Studies in History

and Philosophy of
Biological and
Biomedical Sciences
Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626
www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc

Introduction: Kantian teleology and the

biological sciences
Joan Steigerwald
Science and Technology Studies, Humanities, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Canada M3J 1P3

This special issue was stimulated by a meeting in Guelph, Canada, in July 2005, of the
International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology (ISH-
PSSB). As its rather cumbersome name suggests, the society’s intention is to bring together
scholars in history, philosophy and the social sciences as well as scientists with an interest
in the biological sciences, and to create opportunities for conversations between them.
What was a surprise at the Guelph meeting was the number of places where Kant
appeared in the program. Not only were there sessions in which historians of science
and historians of philosophy addressed the significance of Kant for the development of
the ‘biological sciences’ of his time,1 but also in several sessions philosophers of biology
concerned with the problem of biological functions discussed reassessing the significance
of Kant’s work on teleology for modern debates. In the spirit of the interactions that took
place at the ISHPSSB meeting, this special issue brings together historians of science, his-
torians of philosophy and philosophers of science with a particular interest in the biolog-
ical sciences and Kant’s work on teleology, with six of the eight contributors participants
at Guelph.
An argument can readily be made for the importance of a collection devoted to Kantian
teleology and the biological sciences. Given the extensive literature devoted to Kant’s phi-
losophy, this topic has received relatively little attention. A few monographs have been
dedicated to Kant’s ‘Critique of teleological judgment’—Zammito (1992) McLaughlin
(1990), Zumbach (1984), and McFarland (1970)—but their arguments and conclusions

E-mail address: steiger@yorku.ca

1
Although it is anachronistic to use the expression ‘biological sciences’ for studies of organisms in Kant’s time,
biology being a nineteenth-century term and concept and Kant largely reserving the term ‘science’ for the
mechanical sciences, it is used in this issue to avoid awkward formulations referring to the studies in natural
history, anatomy, anthropology and medicine to which Kant actually referred. Several papers in this issue are
concerned precisely with specifying the fields of study on which Kant drew and his views on how those studies of
organisms were related to his conception of natural science.

1369-8486/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2006.09.002
622 J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626

warrant reassessment in light of recent scholarship in the history of science, the history of
philosophy and the philosophy of science. Some leading Kant scholars have recently
turned their attention to Kant’s 1790 ‘Critique of teleological judgment’, most notably
Henry E. Allison and Paul Guyer, but their primary interest is in Kant’s reflections on tel-
eology as a part of his larger concern with the system of nature, either in relation to his
conception of the mechanical sciences or in relation to his moral philosophy.2 Indeed,
the difficulty in interpreting the arguments of the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’ is
in part due to the fact that they draw on the whole of Kant’s philosophy. Its placement
in the Critique of judgment not only pairs it with the ‘Critique of aesthetic judgment’,
but also frames it with an ‘Introduction’ which gives to the power of judgment a mediating
role between the concepts of nature and the concept of freedom. Moreover, Kant’s lengthy
‘Appendix’ to the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’ not only examines how the principles
of mechanism and teleology can be related in a system of nature, but also includes an
extended discussion of the relationships between our concepts of nature and our morality
and faith in God. Guyer concludes that ‘recent work has begun to make it clear that this
part of Kant’s book should not be ignored’.3 Kant’s reflections on teleology and our com-
prehension of organisms are not restricted to the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’, how-
ever. He was concerned with the difficulties posed by organisms for our understanding of
the natural world from his earliest writings, such as the Universal natural history and theory
of the heavens of 1755, the Only possible proof of the existence of God of 1763 and the
Dreams of a spirit-seer of 1766, a preoccupation that continued until the end of his life,
as can be seen from his Opus postumum. He intervened in contemporary debates in natural
history and on the development of organisms and the races of human beings in his lectures
and related publications on physical geography and anthropology, and in his responses to
works by Johann Gottfried Herder and Georg Forster in the 1770s and 1780s. The most
extensive scholarship on ‘Kantian teleology and the biological sciences’ to date has been
concerned with the relationship of Kant’s reflections on the unique characteristics of
organisms to studies in natural history, anatomy, development and anthropology in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.4 Furthermore, Kant introduced natural teleol-
ogy into his writings on politics and history, such as Idea for a universal history with a cos-
mopolitan intent of 1784 and To perpetual peace of 1795. He also discussed the human
predisposition to animality in works such as Religion within the boundaries of mere reason
of 1793 and Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view of 1798. Thus, preoccupations
with teleology and our comprehension of the unique characteristics of organisms permeate
many of Kant’s writings, even as his larger philosophical system informs those preoccupa-
tions. A growing body of literature discussing diverse aspects of Kantian teleology and the
biological sciences can now be found scattered in articles and as parts of larger studies.
This collection of essays contributes to that scholarship by providing an extensive exam-
ination of Kant’s writings on teleology and our comprehension of organisms, and of how
they have been variously interpreted and assessed, and offers reevaluations of their
significance.
It becomes clear on reading these essays that a considerable lack of consensus exists not
only on how to interpret Kant’s writings, but also on how to interpret their relevance to

2
Allison (2003 [1991], 2000), and Guyer (2005, 2003b, 2001).
3
Guyer (2003a), p. xix.
4
For an overview of this scholarship, and contributions to it, see Huneman (2007, Forthcoming).
 J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626 623

the biological sciences of his time and to modern debates about teleology in biology. It
might be assumed that Kant’s analysis of our comprehension of organisms—that they
appear to us as contingent with regard to the mechanism of nature and thus that we must
appeal to purposiveness, if only as a regulative principle, in our investigation of them—
reflected the limitations of both the biological sciences and physical sciences of his time.
It might also be assumed that subsequent developments in science, particularly in evolu-
tionary theory and genetics, resolved the problems to which Kant’s analysis drew attention
and removed the need for an appeal to teleology in biological science. Indeed, Guyer con-
cludes that ‘Kant’s analysis of our problem in comprehending organisms is now indefen-
sible . . . undermined by developments in histology, embryology and genetics since the
nineteenth century’.5 But recent work in both the history of science and the philosophy
of science calls for a reassessment of such evaluations. Discussions at Guelph and contri-
butions to this special issue suggest that Kant’s contributions to the development of biol-
ogy and his continued relevance are still subject to debate.
The papers in this collection form three groupings. The first three papers, by Phillip R.
Sloan, Philippe Huneman and Alix A. Cohen, discuss the importance of Kant’s philoso-
phy for the ‘biological sciences’ of his time, respectively, natural history and the history of
nature, comparative anatomy and morphology, and anthropology and the study of man-
kind as a natural species. The papers by Angela Breitenbach, Joan Steigerwald and Marcel
Quarfood, focus on the Critique of judgment and the concepts of mechanical explanation
and natural purpose that Kant articulated within it. The final group of papers by John
Zammito and D. M. Walsh raises the question of Kant’s relevance for contemporary
debates over function in biology.
The first group of papers draws on recent scholarship in the history of science reexam-
ining the significance of German contributions and of Kant in particular to the ‘biological
sciences’ of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Phillip R. Sloan’s paper,
‘Kant on the history of nature: The ambiguous heritage of the critical philosophy for nat-
ural history’, argues against the view, defended especially by James Larson, that Kant gave
preference to the ‘history’ of nature, and that his opinions were thus found untenable by
working naturalists.6 He rather argues that Kant’s arguments moved over time in the
opposite direction, and served to restrict speculative natural history within limits that
led notable successors, such as Alexander von Humboldt and Georges Cuvier, to find in
the critical philosophy grounds for rejecting a historical science of nature in favour of a
descriptive program in natural history. Sloan concludes that those who found warrant
for drawing from Kant a program of developmental transcendental morphology, and even
a form of evolutionism, misread him. Philippe Huneman’s paper is also interested in how
Kant was read by subsequent anatomists and naturalists. In ‘Naturalising purpose: From
comparative anatomy to the ‘‘adventures of reason’’’ he argues that Kant’s concept of nat-
ural purpose was elaborated in both functional and formal senses by later figures. Like
Sloan, he interprets Cuvier’s comparative anatomy as drawing on Kant, seeing in his
emphasis on adaptive functions as regulative principles a faithfulness to Kant’s position.
But Huneman is primarily interested in how a reinterpretation of Kant’s critique of
speculative natural history and conception of scientific explanation proved productive
for the developmental transcendental morphology of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and

5
Guyer (2003b), p. 46.
6
Larson (1994).
624 J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626

Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Alix A. Cohen’s paper, ‘Kant on epigenesis, monogenesis
and human nature: The biological premises of anthropology’, examines Kant’s conception
of mankind as a natural species. Positioning Kant within contemporary debates over
organic generation and the human races, she demonstrates how Kant argued for the bio-
logical unity of the human species and for racial difference to be attributed to the posses-
sion of natural predispositions. Cohen argues that Kant’s account of man’s natural
predispositions was not limited to the issue of races, but encompassed unexpected human
features such as gender, temperaments and nations. Kant understood these predisposi-
tions, she concludes, to be the means for the realization of Nature’s overall purpose for
the human species.
While the first group of papers is concerned with several of Kant’s works up to and
including the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’, the second group of papers focuses on
the arguments of Kant’s third Critique. Angela Breitenbach contends in her paper,
‘Mechanical explanation of nature and its limits in Kant’s Critique of judgment’, that what,
on first consideration, appears to be a thoroughly mechanistic conception of nature in
Kant, turns out to be very limited. By considering Kant’s concept of mechanical laws
as found in his early writings and his 1786 Metaphysical foundations of natural science
in relation to both Hannah Ginsborg’s and Peter McLaughlin’s accounts of Kant’s con-
cept of mechanism,7 she concludes that the mechanical laws in the third Critique should
be understood as a particular species of empirical causal laws. She suggests that Kant’s
conclusion in the third Critique, that our hope for an explanation of all of nature accord-
ing to such mechanical laws is based on ‘regulative’ considerations about nature, may
leave room for an alternative non-mechanistic conception of nature. Joan Steigerwald’s
paper, ‘Kant’s concept of natural purpose and the reflecting power of judgment’, examines
the concept of natural purpose as Kant articulated it in the ‘Critique of teleological judg-
ment’ in relation to and in distinction from the concepts of nature and the concept of pur-
pose he had developed in his other critical writings. She argues that although Kant
restricted his reflections on organisms to phenomena that can be demonstrated in experi-
ence, the concept of natural purpose is a product of the reflecting power of judgment, and
concerns only the relation of things to our power of judgment. Yet it is necessary for the
identification of organisms as organisms, as organized and self-organizing, and as subject
to unique norms and circular or ‘reflective’ causal relations between parts and whole. Mar-
cel Quarfood’s paper, ‘Kant on biological teleology: Towards a two-level interpretation’,
offers a way to balance Kant’s claims in the Critique of judgment that teleology is indis-
pensable for conceptualizing organized beings and yet that it is a regulative principle
merely subjectively valid for our reflection on such beings. He proposes distinguishing
between two roles that the concept of natural purpose serves. The concept has an identi-
ficatory function, enabling us to single out certain objects as natural purposes, and thus
constituting the special science of biology; here Quarfood finds in Kant a partial endorse-
ment of Aristotelian teleology and even a quasi-explanatory role for teleology. But on a
meta level of philosophical reflection, the concept has a merely regulative role.
Quarfood leaves his conclusions as only suggestive for the modern philosophy of biol-
ogy, although in other places he takes up this question.8 The last group of papers is con-
cerned directly with the relevance of Kantian teleology for the biological sciences today,

7
Ginsborg (2004, 2001), and McLaughlin (1990).
8
Quarfood (2004).
 J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 37 (2006) 621–626 625

and the authors offer quite different conclusions. One of the reasons Kant’s ‘Critique of
teleological judgment’ has found new attention is a growing interest of both the biological
sciences and the philosophy of biology in the phenomena of organic development, main-
tenance and reproduction. Kant’s analysis of organisms as natural purposes brought to
attention precisely their unique capacities for self-organization. The question has thus
arisen as to whether or not Kant’s analysis might be instructive for present debates regard-
ing the goal-directedness of biological functions. In ‘Teleology then and now: The question
of Kant’s relevance for contemporary controversies over function in biology’, John Zam-
mito locates the motivation for a renewed interest in Kant in an impasse in current func-
tion talk, with little consensus over why teleological approaches are found only in biology,
how they work and what risks they carry, and the extent to which they can be grounded in
biological processes. But he warns that if naturalism is the aspiration of contemporary phi-
losophy of biology and if biology wants to conceptualize self-organization as actual in the
world, Kant offers little help. Zammito argues that epistemological ‘deflation’ was the
decisive feature of Kant’s treatment of the biological sciences of his day. The third Critique
essentially proposed the reduction of biology to a kind of pre-scientific descriptivism,
doomed never to attain authentic scientificity. Denis Walsh takes a different stance in
his paper, ‘Organisms as natural purposes: The contemporary evolutionary perspective’.
Walsh begins by emphasizing recent studies in the biological sciences that have strong res-
onances with Kant’s conception of organisms as natural purposes—their capacity for self-
organization, their emergent properties, their adaptability and their capacity to regulate
their component parts and processes. Then, in a reformulation of Kant’s ‘Antinomy’
between teleological and mechanical principles for our judgment of organisms, he
attempts to carve out an explanatory role for organismal purposes that is consistent with
the modern commitment to mechanism. Appealing to the apparatus of invariance expla-
nation, he sketches a model for how purpose and mechanism can be regarded as reciprocal
causes of organisms, and concludes that purposiveness has a genuine, ineliminable role in
biological explanations.
This special issue does not attempt to resolve debates regarding the interpretation of
Kantian teleology and its relevance to the biological sciences of Kant’s time or today.
What it does present is the current state of the debate.

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