KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

4 Introduction
almost exclusively concerned with the use of teleological principles
in biological explanation. Kant pursues systematically the question
of the extent to which the mechanistic mode of explanation itself
constantly forces the introduction of teleological principles into
science. Teleology, in the form of the plan of the clock-maker deity,
accompanied modern science from the beginning. The clock-work
world presupposed a clock-maker God who anticipated the world
system in thought. Those who doubted that the particles of matter in
motion would have produced precisely this particular world of their
own accord could take refuge in the teleology of the divine plan as a
supplement to mechanism that was nonetheless completely in conformity
with mechanism. Kant's 'Critique' is concerned with determining
the boundaries of the necessity and legitimacy of this kind of
teleology in biology.
Kant's 'Critique' will be reconstructed in three steps each of
which will constitute a chapter of this book: The first chapter will
present some basic problems of biological explanation in the historical
form they took in Kant's time and as Kant took them up in his
philosophy. Chapter Two analyzes Kants most important conceptual
instrument for solving such fundamental problems: the argumentational
figure of the antinomy, as developed in the Critique of Pure
Reason. The third chapter traces Kant's application of this instrument
to explicate the mechanistic concept of the organism. It will
attempt to interpret Kant's critique of biological explanation as an
intelligible and at least initially plausible theoretical structure that
1) takes up real problems of the science of the time, 2) can provide
systematically interesting insights into certain aspects of the problems
that are of more than just historical interest, and 3) is more
compatible with the text and with other major writings of Kant's
than are the available attempts at an interpretation.
In the first section of Chapter 1, I shall sketch some of the
basic outlines of the theory of the organism in the 18th century. This
is not intended merely as historical background to Kant's reflections;
rather, the point is to present the concrete problems that arose
for mechanistic biology in the attempt to explain certain aspects of
the organism and to show that Kant recognized and reflected upon
precisely these problems. In the second section I shall sketch Kant's
development from the pre-critical direct speculation about the
nature of the organism to the later reflexions on the nature of our
explanations of the organism and shall introduce some of the