KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

180 Summary
acquainted with" a causal relation in which a whole acts upon the
properties of its parts, as seems to be the case in the organism. We
can only conceive such a causality of the parts by the whole if the
whole is ideal, such as the idea or representation of the object to be
produced in the mind of an artisan. We are compelled to consider
the organism as if there were an understanding that had the representation
of the whole and directed the mechanical laws according
to this representation in order to produce the organism.
We have seen that this particular relation of part and whole is
incorporated into the modern ideal of scientific explanation conceived
as the ideal production of the state of affairs to be explained.
This presupposition of the analytic-synthetic method of science is
characterized by Kant in somewhat psychologizing terminology as a
peculiar constitution of our understanding. However, insofar as he
resists the temptation to make this peculiarity binding for nature,
he succeeds in grasping the teleology that was in fact used in the
explanation of the organism as the result of the limitations of a particular
method. Kant affirms in the end the exclusive legitimacy of
mechanistic-reductionistic explanations, but he demands that any
explanation of the organism recognize and deal with two phenomena:
the underdetermination of the whole by the independent properties
of the parts and the causal influence of the whole on its parts.
Furthermore, it has turned out that in Kant's critique of teleology
final causes in the proper sense, causae finales, have played more
or less no role at all.