KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

166 Resolution of the Antinomy
a whole) to the particular, i.e., from the whole to the parts. Hence such an
understanding as well as its presentation of the whole has no contingency
in the combination of the parts in order to make a determinate form of the
whole possible. Our understanding, on the other hand, requires this contingency,
because it must start from the parts taken as bases — which are
thought of as universal — for different possible forms that are to be subsumed
under these bases as consequences. (B348-9; CJ, 291-2)
Such an "intuitive" understanding would not need teleological principles
(at least not for organisms) because it would not reduce a
whole to the properties of the parts. Since it does not explain mechanistically,
the deficiency of mechanistic explanation for the organism
would not compel it to assume teleological principles. Our understanding
takes the parts and their properties (the analytical universal)
as its point of departure; from the properties of these parts
(the general grounds) various possible combinations and compositions
to a whole result. Of the "thousands" of combinations only one
is realized, so that the whole is underdetermined by the properties of
the parts and thus seems to be accidental, just as the particular is
underdetermined by the universal. (Whether the whole is really
underdetermined by the properties of the parts, could only be known
if all the infinitely many empirical laws were known; in that case it
could be shown whether only one whole or many different wholes
could arise out of precisely these parts.)
Immediately following this, Kant gives his clearest characterization
of the peculiar constitution of our understanding:
Given the character of our understanding, [we] can regard a real whole of
nature only as the joint effect of the motive forces of the parts. (B349;
CJ, 292)
We cannot regard a "real whole" as the cause of the properties
of the parts but only as the effect of these properties. In other
words, we cannot regard a whole as a real cause; but there are also
ideal causes. Due to our reductionistic understanding we cannot
conceive the causal conditioning of the parts by the whole; or rather
we can only conceive this if the whole is an idea, i.e. when the
representation of the whole guides the production or acquisition of
the parts. In this way the idea of the whole can, as an ideal cause, be
the condition of the parts. This, however, is a case of real (technical)
purpose and presupposes a purposeful understanding (the artisan)
that has the idea of the whole and applies it to the technical product.
If we are confronted with a phenomenon in which the unthinkable
(conditioning of the parts by the whole) seems to be real, we must try