KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Regressus in infinitum 105
motion; he even asserted that two contiguous bodies are only then
different bodies, if they are in motion relative to one another; two
contiguous bodies at rest relative to one another have no boundary;
there is only the extended and motion (division). 6 4 And Bishop
Stillingfleet, with whom Locke still had to debate, saw a serious
problem with regard to the simple parts which were supposed to
have a persistent existence even when separated from one another:
namely, that no one has ever observed them separated from one
another: 65
If then none of these things which bodies are resolved into, and are
supposed to be compounded of, either have been or can be proved to exist
separate from or antecedent to those bodies which they compound, what
then becomes of all our company of atoms which are supposed by their
concourse in an infinite Space to be the origin of the world? I know not
where to find them, unless dancing with the School-men's Chimeras in a
vacuum, or in a space as empty as they infinite are, viz. some Epicurean's
brains.
Even as late as the time of Locke, the supposedly self-evident assertion
that a whole consists of what it can be divided into had to be justified,
because it was actually denied by some thinkers.
Regressus in infinitum
Although Kant's arguments in the refutation of the thesis
and antithesis of the Second Antinomy have been comparatively well
received by the commentators, his remarks in the section in which
the antinomy is resolved have driven the commentators to outrage
and sarcasm. As opposed to the resolution of the antinomy of time
where the regressus was only allowed to go in indefinitum, Kant
here maintains that while a body is not actually divided up i n
infinitum, at least the regress from whole to parts can be carried on
in infinitum. A number of seeming contradictions crop up, since
Kant appears to be saying both: the parts are given with the whole
and the parts are not given with the whole. It cannot be denied that
Kant in the last two sections of the antinomies chapter (cf. B540-42;
64 Descartes, Principia, II, §§23 and 25; III, §§45-48. (AT VIII,52-54 and 99-104).
65 Stillingfleet, Origenes Sacrae or a Rational Account of the Grounds of
Christian Faith, (1680) p. 425, quoted by McGuire, "Atoms," p. 44.