KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

32 Kant's Reading of Biology
to adapt to different climates, such as those of Europe, Africa, Asia,
or America and have thus irreversibly fixed their skin colors.
The development of such germs and dispositions has as its
consequence, that the present characteristics of the different human
races can only be explained historically; and Kant distinguishes
between a merely classificatory description of nature (Naturbeschreibung)
and an explanatory natural history (N a t u r -
geschichte). However, in the latter he is dealing with a history of
development below the level of the biological species and only with
the unfolding of the possibilities contained in the original lineage.
In these essays Kant assumes an original organization without
seriously asking where the organization comes from or how this
assumption can be reconciled with his other views about the nature
of scientific explanation. Even in the essay "On the Use of Teleological
Principles," written shortly before the Critique of Judgment,
he does not advance beyond this position. He also makes no attempt
to specify the mechanism by which the "germs" act or are passed
on:
I for my part derive all organization from organic beings (through
generation) and later forms (of this sort of natural object) according to laws
of the gradual development of original dispositions (such as often are found
in the transplantation of plants) which were to be found in the organization
of their lineage. How this lineage itself arose, this task lies completely
beyond the bounds of all humanly possible physics, within which I felt
obliged to confine myself. (W 5,164; Ak 8,179)
Regulative Principles and Reflective Judgment
In the works discussed so far Kant has considered the organism
from a biological point of view as an especially difficult object
of scientific analysis. In the "Critique of Teleological Judgment" he
deals not with the peculiarities of the organism as such but with the
peculiarities of our explanations of the organism. Here the organism
is not so much a particular kind of object with particular properties
and structures, but rather it is an object that causes us particular
problems when we try to explain it. He analyzes not the organism
but biological explanation. Thus we have before us not a philosophy
of the organism but a philosophy of science applied to biology.
Kant analyzes not the causes of purposive structures and adapta-