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"Natural kind" is an intellectual grouping, or categorizing of things, in a manner that is reflective of the actual world and not just human interests. John Dewey held a view that belief in unconditional natural kinds is a mistake, a relic of obsolete scientific practices. Hilary Putnam rejects descriptivist approaches to natural kinds with semantic reasoning. Hasok Chang and Rasmus Winther hold the emerging view that natural kinds are useful and evolving scientific facts.

In 1938, John Dewey published Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. He there explained how modern scientists create kinds through induction and deduction, and why they have no use for natural kinds. The philosophical issue is how humans can dependably predict that unobserved examples of a kind will have the same traits as a few observed examples. The traditional answer grew out of Aristotle's assertion that humans describe things they know in two kinds of propositions. Existential kinds—known by observing traits—are stated in "generic" propositions. Conceptual kinds—known by intuitive recognition of groups of traits—are stated in "universal" propositions. His opening paragraph laid out his approach in three parts. First, it questioned the logical and scientific legitimacy of reasoning inductively by counting a few examples posting traits imputed to all members of a kind: "What tends to confirm an induction?" For Quine, induction reveals warranted kinds by repeated observation of visible similarities. Second, it assumed that color can be a characteristic trait of natural kinds, despite some logical puzzles: hypothetical colored kinds such as non black non ravens and green blue emeralds. Finally, it suggested that human psychological structure can explain the illogical success of induction: "an innate flair that we have for natural kinds. He started with the logical hypothesis that, if all ravens are black—an observable natural kind—then non black non ravens are equally a natural kind: " each [observed] black raven tends to confirm the law [universal proposition] that all ravens are black " Observing shared generic traits warrants the inductive universal prediction that future experience will confirm the sharing: "And every reasonable [universal] expectation depends on resemblance of [generic] circumstances, together with our tendency to expect similar causes to have similar effects." "The notion of a kind and the notion of similarity or resemblance seem to be variants or adaptations of a single [universal] notion. Similarity is immediately definable in terms of kind; for things are similar when they are two of a kind." Putnam explains his rejection of descriptivist and traditionalist approaches to natural kinds with semantic reasoning, and insists that natural kinds can not be thought of via descriptive processes or creating endless lists of properties. In Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment, one is asked to consider the extension of "water" when confronted with an alternate version of "water" on an imagined "Twin Earth." This "water" is composed of chemical XYZ, as opposed to H2O. However, in all other describable aspects, it is the same as Earth’s "water." Putnam argues that the mere descriptions of an object, such as "water," is insufficient in defining natural kind. There are underlying aspects, such as chemical composition, that may go unaccounted for unless experts are consulted. This information provided by experts is what Putnam argues will ultimately define natural kinds. The process of conveying core facts to communicate the essence and appropriate term of a natural kind term is shown in Putnams example of describing a lemon and a tiger. With a lemon, it is possible to communicate the stimulus meaning of what a lemon is by simply showing someone a lemon. In the case of a tiger, on the other hand, it is considerably more complicated to show someone a tiger, but a speaker can just as readily explain what a tiger is by communicating its core facts. By conveying the core facts of a tiger (e. g. big cat, four legs, orange, black stripes, etc. ), the listener can, in theory, go on to use the word "tiger" correctly and refer to its extension accurately. Her natural kinds include scientific disciplines themselves, each with its own methods of inquiry and classifications or taxonomies

Chang's contribution displayed Kendig's "natural kinding activities" or "practice turn" by reporting classifications in the mature discipline of chemistry—a field renowned for examples of timeless natural kinds: "All water is H2O;" "All gold has atomic number 79." He explicitly rejected Quine's basic assumption that natural kinds are real generic objects. "When I speak of a (natural) kind in this chapter, I am referring to a [universal] classificatory concept, rather than a collection of objects." His kinds result from humanity's continuous knowledge seeking activities called science and philosophy. "Putting these notions more unambiguously in terms of concepts rather than objects, I maintain: if we hit upon some stable and effective classificatory concepts in our inquiry, we should cherish them (calling them 'natural kinds' would be one clear way of doing so), but without presuming that we have thereby found some eternal essences. He also rejected the position taken by Bird and Tobin in our third quote above. "Alexander Bird and Emma Tobin’s succinct characterization of natural kinds is helpful here, as a foil: ‘to say that a kind is natural is to say that it corresponds to a grouping or ordering that does not depend on humans’. My view is precisely the opposite, to the extent that scientific inquiry does depend on humans." For Chang, induction creates conditionally warranted kinds by "epistemic iteration"—refining classifications developmentally to reveal how constant conjunctions of relevant traits work: "fundamental classificatory concepts become refined and corrected through our practical scientific engagement with nature. Any considerable and lasting [instrumental] success of such engagement generates confidence in the classificatory concepts used in it, and invites us to consider them as 'natural'." Among other examples, Chang reported the inductive iterative process by which chemists gradually redefined the kind "element." The original hypothesis was that anything that cannot be decomposed by fire or acids is an element. Learning that some chemical reactions are reversible led to the discovery of weight as a constant through reactions. And then it was discovered that some reactions involve definite and invariable weight ratios, refining understanding of constant traits. "Attempts to establish and explain the combining weight regularities led to the development of the chemical atomic theory by John Dalton and others. Chemical elements were later redefined in terms of atomic number (the number of protons in the nucleus)." Chang claimed his examples of classification practices in chemistry confirmed the fallacy of the traditional assumption that natural kinds exist as mind independent reality. He attributed this belief more to imagining supernatural intervention in the world, than to illogical induction. He did not consider the popular belief that innate psychological capacities enable traditional induction to work. "Much natural kind talk has been driven by an intuitive metaphysical essentialism that concerns itself with an objective [generic] order of nature whose [universal] knowledge could, ironically, only be obtained by a supernatural being. Let us renounce such an unnatural notion of natural kinds. Instead, natural kinds should be conceived as something we humans may succeed in inventing and improving through scientific practice." Rasmus Winther's Contribution to Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice gave new meaning to natural objects and qualities in the nascent discipline of Geographic Information Science (GIS). This "inter discipline" engages in discovering patterns in—and displaying spatial kinds of—data, using methods that make its results unique natural kinds. But it still creates kinds using induction to identify instrumental traits. "Collecting and collating geographical data, building geographical data bases, and engaging in spatial analysis, visualization, and map making all require organizing, typologizing, and classifying geographic space, objects, relations, and processes. I focus on the use of natural kinds , showing how practices of making and using kinds are contextual, fallible, plural, and purposive. The rich family of kinds involved in these activities are here baptized mapping kinds." He later identified sub kinds of mapping kinds as "calibrating kinds," "feature kinds," and "object kinds" of "data model types." Winther identified "inferential processes of abstraction and generalization" as methods used by GIS, and explained how they generate digital maps. He illustrated two kinds of inquiry procedures, with sub procedures to organize data. They are reminiscent of Dewey's multiple steps in modern inductive and deductive inference. Methods for transforming generic phenomena into kinds involve reducing complexity, amplifying, joining, and separating. Methods for selecting among generic kinds involves elimination, classification, and collapse of data. He argued that these methods for mapping kinds can be practiced in other disciplines, and briefly considered how they might harmonize three conflicting philosophical perspectives on natural kinds. Some philosophers believe there can be a "pluralism" of kinds and classifications. They prefer to speak of "relevant" and "interesting" kinds rather than eternal "natural" kinds. They may be called social constructivists whose kinds are human products. Chang's conclusions that natural kinds are human created and instrumentally useful would appear to put him in this group. Other philosophers, including Quine, examine the role of kinds in scientific inference. Winther does not examine Quine's commitment to traditional induction generalizing from small samples of similar objects. But he does accept Quine's willingness to call human identified kinds that work natural. "Quine holds that kinds are "functionally relevant groupings in nature" whose recognition permits our inductions to "tend to come out right." That is, kinds ground fallible inductive inferences and predictions, so essential to scientific projects including those of GIS and cartography." Finally, Winther identified a philosophical perspective seeking to reconstruct rather than reject belief in natural kinds. He placed Dewey in this group, ignoring Dewey's rejection of the traditional label in favor of "warranted assertions." "Dewey resisted the standard view of natural kinds, inherited from the Greeks Instead, Dewey presents an analysis of kinds (and classes and universals) as fallible and context specific hypotheses permitting us to address problematic situations effectively." Winther concludes that classification practices used in Geographic Information Science are able to harmonize these conflicting philosophical perspectives on natural kinds. "GIS and cartography suggest that kinds are simultaneously discovered [as pre existing structures] and constructed [as human classifications]. Geographic features, processes, and objects are of course real. Yet we must structure them in our data models and, subsequently, select and transform them in our maps. Realism and (social) constructivism are hence not exclusive in this field."