KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

58 Antinomies of Reason
shows that Kant understands something different under the term
"Empiricism" than the post-Kantian tradition. In a similar vein
Fichte once classified Berkeley as a materialist — which tells us
more about Fichte than it does about Berkeley. It should already
occasion some perplexity that Kant attributes "popularity" to the
thesis position — a property that no one has ever had to accuse
rationalism of acquiring. As soon as we drop the fixation on the
name that Kant gives and examine the content of the position and
look at the philosophers who took up this position in the course of
history, the situation becomes somewhat clearer. The positions
taken in the theses can, as indicated, cum grano salis all be found
in the writings of Newton: 1) a finite material world in empty
absolute space, 2) indivisible atoms as the ultimate components of
matter, 3) "active principles" such as the human will that introduce
new force into the material world and cause voluntary movements,
and 4) the habitual intervention of a deity into the everyday workings
of the world; all these are integral parts of Newton's cosmology. All
of these positions were explicitly attacked by Leibniz in a number of
writings including the published correspondence with Samuel
Clarke. 6
As concerns Leibniz the grain of salt is somewhat larger and
harder to swallow, but many aspects of his philosophy are clearly
recognizable in the antitheses. Ever since Descartes, rationalist
natural philosophers had tended to see the material universe as
"indefinitely" large rather than as infinite, and Leibniz, too, concurred
in this, 7 so that he was actually closer to Kant's own position
6 The Newtonian position is most clearly presented by Samuel Clarke in his
famous exchange of letters with Leibniz. The circumstances of the correspondence
as well as a number of manuscripts of Newton's containing his drafts
for parts of Clarke's letters leave no doubt that Newton agrees with Clarke on all
essential points. Cf. Koyré and Cohen "Correspondence"; Alexander,
"Introduction"; Freudenthal, Atom, pp. 24, 78.
7 Descartes makes the distinction between infinite and indefinite in a letter to
Henry More (March 5, 1649; AT V, 267f.) and in the Principia, (part I §§ 26 and 27,
AT VIII, 14-15). Cf. also Wilson, "Can I..." for more sources; cf. Spinoza, Renati
Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I & II, II, Prop.6; Leibniz, Nouveaux
Essais, II, 13, §21. The arguments of the rationalists are dressed up theologically
and refer to the infinitude of God; but there is also a significant philosophical
reason why the material universe cannot be regarded as infinite. For such rationalists
as Descartes and Leibniz (and Kant as well) the conservation of "force"
and matter in a material system constituted the foundation of all science
(Descartes, Principia II §§30-36, AT VIII 56-61; Leibniz "Brevis Demonstratio"
and "Dynamica" GM VI, 117ff and 440). However, the conservation of infinite