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Article ID: CBB000770748

Mechanical Explanation of Nature and Its Limits in Kant's Critique of Judgment (2006)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 37
Pages: 694--711
Publication date: 2006
Language: English

Publication Date: 2006
Edition Details: Part of special issue: “Kantian Teleology and the Biological Sciences”

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Biology Nature Philosophy Mechanism; mechanical philosophy 18th century Kant, Immanuel

In this paper I discuss two questions. What does Kant understand by mechanical explanation in the Critique of judgment? And why does he think that mechanical explanation is the only type of the explanation of nature available to us? According to the interpretation proposed, mechanical explanations in the Critique of judgment refer to a particular species of empirical causal laws. Mechanical laws aim to explain nature by reference to the causal interaction between the forces of the parts of matter and the way in which they form into complex material wholes. Just like any other empirical causal law, however, mechanical laws can never be known with full certainty. The conception according to which we can explain all of nature by means of mechanical laws, it turns out, is based on what Kant calls `regulative' or `reflective' considerations about nature. Nothing in Kant's Critique of judgment suggests that these considerations can ever be justified by reference to how the natural world really is. I suggest that what, upon first consideration, appears to be a thoroughly mechanistic conception of nature in Kant is much more limited than one might have expected.

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Article Steigerwald, Joan (2006) Introduction. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 621). unapi

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