Preforming the categories: Eighteenth-century generation theory and the biological roots of Kant's a priori

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 40, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 229-253

  Sloan, Phillip R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOLOGY; EDUCATION; HISTORY; PHILOSOPHY;

BIOLOGY; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; PHILOSOPHY;

EID: 33750462574     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2002.0038     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. For recent discussions, see papers by Michael Friedman, Eric Watkins, and others in E. Watkins, ed., Kant and the Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
2. See especially John Zammito, The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);
3. Peter McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology (Lewiston: Meilen, 1990);
4. Helmut Müller-Sievers, Self Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature around 1800 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).
5. See the collection in Watkins, Kant and the Sciences.
6. On this debate see Lome Falkenstein, "Was Kant a Nativist?", Journal of the History of Ideas 51 (1990): 573-97;
7. Günter Zöller, "From Innate to apriori: Kant's Radical Transformation of a Cartesian-Leibnizian Legacy," Monist 72 (1989): 222-35;
8. Graciela De Pierris, "Kant and Innatism," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 68 (1987): 285-305. Both Falkenstein and De Pierris attempt a purely ahistorical analysis of the issue and conclude that Kant was not an innatist. The argument of this paper draws the opposite conclusion.
9. hereafter cited as AK. Except where noted, translations will be my own. The AK version has been slightly revised in accordance with the critical comparative readings of the A and B editions by Jens Timmermann, ed., Immanuel Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998), 143.
10. N. K. Smith, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed. (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), 175.
11. Robert Paul Wolff, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).
12. Kant, Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, E. Adickes, ed. (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1889), 111, n. 2.
13. Giorgio Tonelli, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Within the Tradition of Modern Logic, D. H. Chandler, ed. (Zurich: Olms, 1994), 247.
14. See for example, Jacques Roger, Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du xviiie siècle, 3rd ed. (Paris: Michel, 1994).
15. My citations are to the French edition. For more specific development of these issues, see Shirley A. Roe, Matter, Life and Generation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
16. See also Müller-Sievers, Self Generation, ch. 1;
17. and Thomas Haffner, "Die Epigenesisanalogie in Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft," (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Saarland, 1997).
18. A. C. Genova, "Kant's Epigenesis of Pure Reason," Kantstudien 65 (1974): 259-73;
19. J. Wubnig, "The Epigenesis of Pure Reason," Kantstudien 60 (1969): 147-52;
20. Günter Zöller, "Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge," in Kant: Analysen-Probleme-Kritik, H. Oberer and G. Seel, eds. (Wurzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1988), 71-90;
21. Haffner, "Epigenesisanalogie," chs. 4-5.
22. On these debates, see Roger, Les Sciences; Roe, Matter, Life and Generation; and C. Correia, The Ovary of Eve: Egg Sperm, and Preformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
23. On the microscopic issues, see my "Organic Molecules Revisited," in J. Gayon et al., eds., Buffon 88 (Paris: Vrin, 1992), 415-38.
24. W Harvey, Exercitationes de generatione animalium (London, 1651), Ex. 46.
25. C. F. Wolff, Theorie generationis (Halle: Hendel, 1759);
26. On the details of Wolff's system, see Roe, Matter, Life and Generation, ch. 3.
27. On the reactions to Descartes, see Roger, Les Sciences, 120-3.
28. See Arthur Warda, Kants Bücher (Berlin: Breslau er, 1922), 29.
29. On Maupertuis and eighteenth-century generation theory see M. Terrall, "Salon, Academy, and Boudoir: Generation and Desire in Maupertuis' Science of Life," Isis 87 (1996): 217-29 and references therein. For purposes of this paper I am ignoring some important differences between the theories of Maupertuis and Buffon. Kant seems to treat them both as variants of mechanistic theories of generation.
30. Albrecht von Haller, "Vorrede," Allgemeine Historie der Natur, vol. 2 (Hamburg and Leipzig, 1752).
31. Facsimiles of both texts are available in Shirley Roe, ed., The Natural Philosophy of Albrecht von Haller (New York: Arno, 1981).
32. They are translated in part in J. Lyon and P. R. Sloan, eds., From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
33. See Roe, Matter, Life and Generation, ch. 3, and idem, "The Development of Albrecht von Haller's Views on Embryology," Journal of the History of Biology 8 (1975): 167-90.
34. On German responses to Bonnet's philosophy in Germany see R. Savioz, La philosophie de Charles Bonnet de Génève (Paris: Vrin, 1948), 341-9.
35. C. Bonnet, Considérations sur les corps organisés, in Oeuvres d'histoire naturelle et de philosophie (Neuchâtel: Faul che, 1779-83;
36. For a survey of some of this literature of relevance to Kant's own readings, see Haffner, Die Epigenesisanalogie, chs. 2-3.
37. Kant, Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des daseins Gottes, AK 2:68.
38. This is the revised form of the prospectus that appeared in J. J. Engel's Der Philosoph für die Welt (Leipzig, 1777), II, 125-64.
39. My citations are to this version. The 1777 version has been made available for the first time in a complete English translation by J. M. Mikkelsen in R. Bernasconi and T. Lott, eds., The Idea of Race (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), 8-22.
40. Buffon, "De la Dégéneration des animaux," Histoire naturelle XIV (1766), in J. Piveteau, ed., Buffon: Oeuvres philosophiques (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954), 407 n.
41. This article appeared in the Leipzig translation in 1772. The term 'race' had, to be sure, been used in French before Buffon, but not in the sense of a semi-permanent historical sublineage within the confines of a single historical biological species governed by a single moule intérieure. Buffon had accounted for the semi-permanent geographical changes within the species by slight changes in the molécules organiques under varying climatic influences. On this see my "The Idea of Racial Degeneracy in Buffon's Histoire naturelle," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 3 (1973): 293-321;
42. and idem, "Buffon, German Biology, and the Historical Interpretation of Biological Species," British Journal for the History of Science 12 (1979): 109-53.
43. For historical remarks on the origin of the race concept, see Robert Bernasconi, "Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant's Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race," in R. Bernasconi, ed., Race (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 10-36.
44. Buffon, Histoire naturelle, vol. 2 (1749), in Piveteau, Oeuvres, 244.
45. Kant, Vorlesung, AK 25: 651, trans. Munzel, used by permission.
46. Zöller, "Kant on Metaphysical Knowledge," 79.
47. The Prolegomena of 1783 displays a general continuity with the first edition of the KrV on these issues. The language of Keim and Anlage is only used occasionally in this treatise, still in the preformationist tradition of his earlier writings, and there is no use of "epigenesis." See Prolegomena, AK 3: 274: 36; 353: 23-7; and 368:10.
48. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-5) (repr. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1965), I, 169. All references to Herder are to this edition.
49. Kant, "Recension," and "Erinnerungen des Recensented der Herder'schen Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit," AK 8: 43-66.
50. I have discussed this controversy in my "Buffon, German Biology," esp. 131-4.
51. However, only the first edition of the Handbuch is listed in Warda's catalog of Kant's library (Kants Bücher). On the general relations between Kant and Blumenbach, see Timothy Lenoir, "Kant, Blumenbach, and Vital Materialism in German Biology," Isis 71 (1980): 77-108;
52. and Peter McLaughlin, "Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb: Zum Verhaltnis von epigenetischer Embryologie und typologischem Artbegriff," Medizinhistorische Journal 17 (1982): 357-72.
53. Blumenbach, Bildungstrieb, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Dietrich, 1789), 24-5.
54. An English translation of this second edition is available as J. Blumenbach, An Essay on Generation, trans. A. Crichton (London: Cadell, 1792). Due to limited access to the second German edition, I will utilize this translation at some points.
55. See Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb, 2nd. ed. I am using the Crichton translation (26-8). Blumenbach interpreted Wolff's theory to imply the workings of a generalized power of nutrition that acted without law or regularity, in contrast to his own Bildungstrieb.
56. Essay on Generation, 60-1.
57. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, AK 5: 423.
58. and Paul Guyer, "Organisms and the Unity of Science," both in Watkins, Kant and the Sciences, chs. 11-2.
59. See Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 2nd. ed. (1794), in AK 6:20, 6:45, 6:38, 6:57.
60. Kant, Religion, AK 6: 80n.
61. Kant, Anthropologie, AK 7: 217
62. Kant, Religion, 122.