KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Newtonian Biology 21
womb or somewhere else (spontaneous generation), whether they
meet here on earth today or whether they met on Jupiter twenty
thousand years ago. All organisms are completely determined by
the properties and interactions of the particles of which they consist;
should a world catastrophe occur wiping out all living creatures,
but leaving the basic geological and climatic conditions, then all
species of organisms would return spontaneously. The organization
forms of the species are not encased as germs, but rather stamped
onto the structure of matter in the combinatorial possibilities of
organic molecules and the underlying anorganic particles.
Mosquitoes and elephants are just as determined as crystals.
The appeal to the combinatory possibilites of the particles and
the limitation of the number of such possible forms may explain
why there are precisely those species that there are. However the
question, why the abilites that the organisms have based on their
organization can be relatively independent of that organization
could not be answered so easily. In regeneration, the paradigmatic
example of life processes, parts of the organization are missing, that
is, the form as a whole does not exist, but the functions are nonetheless
performed. The logical solution to the problem was to introduce
a new primary property of matter, a vital force, which was
however limited in that it only came to expression under certain
circumstances, for instance in a particular arrangement of particles.
This solution is usually called vitalism; and in the 18th century
it was almost always introduced with an analogy to the Newtonian
force of gravity. With this analogy Buffon introduced his
"moule interieure," Haller his "irritability," and Blumenbach his
"Bildungstrieb"; similar arguments can be found in the work of
Bordeu, Barthez, Hunter and Needham. 15
The vitalism of the latter 18th century stipulated that life
could not be reduced to the fundamental properties of matter postulated
by mechanics. It was necessary therefore to introduce a new
primary property of matter — the life force — which played no role
in mechanics and which became active only under a certain constellation
of factors; the life force was however not reducible to or caused
15 Cf. John Hunter, "Lectures on the Principles of Surgery," in : The Works,
London, 1835, vol I, p. 221ff; Théophile Bordeu, "Recherches sur les maladies
chroniques," Oeuvres complètes; vol. II, Paris, 1818, pp. 924f; Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb, Göttingen, 1789, pp. 25f. Cf. also Hall
"Biological Analogues," for further sources.