KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

96 The Unconditioned and the Infinite Series
condition to the conditioned, there can be no temptation to jump
immediately to the unconditioned; and thus no antinomy should
result. The question, whether the world has a limit in space, leads
to a progressus in indefinitum which presumably is not said to go
on in infinitum only because the space in which the world is located
is supposed to recede merely in indefinitum.
The problem could be somewhat alleviated, by asking instead
whether the space in which the world is located is finite or infinite.
One could then say that there is a regress in the space of the world
not in the composition of matter itself. In this case we would only
have to reproach Kant with expressing himself rather unclearly.
But the question would still remain: in what sense is the system of
the world something unconditioned, if it is finite or infinite in space.
A first event, for instance, would have had no material cause that
preceded it and thus would not be conditioned by any other phenomenon;
to this extent it could be said to be unconditioned. But an
outermost shell or most comprehensive system of the universe
would not be unconditioned; rather it would be conditioned by its
own parts. At best one might maintain that the space in which it is
located is unconditioned because it is not limited and conditioned by
any space surrounding it.
This problem, too, could be disposed of, if we were to drop the
presupposition that a material system is conditioned by its parts and
to maintain that the transition from world-part to world-whole is a
regress from a conditioned to its condition, i.e. that the whole conditions
the part. 47 The interpretation of the size of the world as presenting
an antinomy seems to demand in this case that the causal
chain go from "outside" inwards, i.e. that in a good Thomistic manner
every subsystem is conditioned by the system encompassing it
and by its "place" in this system. Only in such a case can the question
of the size of the world lead to a regress. However, if the composition
of matter, the path from part to whole, were a regress, then
the division of matter would be a progress just as the division of
space is a progress. The allegedly smallest particle of matter would
47 Kant himself gives expression to this difficulty in the course of the solution to
the Fourth Antinomy, where he points out that "the mathematical regress [i.e., of
the 'mathematical' antinomies] is concerned only with the combining of parts to
form a whole or the division of a whole into parts ..."; there, we are dealing only
"with the possibility of an unconditioned whole of given parts, or with an unconditioned
part for a given whole..." (B588). However, he adduces no reason, why a
"whole of given parts" should in any sense be unconditioned.