KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Intuitive vs. Discursive 175
analysis. The explanation, the derivation of the phenomenon from
the grounds discovered, was called synthesis. Both concepts had a
double meaning in accordance with their double origin. Analysis
meant rational argumentation starting from the less general and
moving to the more general, i.e. reasoning towards general
principles, but also the physical dissection of an object into its
component parts. Synthesis was movement in the opposite direction,
from more general principles to the particular as well as the
physical composition of the object out of its parts. In the
"corpuscular or mechanical philosophy" as it was called by Robert
Boyle, both these meanings of the method could be united. There, the
more general principles were always the properties of smaller parts
or particles. The dissection into ever smaller parts led to the discovery
of ever more general principles of matter. In the atomistic version
of this method it was even assumed that one could find the
ultimate (most general) principles of nature in the properties of the
ultimate (smallest) particles of matter. The method itself equated
the search for more general grounds with the dissection into
smaller parts. The proof for the truth of the analytical universal
thus reached consisted in deriving again with necessity the initial
phenomenon (synthesis) — either in thought or in experiment. The
method itself assumed that a phenomenon is completely determined
by the properties and interactions of its parts. If the whole still
seems underdetermined by the properties of the parts discovered so
far, then the analysis must be carried farther until enough properties
of small enough parts are known, so that the synthesis can be
carried out successfully. The method determines its object, inasmuch
as it excludes the possibility that a whole that is in reality
underdetermined could ever be recognized as such by the method.
Something may well not yet have been successfully reduced, but
nothing may be irreducible in principle. The only exception is of
course a work of art (craftsmanship), which is in fact underdetermined
by material ("real") causes; it can only be explained completely
by including "ideal" causes such as the ideas and intentions
of the artist. If the grounds discovered by the analysis did not suffice
to reconstruct the initial phenomenon in the synthesis, it was
always possible to compensate for the missing determination of the
objects by appealing to the ideas and purposes of a divine artisan.
Otherwise, the non-reducible was incomprehensible within the