Essentialism

Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity.[1] In early Western thought, Platonic idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In Categories, Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a substance that, as George Lakoff put it, "make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not that kind of thing".[2] The contrary view—non-essentialism—denies the need to posit such an "essence". Essentialism has been controversial from its beginning. In the Parmenides dialogue, Plato depicts Socrates questioning the notion, suggesting that if we accept the idea that every beautiful thing or just action partakes of an essence to be beautiful or just, we must also accept the "existence of separate essences for hair, mud, and dirt".[3]

Older social theories were often conceptually essentialist.[4] In biology and other natural sciences, essentialism provided the rationale for taxonomy at least until the time of Charles Darwin.[5] The role and importance of essentialism in modern biology is still a matter of debate.[6] Beliefs which posit that social identities such as race, ethnicity, nationality, or gender are essential characteristics have been central to many discriminatory or extremist ideologies.[7] For instance, psychological essentialism is correlated with racial prejudice.[8][9] Essentialist views about race have also been shown to diminish empathy when dealing with members of another racial group.[10] In medical sciences, essentialism can lead to a reified view of identities, leading to fallacious conclusions and potentially unequal treatment.[11]

## Contents

* 1 In philosophy
* 2 Examples
* 2.1 Naturalism
* 2.1.1 Human nature
* 2.2 Biological essentialism
* 2.3 Gender essentialism
* 2.4 Racial, cultural and strategic essentialism
* 2.5 Machine learning
* 3 In historiography
* 4 In psychology
* 4.1 In developmental psychology
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 6.1 Notes
* 6.2 Bibliography
* 7 Further reading
* 8 External links

## In philosophy

## Examples

### Naturalism

Dating back to the 18th century, naturalism is a form of essentialism in which social matters are explained through the logic of natural dispositions.[12] The invoked nature can be biological, ontological or theological.[13] It is opposed by antinaturalism and culturalism.[14]

#### Human nature

See also: Philosophical anthropology

In the case of Homo sapiens, the divergent conceptions of human nature may be partitioned into essentialist versus non-essentialist (or even anti-essentialist) positions.[15][16] Another established dichotomy is that of monism versus pluralism about the matter.[17]

> Monism will demand that enhancement technologies be used to create humans as close as possible to the ideal state. [...] The Nazis would have proposed the list of characteristics for admission to the SS as the universal template for enhancement technologies. Hedonistic utilitarianism is a less objectionable version of monism, according to which the best human life is one that contains as much pleasure and as little suffering as possible – but like Nazism, it leaves no room for meaningful choice about enhancement.

### Biological essentialism

Before evolution was developed as a scientific theory, the essentialist view of biology posited that all species are unchanging throughout time. The historian Mary P. Winsor has argued that biologists such as Louis Agassiz in the 19th century believed that taxa such as species and genus were fixed, reflecting the mind of the creator.[18] Some religious opponents of evolution continue to maintain this view of biology.

Work by historians of systematic biology in the 21st century has cast doubt upon this view of pre-Darwinian thinkers. Winsor, Ron Amundson and Staffan Müller-Wille have each argued that in fact the usual suspects (such as Linnaeus and the Ideal Morphologists) were very far from being essentialists, and that the so-called "essentialism story" (or "myth") in biology is a result of conflating the views expressed and biological examples used by philosophers going back to Aristotle and continuing through to John Stuart Mill and William Whewell in the immediately pre-Darwinian period, with the way that biologists used such terms as species.[19][20][21]

Anti-essentialists contend that an essentialist typological categorization has been rendered obsolete and untenable by evolutionary theory for several reasons.[22][23] First, they argue that biological species are dynamic entities, emerging and disappearing as distinct populations are molded by natural selection. This view contrasts with the static essences that essentialists say characterize natural categories. Second, the opponents of essentialism argue that our current understanding of biological species emphasizes genealogical relationships rather than intrinsic traits. Lastly, non-essentialists assert that every organism has a mutational load, and the variability and diversity within species contradict the notion of fixed biological natures.

### Gender essentialism

Main article: Social:Gender essentialism

In feminist theory and gender studies, gender essentialism is the attribution of fixed essences to men and women—this idea that men and women are fundamentally different continues to be a matter of contention.[24][25] Gay/lesbian rights advocate Diana Fuss wrote: "Essentialism is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the 'whatness' of a given entity."[26] Women's essence is assumed to be universal and is generally identified with those characteristics viewed as being specifically feminine.[27] These ideas of femininity are usually biologized and are often preoccupied with psychological characteristics, such as nurturance, empathy, support, and non-competitiveness, etc. Feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz states in her 1995 publication Space, time and perversion: essays on the politics of bodies that essentialism "entails the belief that those characteristics defined as women's essence are shared in common by all women at all times. It implies a limit of the variations and possibilities of change—it is not possible for a subject to act in a manner contrary to her essence. Her essence underlies all the apparent variations differentiating women from each other. Essentialism thus refers to the existence of fixed characteristic, given attributes, and ahistorical functions that limit the possibilities of change and thus of social reorganization."[27]

Gender essentialism is pervasive in popular culture, as illustrated by the #1 New York Times best seller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,[28] but this essentialism is routinely critiqued in introductory women's studies textbooks such as Women: Images & Realities.[25] Starting in the 1980s, some feminist writers have put forward essentialist theories about gender and science. Evelyn Fox Keller,[29] Sandra Harding, [30] and Nancy Tuana [31] argued that the modern scientific enterprise is inherently patriarchal and incompatible with women's nature. Other feminist scholars, such as Ann Hibner Koblitz,[32] Lenore Blum,[33] Mary Gray,[34] Mary Beth Ruskai,[35] and Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram[36] have criticized those theories for ignoring the diverse nature of scientific research and the tremendous variation in women's experiences in different cultures and historical periods.

### Racial, cultural and strategic essentialism

Main articles: Social:Race (human categorization) and Strategic essentialism

Cultural and racial essentialism is the view that fundamental biological or physical characteristics of human "races" produce personality, heritage, cognitive abilities, or 'natural talents' that are shared by all members of a racial group.[37][38] In the early 20th century, many anthropologists taught this theory – that race was an entirely biological phenomenon and that this was core to a person's behavior and identity.[39] This, coupled with a belief that linguistic, cultural, and social groups fundamentally existed along racial lines, formed the basis of what is now called scientific racism.[40] After the Nazi eugenics program, along with the rise of anti-colonial movements, racial essentialism lost widespread popularity.[41] New studies of culture and the fledgling field of population genetics undermined the scientific standing of racial essentialism, leading race anthropologists to revise their conclusions about the sources of phenotypic variation.[39] A significant number of modern anthropologists and biologists in the West came to view race as an invalid genetic or biological designation.[42]

Historically, beliefs which posit that social identities such as ethnicity, nationality or gender determine a person's essential characteristics have in many cases been shown to have destructive or harmful results. It has been argued by some that essentialist thinking lies at the core of many simplistic, discriminatory or extremist ideologies.[43] Psychological essentialism is also correlated with racial prejudice.[44][45] In medical sciences, essentialism can lead to an over-emphasis on the role of identities—for example assuming that differences in hypertension in African-American populations are due to racial differences rather than social causes—leading to fallacious conclusions and potentially unequal treatment.[46] Older social theories were often conceptually essentialist.[47]

Strategic essentialism, a major concept in postcolonial theory, was introduced in the 1980s by the Indian literary critic and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.[48] It refers to a political tactic in which minority groups, nationalities, or ethnic groups mobilize on the basis of shared gendered, cultural, or political identity. While strong differences may exist between members of these groups, and among themselves they engage in continuous debates, it is sometimes advantageous for them to temporarily "essentialize" themselves, despite it being based on erroneous logic,[49] and to bring forward their group identity in a simplified way to achieve certain goals, such as equal rights or antiglobalization.[50]

### Machine learning

Pelillo argues that traditional machine learning techniques often align with an essentialist paradigm by relying on features \- properties assumed to be essential for classification tasks. For instance, pattern recognition, which attempts to extract essential attributes from data, is described as inherently essentialist since it presupposes that objects have stable, identifiable essences that define their categories. This perspective extends to similarity-based approaches, which use prototype theory to establish relationships within data by grouping instances around central prototypes that exhibit the "essence" of a category.[51]

Expanding on this, Pelillo and Scantamburlo highlight that certain machine-learning scenarios, such as when data is highly dimensional or features are poorly defined, challenge the essentialist framework. They advocate for alternative paradigms that consider relational and contextual information instead of isolated feature analysis. This relational focus aligns with anti-essentialist stances, which view categories as dynamic and context-dependent rather than fixed.[52]

## In historiography

Essentialism in history as a field of study entails discerning and listing essential cultural characteristics of a particular nation or culture, in the belief that a people or culture can be understood in this way. Sometimes such essentialism leads to claims of a praiseworthy national or cultural identity, or to its opposite, the condemnation of a culture based on presumed essential characteristics. Herodotus, for example, claims that Egyptian culture is essentially feminized and possesses a "softness" which has made Egypt easy to conquer.[53] To what extent Herodotus was an essentialist is a matter of debate; he is also credited with not essentializing the concept of the Athenian identity,[54] or differences between the Greeks and the Persians that are the subject of his Histories.[55]

Essentialism had been operative in colonialism, as well as in critiques of colonialism. Post-colonial theorists, such as Edward Said, insisted that essentialism was the "defining mode" of "Western" historiography and ethnography until the nineteenth century and even after, according to Touraj Atabaki, manifesting itself in the historiography of the Middle East and Central Asia as Eurocentrism, over-generalization, and reductionism.[56] Into the 21st century, most historians, social scientists, and humanists reject methodologies associated with essentialism,[57][58] although some have argued that certain varieties of essentialism may be useful or even necessary.[57][59] Karl Popper splits the ambiguous term realism into essentialism and realism. He uses essentialism whenever he means the opposite of nominalism, and realism only as opposed to idealism. Popper himself is a realist as opposed to an idealist, but a methodological nominalist as opposed to an essentialist. For example, statements like "a puppy is a young dog" should be read from right to left as an answer to "What shall we call a young dog", never from left to right as an answer to "What is a puppy?"[60]

## In psychology

Paul Bloom attempts to explain why people will pay more in an auction for the clothing of celebrities if the clothing is unwashed. He believes the answer to this and many other questions is that people cannot help but think of objects as containing a sort of "essence" that can be influenced.[61]

There is a difference between metaphysical essentialism and psychological essentialism, the latter referring not to an actual claim about the world but a claim about a way of representing entities in cognition.[62][63] Influential in this area is Susan Gelman, who has outlined many domains in which children and adults construe classes of entities, particularly biological entities, in essentialist terms—i.e., as if they had an immutable underlying essence which can be used to predict unobserved similarities between members of that class.[64][65] This causal relationship is unidirectional; an observable feature of an entity does not define the underlying essence.[66]

### In developmental psychology

Essentialism has emerged as an important concept in psychology, particularly developmental psychology.[64][67] In 1991, Kathryn Kremer and Susan Gelman studied the extent to which children from four–seven years old demonstrate essentialism. Children believed that underlying essences predicted observable behaviours. Children were able to describe living objects' behaviour as self-perpetuated and non-living objects' behavior as a result of an adult influencing the object. Understanding the underlying causal mechanism for behaviour suggests essentialist thinking.[68] Younger children were unable to identify causal mechanisms of behaviour whereas older children were able to. This suggests that essentialism is rooted in cognitive development. It can be argued that there is a shift in the way that children represent entities, from not understanding the causal mechanism of the underlying essence to showing sufficient understanding.[69]

There are four key criteria that constitute essentialist thinking. The first facet is the aforementioned individual causal mechanisms.[70] The second is innate potential: the assumption that an object will fulfill its predetermined course of development.[71] According to this criterion, essences predict developments in entities that will occur throughout its lifespan. The third is immutability.[72] Despite altering the superficial appearance of an object it does not remove its essence. Observable changes in features of an entity are not salient enough to alter its essential characteristics. The fourth is inductive potential.[73] This suggests that entities may share common features but are essentially different; however similar two beings may be, their characteristics will be at most analogous, differing most importantly in essences. The implications of psychological essentialism are numerous. Prejudiced individuals have been found to endorse exceptionally essential ways of thinking, suggesting that essentialism may perpetuate exclusion among social groups.[74] For example, essentialism of nationality has been linked to anti-immigration attitudes.[75] In multiple studies in India and the United States, it was shown that in lay view a person's nationality is considerably fixed at birth, even if that person is adopted and raised by a family of another nationality at day one and never told about their origin.[76] This may be due to an over-extension of an essential-biological mode of thinking stemming from cognitive development.[77] Paul Bloom of Yale University has stated that "one of the most exciting ideas in cognitive science is the theory that people have a default assumption that things, people and events have invisible essences that make them what they are. Experimental psychologists have argued that essentialism underlies our understanding of the physical and social worlds, and developmental and cross-cultural psychologists have proposed that it is instinctive and universal. We are natural-born essentialists."[78] Scholars suggest that the categorical nature of essentialist thinking predicts the use of stereotypes and can be targeted in the application of stereotype prevention.[79]

## See also

* Biological determinism
* Determinism
* Educational essentialism
* Moral panic
* Nature vs. nurture
* Mereological essentialism
* Medium essentialism
* National essentialism (Japan)
* Non-essentialism
* Pleasure
* Poststructuralism
* Primordialism
* Social constructionism
* Scientific essentialism
* Structuralism
* Traditionalist School
* Vitalism

* Political acceptation: Identity politics, Strategic essentialism, Ethnic nationalism
* Brian David Ellis (New essentialism)
* Greg McKeown (author) (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)

## References

### Notes

1. ↑ Cartwright, Richard L. (1968). "Some Remarks on Essentialism". The Journal of Philosophy 65 (20): 615–626. doi:10.2307/2024315.
2. ↑ Janicki (2003), p. 274
3. ↑ "Plato's Parmenides". Stanford University. 30 July 2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-parmenides/.
4. ↑ Kurzwelly, J.; Rapport, N.; Spiegel, A. D. (2020). "Encountering, explaining and refuting essentialism". Anthropology Southern Africa 43 (2): 65–81. doi:10.1080/23323256.2020.1780141.
5. ↑ Ereshefsky (2007), p. 8
6. ↑ Hull (2007)
7. ↑ Kurzwelly, J.; Fernana, H.; Ngum, M. E. (2020). "The allure of essentialism and extremist ideologies". Anthropology Southern Africa 43 (2): 107–118. doi:10.1080/23323256.2020.1759435.
8. ↑ Chen, Jacqueline M.; Ratliff, Kate A. (June 2018). "Psychological Essentialism Predicts Intergroup Bias". Social Cognition 36 (3): 301–323. doi:10.1521/soco.2018.36.3.301. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325508855.
9. ↑ Mandalaywala, Tara M.; Amodio, David M.; Rhodes, Marjorie (19 June 2017). "Essentialism Promotes Racial Prejudice by Increasing Endorsement of Social Hierarchies". Social Psychological and Personality Science 19 (4): 461–469. doi:10.1177/1948550617707020. PMID 33163145.
10. ↑ Tsai, Jennifer (2022). "How Should Educators and Publishers Eliminate Racial Essentialism?". American Medical Association Journal of Ethics 24 (3). https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-should-educators-and-publishers-eliminate-racial-essentialism/2022-03.
11. ↑ Duster, Troy (2005). "Race and Reification in Science". Science 307 (5712): 1050–1051. doi:10.1126/science.1110303. PMID 15718453.
12. ↑ Guillaumin, Colette (1996), Adkins, Lisa, ed., "The Practice of Power and Belief in Nature", Sex In Question (Taylor & Francis): pp. 81–118, doi:10.4324/9780203646250-10, ISBN 978-0-203-64625-0, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203646250-10/practice-power-belief-nature-lisa-adkins-diana-leonard?context=ubx&refId=784d9cbd-9840-4f8d-a64c-cf718a54a17d
13. ↑ Grosz, Elizabeth (2013-05-20). "Conclusion". in Gunew, Sneja (in en). Feminist Knowledge (RLE Feminist Theory): Critique and Construct (0 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203094037. ISBN 978-0-203-09403-7. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781136204432.
14. ↑ Hałas, Elżbieta (2010). Towards the world culture society: Florian Znaniecki's culturalism. Studies in sociology: symbols, theory and society. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-631-59946-4. OCLC 503075283. https://www.worldcat.org/title/503075283.
15. ↑ Pojman, Louis (2006). Who are we? Theories of human nature. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
16. ↑ Kronfeldner, Maria; Roughley, Neil; Töpfer, Georg (2014) "Recent work on human nature: beyond traditional essences." Philos Compass 9:642–652
17. ↑ Agar, Nicholas (2004). Liberal Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement. Wiley-Blackwell. , p 41
18. ↑ Bowler, Peter J. (1989). Evolution. The History of an Idea. University of California Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-0-520-06386-0. https://archive.org/details/evolutionhistory0000bowl/page/128.
19. ↑ Amundson, R. (2005) The changing rule of the embryo in evolutionary biology: structure and synthesis, New York, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80699-2
20. ↑ Müller-Wille, Staffan (2007). "Collection and collation: theory and practice of Linnaean botany". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (3): 541–562. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2007.06.010. PMID 17893064.
21. ↑ Winsor, M. P. (2003). "Non-essentialist methods in pre-Darwinian taxonomy". Biology & Philosophy 18 (3): 387–400. doi:10.1023/A:1024139523966.
22. ↑ Sober, Elliott (1980). "Evolution, population thinking, and essentialism." Philos Sci 47:350–383
23. ↑ Okasha S (2002). "Darwinian metaphysics: species and the question of essentialism." Synthese 131:191–213
24. ↑ Fausto-Sterling, Anne (1992). Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465047925.
25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Suzanne Kelly, Gowri Parameswaran, and Nancy Schniedewind, Women: Images & Realities: A Multicultural Anthology, 5th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2011.
26. ↑ Fuss (2013), p. xi
27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Grosz, Elizabeth (1995). Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415911375. https://books.google.com/books?id=Htf7y-rcVFwC. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
28. ↑ John Gray, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, HarperCollins, 1995.
29. ↑ Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science, Yale University Press, 1985.
30. ↑ Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, Cornell University Press, 1986.
31. ↑ Nancy Tuana, The Less Noble Sex, Indiana University Press, 1993.
32. ↑ Ann Hibner Koblitz, "A historian looks at gender and science," International Journal of Science Education, vol. 9 (1987), pp. 399–407.
33. ↑ Lenore Blum, "AWM's first twenty years: The presidents' perspectives," in Bettye Anne Case and Anne M. Leggett, eds.,  Women in Mathematics, Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 94–95.
34. ↑ Mary Gray, "Gender and mathematics: Mythology and Misogyny," in Gila Hanna, ed., Towards Gender Equity in Mathematics Education: An ICMI Study, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.
35. ↑ Mary Beth Ruskai, "Why women are discouraged from becoming scientists," The Scientist, March 1990.
36. ↑ Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, "Introduction," Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789–1979, Rutgers University Press, 1987.
37. ↑ Soylu Yalcinkaya, Nur; Estrada-Villalta, Sara; Adams, Glenn (2017-05-30). "The (Biological or Cultural) Essence of Essentialism: Implications for Policy Support among Dominant and Subordinated Groups". Frontiers in Psychology (Frontiers Media SA) 8: 900. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00900. ISSN 1664-1078. PMID 28611723. "Whereas, endorsement of biological essentialism may have similarly negative implications for social justice policies across racial categories, we investigated the hypothesis that endorsement of cultural essentialism would have different implications across racial categories. In Studies 1a and 1b, we assessed the properties of a cultural essentialism measure we developed...".
38. ↑ Stubblefield, Anna (1995). "Racial Identity and Non-Essentialism About Race". Social Theory and Practice (Florida State University Department of Philosophy) 21 (3): 341–368. doi:10.5840/soctheorpract19952131. ISSN 0037-802X. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23557192. Retrieved 2023-07-22. "Essentialist conceptions of race hold that the characteristics of physical appearance referred to by racial terms are indicative of more profound characteristics (whether positively or negatively construed) of personality, inclinations, `culture,' heritage, cognitive abilities, or `natural talents' that are taken to be shared by all members of a racially defined group.".
39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 Cravens 2010
40. ↑ Currell & Cogdell 2006
41. ↑ "The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race". Population and Development Review 30 (3): 385–415. 2004. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2004.00021.x. ISSN 1728-4457.
42. ↑ See:
* Cravens 2010
* Angier 2000
* Amundson 2005
* Reardon 2005
43. ↑ Kurzwelly, J.; Fernana, H.; Ngum, M. E. (2020). "The allure of essentialism and extremist ideologies". Anthropology Southern Africa 43 (2): 107–118. doi:10.1080/23323256.2020.1759435.
44. ↑ Chen, Jacqueline M.; Ratliff, Kate A. (June 2018). "Psychological Essentialism Predicts Intergroup Bias". Social Cognition 36 (3): 301–323. doi:10.1521/soco.2018.36.3.301. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325508855.
45. ↑ Mandalaywala, Tara M.; Amodio, David M.; Rhodes, Marjorie (19 June 2017). "Essentialism Promotes Racial Prejudice by Increasing Endorsement of Social Hierarchies". Social Psychological and Personality Science 19 (4): 461–469. doi:10.1177/1948550617707020. PMID 33163145.
46. ↑ Duster, Troy (2005). "Race and Reification in Science". Science 307 (5712): 1050–1051. doi:10.1126/science.1110303. PMID 15718453.
47. ↑ Kurzwelly, J.; Rapport, N.; Spiegel, A. D. (2020). "Encountering, explaining and refuting essentialism". Anthropology Southern Africa 43 (2): 65–81. doi:10.1080/23323256.2020.1780141.
48. ↑ G. Ritze and J.M. Ryan, ed (2010). The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology. p. 193.
49. ↑ Kurzwelly, J.; Rapport, N.; Spiegel, A. D. (2020). "Encountering, explaining and refuting essentialism". Anthropology Southern Africa 43 (2): 65–81. doi:10.1080/23323256.2020.1780141.
50. ↑ B. Ashcroft (1998). Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. Psychology Press. pp. 159–60. ISBN 9780415153041. https://archive.org/details/keyconceptsinpos0000ashc.
51. ↑ Pelillo, M. (2013). "Introduction: The SIMBAD Project". in M. Pelillo. Similarity-Based Pattern Analysis and Recognition. Advances in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. pp. 1–10. doi:10.1007/978-1-4471-5628-4_1. ISBN 978-1-4471-5627-7.
52. ↑ Pelillo, M.; Scantamburlo, T. (2013). "How Mature Is the Field of Machine Learning?". AI*IA 2013: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 8249. pp. 121–132. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-03524-6_11. ISBN 978-3-319-03523-9.
53. ↑ DeLapp 177.
54. ↑ Lape 149-52.
55. ↑ Gruen 39.
56. ↑ Atabaki 6-7.
57. ↑ 57.0 57.1 Phillips, Anne (1 March 2011). "What's wrong with essentialism?". Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 11 (1): 47–60. doi:10.1080/1600910X.2010.9672755. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1600910X.2010.9672755.
58. ↑ Cody, Lisa Forman (1 December 2015). "Essentialism in Context". Perspectives on History. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2015/essentialism-in-context.
59. ↑ Sayer, Andrew (1 August 1997). "Essentialism, Social Constructionism, and beyond". The Sociological Review 45 (3): 453–487. doi:10.1111/1467-954X.00073. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-954X.00073?journalCode=sora.
60. ↑ The Open Society and its Enemies, passim.
61. ↑ Bloom, Paul (July 2011). "The Origins of Pleasure (TED talk)". https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_bloom_the_origins_of_pleasure.
62. ↑ Medin, D. L. (1989). "Concepts and conceptual structure". American Psychologist 44 (12): 1469–1481. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.44.12.1469. PMID 2690699.
63. ↑ Neufeld, E. (2022). "Psychological Essentialism and the Structure of Concepts". Philosophy Compass 17 (5). doi:10.1111/phc3.12823.
64. ↑ 64.0 64.1 Gelman, Susan A. (2009). The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-515406-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=wuGxpfRrv9EC.
65. ↑ Toosi, N. R.; Ambady, N. (2011). "Ratings of essentialism for eight religious identities". International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 21 (1): 17–29. doi:10.1080/10508619.2011.532441. PMID 21572550.
66. ↑ Dar-Nimrod, I.; Heine, S. J. (2011). "Genetic essentialism: On the deceptive determinism of DNA". Psychological Bulletin 137 (5): 800–818. doi:10.1037/a0021860. PMID 21142350.
67. ↑ Gelman, S. A.; Kremer, K. E. (1991). "Understanding natural causes: Children's explanations of how objects and their properties originate". Child Development 62 (2): 396–414. doi:10.2307/1131012. PMID 2055130.
68. ↑ Rangel, U.; Keller, J. (2011). "Essentialism goes social: Belief in social determinism as a component of psychological essentialism". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100 (6): 1056–1078. doi:10.1037/a0022401. PMID 21319911.
69. ↑ Demoulin, Stéphanie; Leyens, Jacques-Philippe; Yzerbyt, Vincent (2006). "Lay Theories of Essentialism". Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 9 (1): 25–42. doi:10.1177/1368430206059856.
70. ↑ del Río, María Francisca; Strasser, Katherine (November 2011). "Chilean children's essentialist reasoning about poverty" (in en). British Journal of Developmental Psychology 29 (4): 722–743. doi:10.1348/2044-835X.002005. ISSN 0261-510X. PMID 21199501. https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/2044-835X.002005.
71. ↑ Kanovsky, M. (2007). "Essentialism and folksociology: Ethnicity again". Journal of Cognition and Culture 7 (3–4): 241–281. doi:10.1163/156853707X208503.
72. ↑ Holtz, P.; Wagner, W. (2009). "Essentialism and attribution of monstrosity in racist discourse: Right-wing internet postings about Africans and jews". Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 19 (6): 411–425. doi:10.1002/casp.1005.
73. ↑ Birnbaum, D.; Deeb, I.; Segall, G.; Ben-Eliyahu, A.; Diesendruck, G. (2010). "The development of social essentialism: The case of Israeli children's inferences about Jews and Arabs". Child Development 81 (3): 757–777. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01432.x. PMID 20573103.
74. ↑ Morton, T. A.; Hornsey, M. J.; Postmes, T. (2009). "Shifting ground: The variable use of essentialism in contexts of inclusion and exclusion". British Journal of Social Psychology 48 (1): 35–59. doi:10.1348/014466607X270287. PMID 18171502.
75. ↑ Rad, M.S.; Ginges, J. (2018). "Folk theories of nationality and anti-immigrant attitudes". Nature Human Behaviour 2 (5): 343–347. doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0334-3. PMID 30962601. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0334-3.
76. ↑ Rad, Mostafa Salari; Martingano, Alison Jane; Ginges, Jeremy (2018-11-06). "Toward a psychology of Homo sapiens : Making psychological science more representative of the human population" (in en). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (45): 11401–11405. doi:10.1073/pnas.1721165115. ISSN 0027-8424. PMID 30397114. Bibcode: 2018PNAS..11511401R.
77. ↑ Medin, D.L.; Atran, S. (2004). "The native mind: biological categorization and reasoning in development and across cultures". Psychological Review 111 (4): 960–983. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.111.4.960. PMID 15482069. https://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000565/file/ijn_00000565_00.pdf.
78. ↑ Bloom, Paul (2010). "Why we like what we like". Observer (Association for Psychological Science) 23 (8). http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2010/october-10/why-we-like-what-we-like.html.
79. ↑ Bastian, B.; Haslam, N. (2006). "Psychological essentialism and stereotype endorsement". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 42 (2): 228–235. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2005.03.003.

### Bibliography

* Atabaki, Touraj (2003). Beyond Essentialism: Who Writes Whose Past in the Middle East and Central Asia? Inaugural lecture, 13 December 2002. Amsterdam. http://atabaki.nl/upload/Beyond Essentialism.pdf. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
* DeLapp, Kevin (2011). "Ancient Egypt as Europe's 'Intimate Stranger'". in Helen Vella Bonavita. Negotiating Identities: Constructed Selves and Others. Rodopi. pp. 171–192. ISBN 978-9401206877. https://books.google.com/books?id=3YwQflMm0B4C&pg=PA177. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
* Ereshefsky, Marc (2007). "Philosophy of Biological Classification". in Roberts, Keith. Handbook of Plant Science. 2. Wiley. pp. 8–10. ISBN 978-0470057230. https://books.google.com/books?id=ucilIjrex5cC&pg=PA8.
* Fuss, Diana (2013). Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference. Routledge. ISBN 978-1135201128. https://books.google.com/books?id=euX6NWoYpXgC&pg=PP1.
* Gruen, Erich (2012). Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. Princeton UP. ISBN 978-0691156354. https://books.google.com/books?id=q4O8DrKO4B4C&pg=PA39.
* Hull, David (2007). "Essentialism in Taxonomy: Four Decades Later". in Wisseman, Volker. Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology. 11 (2006). Universitätsverlag Göttingen. pp. 47–58. ISBN 978-3938616857. https://books.google.com/books?id=TJso832AGXEC&pg=PA47.
* Janicki, Karol (2003). "The Ever-Stifling Essentialism: Language and Conflict in Poland (1991–1993)". in Hubert Cuyckens. Motivation in Language: Studies in Honor of Günter Radden. et al. John Benjamins. pp. 274–96. ISBN 978-1588114266. https://books.google.com/books?id=qzhJ3KpLpQUC&pg=PA275.
* Kurzwelly, J.; Rapport, N.; Spiegel, A. D. (2020). "Encountering, explaining and refuting essentialism". Anthropology Southern Africa 43 (2): 65–81. doi:10.1080/23323256.2020.1780141.
* Lape, Susan (2010). Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy. Cambridge UP. ISBN 978-1139484121. https://books.google.com/books?id=ruS5-uu7k4cC&pg=PA151.
* Regnier, Denis (2015). "Clean people, unclean people: the essentialisation of 'slaves' among the southern Betsileo of Madagascar". Social Anthropology 23 (2): 152–168. doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12107. https://philpapers.org/rec/REGCPU.
* Wittig, Monique (1992). "The Category of Sex". The Straight Mind: And Other Essays. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807079171. https://books.google.com/books?id=TYfUqBeX9ZUC.
* Cravens, Hamilton (2010). "What's New in Science and Race since the 1930s?: Anthropologists and Racial Essentialism". The Historian 72 (2): 299–320. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.2010.00263.x. PMID 20726131. https://archive.org/details/sim_historian_summer-2010_72_2/page/299.
* Currell, Susan; Cogdell, Christina (2006). Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in The 1930s. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. p. 203. ISBN 082141691X.
* Angier, Natalie (22 August 2000). "Do Races Differ? Not Really, DNA Shows". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/082200sci-genetics-race.html.
* Amundson, Ron (2005). "Disability, Ideology, and Quality of Life: A Bias in Biomedical Ethics". Quality of life and human difference: genetic testing, health care, and disability. Cambridge University Press. pp. 101–124. ISBN 978-0521832014. https://books.google.com/books?id=9PvWVZIzoTIC&pg=PA107.
* Reardon, Jenny (2005). "Post World-War II Expert Discourses on Race". Race to the finish: identity and governance in an age of genomics. Princeton University Press. pp. 17ff. ISBN 978-0691118574. https://books.google.com/books?id=HMHiuOJIQcYC&pg=PA17.

## Further reading

* Runes, Dagobert D. (1972) Dictionary of Philosophy (Littlefield, Adams & Co.). See for instance the articles on "Essence", p. 97; "Quiddity", p. 262; "Form", p. 110; "Hylomorphism", p. 133; "Individuation", p. 145; and "Matter", p. 191.
* Barrett, H. C. (2001). On the functional origins of essentialism. Mind and Society, 3, Vol. 2, 1–30.
* Sayer, Andrew (August 1997) "Essentialism, Social Constructionism, and Beyond", Sociological Review 45 : 456.
* Oderberg, David S. (2007) Real Essentialism New York, Routledge.
* Cattarini, L.S. (2018) Beyond Sartre and Sterility (Montreal), argues for priority of essence/conscience over existence/consciousness

## External links

* Essentialism at PhilPapers
* Essentialism at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
* Cliff, Brian (Spring 1996). "Essentialism". Emory University. http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Essentialism.html.

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