KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

174 Resolution of the Antinomy
tion, in order to "gain insight" into it or to "conceive" it as a product
of nature. We need this conceptual tool because, while the causal
influence of a whole upon its parts is "conceivable" in the sense of
being free of internal contradiction, we nonetheless cannot
(according to Kant) actually conceive it — at least we are unwilling
to accept as scientific any explanation that adduces this kind of
causal action. Analogously to his differentiation of mechanism as a
particular kind of causality, Kant now distinguishes (scientific)
knowledge as a particular kind of experience, which is subject to
additional determinations. Apparently, not all experience is knowledge.
To be an object of experience, a thing must be causally
determined; to be explainable by us, it must, due to our peculiarity,
also be completely determined causally by its parts.
Our second peculiarity (mechanism) thus seems to be a good
candidate for a merely psychologically anchored idolon tribus.
Kant's utterances on this score are just as psychologizing as was
the case with the original categorial peculiarity, but here there is no
connection to universally valid logical forms of judgment. Such a
psychological interpretation is however not compelling. Kant merely
postulates the mechanical peculiarity of our understanding and
makes no attempt to explain what it consist in and why it is justified.
It is only assumed to have the appropriate effects on our way of
explaining things in science. While a psychological interpretation
certainly could be defended if one wanted to, nonetheless, it is possible
to attribute an epistemological sense to this peculiarity in terms
of the historical development of science, and it is at least plausible
that this was Kant's intention, as can be seen in his allusion to the
"analytical universal."
The scientific method of the modern natural (and social)
sciences — the subject of treatises from Bacon to Kant — was generally
called the "analytic-synthetic method" (sometimes the "resolutive-compositive"
method, and in the later 18th century, simply the
"Newtonian" method). 28 It was developed in the course of the 17th
century primarily in physics and physiology and based itself on two
traditions: the logic of the Italian Renaissance and the mechanical
procedures of craftsmen. The course of research, the investigation
of the object or the pursuit of a phenomenon to its ground was called
28 On the analytic-synthetic method, cf. Freudenthal, Atom, chapt. 3 and 13; also
Molland, "Atomisation of Motion"; Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts; and Enfers,
Philosophie der Analysis, pp. 89ff.