Mineral species are, at first glance, an excellent candidate for an ideal set of natural kinds somewhere beyond the periodic table. Mineralogists have a detailed set of rules and formal procedure for ratifying new species, and minerals are a less messy subject matter than biological species, psychological disorders, or even chemicals more broadly—all areas of taxonomy where the status of species as natural kinds has been disputed. After explaining how philosophers have tended to get mineralogy wrong in discussions of natural kinds, I show how minerals species don’t behave like natural kinds. They are defined on the basis of human intentionality, not merely natural distinctions. They aren’t ideal grounds for inductive inference. And they don’t form a system that divides nature along a set of equivalent joints. While this is a regrettable outcome to those of us who like the idea of science relying on natural kinds, I contend that mineralogy is doing just fine without a natural kind-based taxonomy, and may in fact be better off without one.

中文翻译：

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矿物不当行为：为什么矿物学家不处理天然种类

乍一看，矿物物种是元素周期表之外某处理想的一组自然物种的绝佳候选者。矿物学家有一套详细的规则和正式程序来批准新物种，矿物是一个比生物物种、心理障碍甚至更广泛的化学物质更简单的主题——所有分类学领域都将物种作为自然物种的地位争议。在解释了哲学家在讨论自然种类时如何倾向于将矿物学弄错之后，我展示了矿物种类如何不像自然种类那样表现。它们的定义是基于人类的意图，而不仅仅是自然的区别。它们不是归纳推理的理想基础。而且它们没有形成一个系统，沿着一组等效的关节划分自然。