KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

First positions 25
world. In physics Kant began with the discussion of purely physical
questions (although often with a strong methodological emphasis),
but in the course of time he turned more and more to the properly
philosophical aspects of physical questions. In biology Kant dealt at
first with biological questions of the peculiar structure of organisms
and later turned more and more to questions of the peculiar structure
of biological explanations.
First Positions
In his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens
(1755), in which he attempted to explain the origin and development
of the solar system on the basis of the universal laws and properties
of matter, Kant indicated that the explanation of an organism is
much more difficult than the explanation of the solar system, without
however elaborating on whether the difficulties were merely
technical, based on the quantitative complexity of the systems, or
whether they were supposed to be of a principle nature. He posed the
rhetorical question:
Are we in a position to say: Give me matter and I will show you how a
worm can be produced? Don't we get stuck at the first step due to ignorance
about the true inner make-up of the object and the complexity of the
manifold contained within it? (W 1,237; Ak 1,230)
Kant's answer to the question is of course: We cannot explain even a
worm; but the references to "inner make-up" and "complexity"
seem to indicate merely technical difficulties. The same conclusion
seems also to be suggested by his remark that the explanation of the
solar system is easier than that of the organism, in as much as they
are apparently taken to be of the same kind. Kant maintains,
that the formation of all celestial bodies, the cause of their motions, in short,
the origin of the entire present constitution of the world system will be
comprehensible before the production of a single weed or worm will be
clearly and completely understood. (W 1,237; Ak 1,230)
At one point Kant does in fact speak of the "absurdity" of the
opinion of the Greek atomists that the origin of organisms could be
explained by the "blind concourse" of atoms (W 1,234). However, this
cannot be interpreted as a rejection in principle of the possibility of a
mechanistic explanation or a mechanical production of organisms,