KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Antinomy of Division 99
is divisible because it has parts; it is not asserted (or even
considered) that the parts are only differentiated from one another
by the division. As we shall see below, division is for Kant merely the
revealing or discovering of the parts of a compound; the parts do not
arise through the division; rather they are merely made objects of
experience by it.
Kant's refutation of the antithesis (proof of the thesis) argues
as follows. Since composition is a merely "accidental relation of substances,"
there must be substances out of which the bodies can be
composed. If these substances are themselves always divisible
(always have parts), then there is nowhere anything independent of
composition (no subject of this accident). This argument is quite
similar to the one that Kant had proposed in the Monadologia physica
(prop. ii, theorema) as well as to arguments by Leibniz on
simple substances in metaphysics and by Clarke on simple particles
of matter in physics. The argument is also valid, if one accepts the
implicit premises. The first such premise is mentioned by Kant in
the Monadologia physica: "Bodies consist of parts, which separated
from one another have a persistent existence"; that is, the parts are
independent of their composition to a whole body. 48 The second
premise is that we are dealing with things in themselves, i.e. that
the parts and parts of the parts are given with the whole.
The refutation of the thesis (proof of the antithesis) shares the
same presuppositions; but it points out that the extended is per definitionem
divisible and therefore must be composed of parts. Something
that is not divisible cannot be extended, and no extended body
can be compounded out of the non-extended. The application of
mathematics in science excludes the possibility of indivisible ultimate
particles.
Each refutation expresses the self-understanding of one of the
two fundamentally different interpretations of the analytic-synthetic
method of modern science. Newton interpreted it as a method of
drawing inferences from the phenomena to the properties of the
ultimate particles of matter; these properties of the ultimate particles
could not be further analyzed. Leibniz on the other hand could
not comprehend why there should be material entities to which the
method of scientific analysis no longer applied, and this method presupposes
that phenomena should be explained by their parts; the
48 Kant, Ak 1,477; W 1,522; Leibniz, "Monadology" §2, GP VI, 670; PPL, 643;
Clarke 4th letter, N.B.