Since a tradition of behaviour is not susceptible of the distinction between essence and accident), knowledge of it is unavoidably knowledge of its detail: to know only the gist is to know nothing.
On the other hand, nowhere is ‘essence’ and ‘accident’ more con-fused and intermingled than in biology, and it is certainly not true that to know gists in biology (what is more of a gist than the concepts of evolution and natural selection?) ‘is to know nothing’.
Michael Oakeshott, Political Education.
On the other hand, nowhere is ‘essence’ and ‘accident’ more con-fused and intermingled than in biology, and it is certainly not true that to know gists in biology (what is more of a gist than the concepts of evolution and natural selection?) ‘is to know nothing’.
Biology may include studying traditions of behaviour, but biology is not itself a tradition of behaviour.