KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

8 Theory of the Organism
will be seen that it is the concept of the organism as a self-reproducing
system that makes it meaningful to speak of an objective
purposiveness.
1.2 The Theory of the Organism in the Mid 18th Century
In this section I shall sketch some of the basic characteristics
of the theory of the organism as it developed in the 18th century. I
shall not attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of biology in
the Enlightenment but only to report some of the results of such an
analysis. Primary sources will be cited only where they are directly
quoted. A detailed analysis of the biological theories of this period
can be found in Jacques Roger's Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée
française du xviiie siècle (1959). A perceptive reflection on these
developments is provided by François Jacob's The Logic of Life. A
History of Heredity (1974). Arguments and sources for the particular
interpretation of theory development given here can be found in my
own work cited in the bibliography. 1
Around 1750 the original intergrating mechanistic theory, the
theory of preformation, could scarcely be upheld any more, although
an adequate replacement theory had not yet been found. After the
only moderately successful attempts (e.g. Buffon, Maupertuis,
Lamettrie) to revive the atomistic pangenesis theories of the 17th
century, there arose in the course of the latter 18th century a number
of theories that introduced special organic forces and justified
them by appealing to an analogy with Newtonian gravitation. These
theories are today collected under the heading of vitalism. In spite of
all differences in their explanations of the organism, preformation
and vitalism shared a strictly reductionistic ideal of explanation.
Both used reductionist methods, but both also postulated an autonomous
explanatory level for the organism. Both reduced the phenomena
of a system to the properties and interactions of the parts
but denied that those properties and interactions postulated by the
science of mechanics were sufficient for the explanation of the organism.
Both conceived of the organism as underdetermined by the
1 Cf. also Cole, Early Theories; Mendelsohn, "Philosophical Biology";
Needham, History; Roe, Matter.
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