstraction and generality beyond zoological studies considered according to species. In a philosophical and theological sense sex has always been somewhat elusive in that way. This elusiveness of sex is therefore in some manner a metaphysical issue, given that it requires a reconceptualization of the whole in light of some common aspect. Even current day disputes between different schools of feminism could be cashed out in terms of this elusiveness, where "TERFs" will tend to emphasize sex as being more than a kind of accidental division subordinate to the animal species.

    (This is incidentally why is mistaken when he views metaphysics as merely a matter of "height," as if it were a hermetically sealed compartment at a certain "altitude" of thought. That is a very common misunderstanding.)
  • Paine
    3.1k

    That paper is narrowly focused on a particular set of issues. The Metaphysics draws sharp differences between the ease with which we can observe kinds as a grouping in a system of classification and what might be an understanding how those species came into being. The many discussions concerning the "actual" in relation to the "potential;" are problems that cut across all enquiries of the nature of beings. The methods of analysis in the biological works are attempts to apply the ideas of causality developed in the Metaphysics to figure how particular beings come into being.

    If you search the site, you will see the issue has consumed much digital ink.
  • ProtagoranSocratist
    245
    i think you and Leon are missing the point, i was just demonstrating that Metaphysics influenced taxonomy without asking anyone to read the book, i honstly don't even know what the paper is about...but it mentions aristotle's metaphysics in regards to zoology, i regret using that as an example...
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