HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Natural History Insights
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1695173
Species Individualism
Provisionally accepted
Liang Xu1,2*
Peng Rui Lei1- 1School of Marxism, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
- 2College of Politics Science and Public Administration, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
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There has been a long-standing debate regarding the theory of "Species as Individuals (SAI)" within biological philosophy. Scholars such as Ghiselin, Hull, Mishler, and Brandon have played pivotal roles in defending this theory, demonstrating species as logical, historical, and causal entities in detail. However, the term "individual", which has become exclusive to species, is actually used in a metaphorical sense. When combined with the aggregation phenomenon and integrative nature of species, the hypothesis of SAI can be inferred. Nevertheless, the theory of "Species as Classes (SAC)" also has a strong foundation. Scholars have proposed several reconciliation frameworks to address the issue of whether species are classes or individuals, arguing that species can be both classes and individuals. In fact, SAI can account for the integration and diachrony of species, which are products of processes and processes themselves, with similarity arising from genetic processes. Consequently, SAI exhibits stronger explanatory power, encompassing the content of SAC while achieving its transcendence. This thus forms a new theoretical framework: SAI = SAC + Process/Lineage Relationship + Systematicness/Causal Integration.
Keywords: species, individual, biological individual, Individuality, natural kind
Received: 29 Aug 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu and Lei. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Liang Xu, 79036127@qq.com
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