Specii biologice, genuri naturale și evoluție la Platon și Aristotel
Biological Species, Natural Kinds and Evolution in Plato and Aristotle

Summary/Abstract: The ontological status of biological species is of particular interest in philosophy of biology, where ultimately translates into a realism versus nominalism dichotomy: are they real natural kinds, or mere intellectual constructs with only a mental, conceptual reality, fictions destined to help us bring some order in the extraordinary diversity of the living world? In this paper, I have tried to compare two classical answers to this question, formulated by Plato and Aristotle, the founding fathers of the essentialist and realist doctrine of biological species, according to which species are real entities, natural kinds endowed with immutable essences.

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