KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

108 Antinomy of Division
"machine" can be decompounded into its parts, but it constitutes a
functional nexus: the parts have a purposive relation to the whole
for which they were determined. Aggregates do not contain such
relations. According to Leibniz anorganic bodies are not machines
that are composed of machines, but rather aggregates that are composed
of machines and aggregates. 66
Each part of matter can be thought of as a garden full of plants or as a pond
full of fish. [...] And although the earth and the air interspersed between the
plants of the garden and the water interspersed between the fish in the pond
are not themselves plants or fish, they also contain them ...
With the rejection of Leibniz's theorem of the actually infinite
dividedness of matter Kant also rejects the corresponding concept of
the organism or of the organic body. However, Kant's rejection goes
farther than the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon
demands. On the one hand according to Kant, though we have no
justification for assuming an infinite number of parts, we can
nonetheless exclude the possibility that in a finite process of dissection
(in a possible experience) we will ever encounter a part that
itself has no parts. On the other hand, however, Kant also asserts
that in the case of organic bodies we can reliably expect that a finite
process of dissection will arrive at parts that, while still divisible,
are no longer organic, i.e. no longer internally structured.
Kant considers the Leibnizian concept of organism as selfcontradictory
due to the actual infinity involved:
On the other hand, in the case of an organic body structured [gegliedert] to
infinity, the whole is already represented by this concept as partitioned and
yields to us, prior to all regress of division, an in itself determinate, yet infinite
number [Menge] of parts. This, however, is self-contradictory. This
infinite involution is regarded as a never to be completed (infinite) series
and nonetheless in the same consideration as completed. (B*554-5)
This objection naturally applies to Leibniz's theory of inorganic matter
as well, but it cannot be circumvented by transforming the actually
infinite dividedness into a potentially infinite regress of division.
In organisms, according to Kant, the regress from organic whole to
organic parts cannot be carried out to infinity (in infinitum).
To assume that in every structured (organized) whole every part is in turn
structured [gegliedert], and that in such a manner in the dissection of the
parts to infinity, new articulated parts [Kunstteile] are always to be met
with, in a word, that the whole is organized to infinity: this is quite incon-
66 Monadology §§67-68; PPL, 649.