Essentialism Isn't Bad for Things That Have Essences

Essentialism, the idea that everything has an essence, is not applicable to all categories. It is a mistake to treat categories like games and tables as having an essence because they don't. However, categories like gold and triangles do have essences. This means that we can have a scientific explanation for things that have homogeneous categories and support powerful inductive generalizations. But for categories that don't have these qualities, a scientific explanation is not possible.