05.30.06
Kant and biology
Telic Thoughts has two quotes from Barrow and Tipler’s The Cosmological Anthropic Principle on Kant, biology, and teleology.
Kant’s notion of teleology had an enormous influence on the work of German biologists in the first half of the nineteenth century. Like Kant, for the most part these biologists did not regard teleology and mechanism as polar opposites, but rather as explanatory modes complementary to each other. Mechanism was expected to provide a completely accurate picture of life at the chemical level, without the need to invoke ‘vital forces.’ Indeed, Kant and many of the German biologists were strongly committed to the idea that all objects in Nature, be they organic or inorganic, are completely controlled by mechanical physical laws. These scientists had no objection to the idea that living beings are brought into existence by the mechanical action of physical laws. What they objected to was the possibility of constructing a scientific theory, based on mechanism alone, which described that coming into being, and that could completely describe the organization of life. . . . In Kant’s view, a mechanical explanation…could be given only when there is a clear separation between cause and effect. In living beings, causes and effects are inextricably mixed. . . . ultimate biological explanations require a special non-mechanical notion of causality - teleology - in which each part is simultaneously cause and effect. Parts related to the whole in this way transcend mechanical causality.
And:
The limitation of explanation in terms of mechanical causality can perhaps be best understood by comparing a living being to a computer. As Michael Polanyi has pointed out the internal workings of the computer can of course be completely understood in terms of physical laws. What cannot be so explained is the computer’s program. To explain the program requires reference to the purpose of the program, that is, to teleology. Even the evolution of a deterministic Universe cannot be completely understood in terms of the differential equations which govern evolution. The boundary conditions of the differential equations must also be specified. These boundary conditions are not determined by the laws of physics which are differential equations.