The metaphor of epigenesis: Kant, Blumenbach and Herder

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in History and Philosophy of Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa The metaphor of epigenesis: Kant, Blumenbach and Herder Daniela Helbig a, Dalia Nassar b, * a b Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia Philosophy Department, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Available online 6 July 2016 Over the last few decades, the meaning of the scientific theory of epigenesis and its significance for Kant’s critical philosophy have become increasingly central questions. Most recently, scholars have argued that epigenesis is a key factor in the development of Kant’s understanding of reason as selfgrounding and self-generating. Building on this work, our claim is that Kant appealed to not just any epigenetic theory, but specifically Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s account of generation, and that this appeal must be understood not only in terms of self-organization, but also in terms of the demarcation of a specific domain of inquiry: for Blumenbach, the study of life; for Kant, the study of reason. We argue that Kant adopted this specific epigenetic model as a result of his dispute with Herder regarding the independence of reason from nature. Blumenbach’s conception of epigenesis and his separation of a domain of the living from the non-living lent Kant the tools to demarcate metaphysics, and to guard reason against Herder’s attempts to naturalize it. Ó 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Kant; Epigenesis; Metaphor; Analogy; Biology; Blumenbach; Herder; Transcendental deduction Over the last few decades, Kant’s interest in the life sciences and the role of the life sciences in the development of his critical philosophy have attracted greater scholarly attention. One strand of investigation, opened up by Timothy Lenoir in 1982, examines the crucial role of the life sciences in the Critique of Judgment and the influence of Kant’s views on the life sciences themselves.1 A second strand has argued that key ideas from the life sciences played pivotal roles in the development of Kant’s earlier writings, especially the Critique of Pure Reason.2 Kant’s interest in the competing theories of generationdpreformation and epigenesisdis regarded as an especially significant interpretative tool for understanding the origin, meaning, and role of the pure concepts of the understanding. Thus, Kant’s statements about the “birth place” of the pure concepts, and his correlative use of terms such as Keime (seeds) and Anlagen (predispositions)3 to describe their development, have led some interpreters to suggest that Kant used the preformationist model of generation in order to explicate the generation of the pure * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Helbig), dalia.nassar@sydney. edu.au (D. Nassar). 1 Lenoir (1982). 2 See Sloan (2002), Zöller (1988), and especially Mensch (2013), whose booklength study of the topic of epigenesis in the pre-critical writings and the first Critique has generated new interest in Kant’s use of the term. 3 Kant (1781/1787), A66/B90-91. 4 Sloan (2002). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2016.05.003 0039-3681/Ó 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. concepts of the understanding.4 In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, however, Kant adds that the legitimacy of the categories can only be established by thinking of them in terms of “a system of the epigenesis of pure reason.”5 Accordingly, other commentators have claimed that by 1787 Kant rejected the metaphor of preformation, and instead introduced that of epigenesis to explicate the non-empirical and non-arbitrary character of the categories.6 While the disagreement over Kant’s favored biological model is explicit, his metaphorical use of these models in the context of the generation of the pure concepts of the understanding has gone largely unproblematized. According to Phillip Sloan, biological models of explanation “ground”7 Kant’s cognitive theory; they constitute its “scientific foundation.”8 Taking the primacy of scientific investigation as a given, Sloan sees Kant as altering his theory of reason when this foundation shifts. Günter Zöller, by contrast, regards the purpose of the use of the terms preformation and epigenesis as more decorative than functional: doctrines of 5 Kant (1781/1787), B167. This is the key claim made by Zöller (1988). Although Mensch (2013) agrees with Zöller’s understanding of the significance of the metaphor of epigenesis, she demonstrates that Kant’s turn to epigenesis came much earlier than 1787. She does not, however, explicitly address the question of whether there was a transition in Kant’s thinking between 1781 and 1787. 7 Sloan (2002), 22. 8 Sloan (2002), 24. 6 D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 reason are “illustrate[d] by means of an analogy,” or “figuratively represented” by them.9 Neither approach, however, captures the significance of the appearance of language borrowed from the life sciences in crucial parts of the Critique of Pure Reason, whether in the Transcendental Analytic or the Transcendental Deduction. The first aim of this paper is to clarify the role of the metaphors of generation in the critical philosophy. We argue that Kant’s 1787 reference is to a specific epigenetic theory, that of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach rather than Caspar Friedrich Wolff, and that its metaphorical use in the context of Kant’s theory of cognition carries wider programmatic connotations, which cannot be grasped by taking the analogy with biological generation to be either a naturalistic blueprint, or a mere illustration. Blumenbach’s vitalistic theory of epigenesis, and its central notion of Bildungstrieb, functioned as one of the emerging demarcations of the subject area of the life sciences, thereby clearly distinguishing it from the physical sciences. In various contexts, Kant warned against the confusion of the problems of metaphysics with those of the special sciences, and he had a keen interest in mapping the boundaries of those special disciplines.10 His use of Blumenbach’s theory as a metaphor in the context of his conception of reason must therefore be understood not simply in terms of the self-organization or spontaneity of reason,11 but also in terms of the demarcation of a specific domain of inquiry: for Blumenbach, that of the study of life; for Kant, that of the study of reason. More specifically, we argue that Kant introduced the metaphor of epigenesis into his theory of reason in 1787 as a result of his dispute with Herder about the independence of reason from nature, followed by his explicit adoption of epigenesis as a scientific theory of generation in the Critique of Judgment in 1790. Blumenbach’s separation of a domain of the living from the non-living in terms of his notion of Bildungstrieb lent Kant the conceptual tools by which to demarcate metaphysics as the study of reason, and thus to guard the domain of reason against Herder’s attempts to naturalize it. We show that it was following his review of Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784e5) that Kant felt the need to emphasize both the independence of reason from nature and the distinctiveness of the study of reason from the study of nature, i.e., to distinguish reason as an object that cannot be studied by means of the natural sciences or anthropology. It was on account of this, we contend, that the specific articulation of epigenesis put forward by Blumenbach became central in the second edition of the first Critique. Our re-contextualization of Kant’s employment of the metaphor of epigenesis does not, however, imply that he did not make critical use of the term in the Transcendental Deduction. Rather, and in concert with research that draws on the idea of epigenesis to understand the activity of reason, we argue that by comparing Kant’s first published use of the termdin his review of Herder’s Ideendwith the parenthetical remark he makes in the Deduction, it becomes clear that the “epigenesis of pure reason” involves the limitation of what is and what is not possible in experience, analogous to the limitation that Kant regards as necessary in natural generation, and which he formulates in response to Herder. It is through the notion of epigenesis as a form of limitation (on possible 9 Zöller (1988), 88. As Kant puts it in his essay on the use of teleological judgment: “I have become totally convinced that through the mere separation of what is heterogeneous and what previously had been left in a mixed state, often a new light is cast upon the science . which opens up many authentic sources of cognition where one would not at all have expected them .” (Kant (1788), AA 8, 162). The aim of the scientist, he continues, must be to challenge “the carelessness of letting the boundaries of the sciences run into each other.” 11 Zöller (1988); Mensch (2013). 10 99 experience, on natural development) that the metaphor can be regarded as playing a crucial role in the Transcendental Deduction.12 Our aims are thus twofold. In the first instance, we seek to offer a new perspective on Kant’s interest in Blumenbach, via Herder, and to show how Kant’s use of biological metaphors should be understood neither as naturalistically nor as illustratively, but as both a reflection and instrumentalization of emerging disciplinary distinctions in the natural sciences. In the second, we suggest a new way by which the metaphor of epigenesis can help us to better understand the Transcendental Deduction. Our reinterpretation is based on a clear distinction between Wolff’s and Blumenbach’s versions of epigenesis. On that basis, Kant’s use of epigenesis to describe his conception of the mind speaks not only to the deduction of the categories, but also to long-standing questions regarding Kant’s understanding of the unity of reason. 1. Kant on scientific theories of generation prior to the Critique of Pure Reason Long before his much-cited endorsement of Blumenbach’s formulation of an epigenetic theory, Kant occasionally discussed the competing theories of generation, epigenesis and preformation. However, these discussions occur in a number of different contexts. They weigh the various problems Kant sees with both of the theories, but their primary goal is neither to espouse one theory over the other as a scientific explanation of the generation of living beings, nor to use them metaphorically to explicate problems outside the life sciences.13 Against this background, the shift in the Critique of Judgment in 1790 is significant. In this latter work, Kant explicitly distinguishes two different contexts in which theories of generation are relevant to him, and endorses epigenesis in both. Firstly, he declares Blumenbach’s epigenetic theory to provide an appropriate scientific explanation for generation, having a “great advantage . on experiential grounds” over preformation.14 Secondly, Kant emphasizes the theory’s cognitive appeal in stating that reason is “favorably disposed to this [epigenetic] explanation.” This second aspect is independent of the first. It would hold “even if one did not recognize” the alleged experiential superiority.15 The endorsement of a specific explanatory model in the life sciences thus coincides with a claim about reason’s dispositions. A brief review of Kant’s discussion of epigenetic and preformationist theories in the years leading up to the use of metaphors of generation in the Transcendental Analytic at A66/B90-1 may serve to demonstrate the absence of his commitment to either theory as a scientific explanation of generation. Such a commitment only comes, as we will argue, when it coincides with a specific rearticulation of the role of reason in Kant’s systematic philosophy. Kant discusses the generation of plants and animals as early as 1763 in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. Here he distinguishes broadly between a view 12 We thus aim to elaborate and expand upon the work of Zöller (1988) and Mensch (2013) on the significance of the notion of epigenesis for the Transcendental Deduction. 13 Our conclusion is in line with Reinhard Löw’s, who argues that Kant “did not take a consistent position on these questions” (Löw, 1980, 168). In particular, we agree with his problematisation of Kant’s endorsement of epigenesis. However, our intention here is different from Löw’s: we do not seek to determine Kant’s position regarding epigenesis and preformation, but to emphasize that he saw no need to take such a position on the problem of generation as a scientific problem prior to 1790. 14 Kant (1790), AA 5, 424. 15 Kant (1790), AA 5, 424. See McLaughlin’s (1982) critical contextualization of this claim, placing it in the context of bourgeois theories of society in the 17th and 18th centuries (371). 100 D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 of ontogeny as the quantitative evolution (Auswickelung) of a supernaturally given form, and a view which grants individuals the capacity of qualitatively generating rather than merely unfolding their structural form.16 Although Kant does not name them as such, the former view corresponds to the theory of preformation, prevailing through the first half of the 18th century and prominently represented by Albrecht von Haller and Charles Bonnet.17 The latter view can, in turn, be described as “epigenetic,” and its first 18thcentury representative was Caspar Friedrich Wolff (whom Kant does not mention). It was, however, preceded by antipreformationist views as articulated by Pierre Louis de Maupertuis, and the Comte de Buffon (whom Kant does mention).18 Both preformationist and anti-preformationist views, Kant contends, are deeply problematic in that they each contain an arbitrary (willkürlich) element.19 He finds sarcastic words for both. The arbitrariness of preformation consists in positing a supernatural origin of generation instead of admitting that this origin might be scientifically explicable. Kant mocks this move by invoking the reproduction of yeast: while as equally ill-understood as the problem of explaining higher organisms, this problem does not seem to prompt any explanatory recourse to alleged supernatural causes. Buffon’s and Maupertuis’s non-preformationist theories, in contrast, do not posit any such supernatural origins, but they too contain arbitrary elements. Kant locates these in the attempts to counter the difficulties in accounting for the origin of qualitatively new structure according to mechanical laws. Maupertuis addresses the problem of generating structure by the introduction of attractive forces and particles in the seminal fluid of the parents, whereas Buffon posits the existence of a so-called moule intérieure, or internal mould, responsible for the formation of the newly generating body. Kant criticizes both in one and the same breath, suggesting that “the inner forms of Herr Buffon, which self-assemble according to the opinion of Herr von Maupertuis”, are “either as incomprehensible as the thing itself, or [.] arbitrary inventions.”20 Thus facing a choice between preformation as a theory of supernaturally given, and anti-preformationism as a theory of arbitrarily invented form, Kant concludes that “it is perhaps impossible to make out which difficulty is the greatest.”21 He is perfectly explicit in stating the point of his discussion of the two theories of generation: not to endorse one of them over the other as a scientific (naturphilosophische) theory, but to sort out the “weightier metaphysical reasons” at stake in deciding between them.22 The weightier reason for him, unsurprisingly, is to avoid any recourse to the supernatural in the philosophy of nature. However, this does not amount to an endorsement of the specific anti-preformationist theories of Maupertuis and Buffon, which he has just ridiculed. Instead, it is a methodological demanddand 16 Kant (1763), AA 2, 114. See Roe (1981), ch. 2, on Haller’s conversion from epigenesis to preformation in the 1750s. 18 Kant’s omission of Wolff ’s name not just here but in any other of his writings has been discussed at length; see Löw (1980), 176. Wolff and Blumenbach both explicitly use the term ‘epigenesis’ to describe their respective, and different, theories (see below). Maupertuis and Buffon do not use this term, and it remains a matter of debate whether or not it is appropriate to label their views as epigenetic. Wolff and Blumenbach each postulate a force responsible for the generation of a qualitatively new structure, whereas Buffon’s explanation of this new structure relies on spatial arrangements of matter that preexist the newly generated organism. For Sloan (2002), this makes Maupertuis and Buffon “mechanistic” epigeneticists (6); for Mensch (2013), Buffon’s “internal mould” smells too strongly of preformationism to count him among the epigeneticists (chapter 2). 19 Kant (1763), AA 2, 115. 20 Kant (1763), AA 2, 115. 21 Kant (1763), AA 2, 114. 22 Kant (1763), AA 2, 115. 17 only that, as Kant stressesdto rethink the possible action of forces in living things23: My intention here is only to show the necessity to grant the things of nature more of a possibility than is commonly done to produce their consequences according to general laws.24 It is worth noting that Wolff’s explicitly epigenetic theory (discussed below) in its reliance on a force, as opposed to Buffon’s and Maupertuis’s anti-preformationist accounts, could bedalthough Kant does not do sodinterpreted as an attempt to fulfill just such a methodological demand in seeking to show how “general laws” might account for the generation of high structural complexity. In his first mention of the actual term ‘epigenesis’ in notes dated 1772e1776, Kant identifies it with the ‘organic’ as opposed to the mechanical or chemical, and as such with the idea of an “an animating spirit in plants and animals”: The question is whether there is an organic formative nature (epigenesis) or only one which produces form (bildet) mechanically and chemically. It seems: to that belongs a spirit because of the unity of the relation of all parts, according to their generation, to every single such part. But isn’t there a spiritually animating essence in animals and plants too. In such a way one would even have to assume an animating spirit in the primordial chaos in order to explain the various animals which can now only reproduce.25 This usage of the term ‘epigenesis’ is sufficiently broad and yet idiosyncratic to rule out the possibility that Kant is discussing the contemporaneous epigenetic theory that had actually been put forward by the time he was writing. Wolff ’s epigenetic Theoria generationis from 1759 is decidedly anti-animistic in postulating a vis essentialis that accounts for the structure of plants and animals by the secretion of nutritive fluids; the functional unity of their different parts is a by-product rather than the result of the action of a soul or spirit. If Kant’s usage of the term is not aligned with Wolff ’s, what might his sources be? Maupertuis’s Systême de la nature. Essai sur la formation des corps organisés (1751) claims the impossibility of accounting for an organism’s functional unity as a result of a “uniform and blind force,” and posits a “principle of intelligence” to resolve this problem, “similar to what we call desire, aversion, memory.” However, and even if he may have left Kant unconvinced, Maupertuis insisted that there was a difference between his principle of intelligence and an animating spirit in the sense of a “sensitive soul.”26 Another potential source for Kant’s allusion to an animating principle is Georg Ernst Stahl (from whom Wolff had distinguished his views explicitly).27 In the Dreams of a spirit-seer, Kant had defended Stahl’s “organic explanation” as being “often closer to the truth” than 23 Thus we disagree with Claude Piché’s reading of this passage as an obvious “adoption of the biological theory of epigenesis” (Piché [2001], 186). Firstly, we do not see Kant endorsing the specific theories he sarcastically discusses as arbitrary; we only see him arguing that bad non-preformationist theories are on safer metaphysical grounds than preformationist ones. Secondly, applying the broad label ‘epigenetic’ to the specific non-preformationist theories Kant exposes here erases the decisive difference with his later endorsement of Blumenbach’s epigenetic theory as based on not just a force, but a “drive”. 24 Kant (1763), AA 2, 115 (our translation). 25 Kant (1772e1776), AA 17, 591 (our translation). 26 Maupertuis (1984 [1751]), 146e147. 27 See Roe (1981), 109. D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 . Hofmann, Boerhaave and others, who do not consider immaterial forces, who stick to mechanical causes and in that, follow a more philosophical method.28 Kant thus broadly aligns the term ‘epigenesis’ with an organic process of formation that bears animistic connotations, and uses the term to acknowledge the problem of the relation between the organically formative on the one hand, and the mechanical on the other. This is, however, neither a discussion of an actually existing theory of epigenesis (Stahl did not offer such a theory), nor an endorsement of the idiosyncratically animistic articulation of epigenesis as a viable explanatory option in natural philosophy. When he takes up the problem of epigenetic ontogeny again in notes dated 1776e78, Kant still presents epigenesis as requiring the assumption of a ‘soul’; however, this soul must understood as a non-localized part of the intelligible world in order to avoid animistic implications: For epigenesis we have to assume that the soul belongs to the intelligible world; that it does not have a location in space, that, once an organized body has come into being through conception, it has in itself the condition to be ensouled (beseelt) by the intelligible, vitalizing (belebend) principle; and that in this body the soul is present not locally, but virtually.29 In his private remarks on Eberhard’s “Preparations for natural theology,” and thus in a theological context, Kant discusses phylogeny rather than ontogeny with regard to the necessity of assuming supernatural effects.30 Here, he now uses the term ‘epigenesis’ in a more conventional way: The preservation of species can either be regarded as natural, or it requires a supernatural influence. In the first case the origin of species is to be regarded as natural too: for every generation is to be regarded as a new origin insofar as there are so many foreign causes which can modify or change the formative force that, were it not for a counteracting principle following general laws, the regularity of reproduction could not be explained from a disposition once created. Particularly if one assumes epigenesis. A hypothetical endorsement of epigenesis thus renders a natural origin of species more plausible insofar as the theory purports to explain the generation of every single member of the species as a renewed “origin” (Ursprung) without recourse to supernatural causes, and thus provides a model for how the first such origin could be conceived. Kant’s earlier metaphysical argument in favor of non-preformationist theories is reiterated here with explicit reference to epigenesis as a mode of explanation. And yet, this move only posits an epigenetic theory for the sake of the theological argument, and does not amount to an explicit espousal of epigenesis over other theories in the life sciences. By the late 1770s, then, Kant has publicly engaged with epigenesis and preformation on a methodological meta-level, and privately considers both the difficulties of epigenesis as an explanatory strategy in ontogeny, and its phylogenetic implications. However, when not working on a meta-level but engaging directly and publicly with questions of phylogeny and heredity in his 1775 28 29 30 Kant (1766), AA 2, 331 (our translation). Kant (1776e78), AA 18, 189/190. Kant (1776e78), AA 18, 574. 101 “On the different human races,” Kant’s account of natural generation is a version of preformationism.31 The assumption of preformed germs (Keime) as well as predispositions (Anlagen) is the only means, he argues, by which to explain both differences between species and heritable differences within species, i.e., adaptation. For insofar as “chance or general mechanical laws cannot bring forth such adaptations,” e.g. to climate, it follows that different species must have within them germs and natural predispositions which allow them both to maintain their species line as well as adapt to new conditions.32 The original species is equipped with the potential to adapt to any external condition, but it is contingent upon these conditions which predisposition is expressed (ausgewickelt). Sloan has characterized this view as a combination of “preformation with environmentalism.”33 Against the background of these varied earlier discussions, Kant’s usage of biological terms of generation in the 1781 edition of the first Critique stands out as markedly different: in contrast to the earlier methodological debates or attempts at developing a theory of heredity, this usage is clearly metaphorical in character. Keime, seeds, is the word Kant uses to describe both the generation of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Transcendental Analytic, and the development of the special sciences in the Architectonic of Pure Reason.34 In the 1787 edition, Kant retains both passages, and thus maintains the metaphorical vocabulary of categories as preformed seeds and dispositions, which develop on the occasion of experience. However, in the Transcendental Deduction he adds a competing metaphor from the life sciences: the now well-known claim of the “epigenesis of pure reason.”35 Given this ambiguity within the B edition, it is perhaps not surprising that commentators have reached contradictory answers to the question which biological mode of explanation informs Kant’s cognitive theory. After all, his many different earlier discussions of both epigenesis and preformation offer numerous passages to support either argumentdtypically by emphasizing the methodological support for epigenesis, or the usage of preformationism in the race essay, respectively.36 But it seems to us that these arguments skate too lightly over the difference in context and usage. Even if Kant had endorsed either theory as scientifically superior prior to 1790, it would still remain unclear how an endorsement of the scientific theory affects its metaphorical usage in the theory of cognition. However, we have no such endorsement. Furthermore, such a discussion does not do justice to Kant’s use of biological language outside of its original context. To understand what makes Kant’s employment of the metaphor of epigenesis poignant, we turn to its usage in the contemporaneous life sciences and to Kant’s first published discussion of the term in his review of Herder. 31 McLaughlin (2007). Kant (1775), AA 2, 435. 33 Sloan (2002), 240. 34 Thus, the aim of the Transcendental Analytic is “to pursue the pure concepts into their first seeds (Keime) and predispositions (Anlagen) in the human understanding, where they lie ready (vorbereitet), until with the opportunity of experience, they are developed (entwickelt) and exhibited in their clarity by the very same understanding liberated from empirical conditions attaching to them” (Kant (1781/ 1787), A66/B91). And in the Architectonic: “No one attempts to bring about a science without a grounding idea for that science. However, in elaborating that idea the schema, even the definition given to that science initially, rarely ever corresponds to that idea; because it lies like a seed (Keim) in reason, a seed in which all parts are still very much wrapped up (eingewickelt) and lie hidden barely accessible to microscopic observation” (Kant (1781/1787), B861; our translation). 35 Kant (1781/1787), B167. 36 Sloan (2002) and Zöller (1988), respectively. 32 102 D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 2. Blumenbach: Bildungstrieb and generic preformation Both in his oft-cited letter from August 1790 to Blumenbach, and in x81 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant singles out a specific formulation among the broad field of theories associated with the label “epigenesis.” In doing so, he draws explicit attention to the difference between Blumenbach’s concept of Bildungstrieb and a mere formative force, Bildungskraft. What is the nature of this distinction, which was drawn in the 1789 revised edition of Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäft, but can be traced back to Blumenbach’s earliest writings on the same topic in 1781? From the very first treatises on the Bildungstrieb in 1780 and 1781, Blumenbach had emphasized the difference between his new concept of a “formative drive” and “all other forces of nature,” stating as his result that there lies within all living creatures from human beings down to the maggot, from the cedar to mold, a special, innate drive that remains active through their lifetime, initially to make them take their shape, then to retain it, and, if possible, to restore this shape when destroyed. A drive (or tendency or striving, whichever one wishes to call it) that is entirely different both from the general properties of [material] bodies, and from the other forces specifically peculiar to organized bodies37; and that seems to be one of the primary causes of all generation, nutrition, and reproduction; and which, in order to prevent any misinterpretation, and in order to distinguish it from all other natural forces, I shall here call the formative drive (nisus formativus).38 In particular, he warned, the Bildungstrieb should not be confused with Wolff’s “essential force.” Wolff ’s epigenetic account of generation (Theoria generationis, 1759) relies on the notion of a vis essentialis, a non-teleological force which primarily serves nutritive purposes. Its organizing effect is construed as a byproduct of its chemical and mechanical interactions with the environment.39 This intentional alignment of the process of organic with inorganic organization is precisely the opposite of Blumenbach’s move, which locates the source of the generation of organic structure in organic matter alone. Thus, his epigenetic theory is built upon the notion of a formative drive, rather than force, that is unique to and inherent in “all living creatures”dand those alone. Blumenbach realizes that the formative drive might easily be confused with Wolff’s vis essentialis, given that they both are responsible for the “effects because of which we ascribe life to [plants and animals] [weswegen wir [Pflanzen und Tieren] ein Leben zuschreiben].”40 However, in contrast to Wolff’s, Blumenbach’s vitalistic epigenetic theory locates the difference between the living and the non-living in the formative drive. If this point remains implicit in the earlier edition, Blumenbach emphasizes it all the more strongly in the 1782 edition of his Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, and in the revised 1789 edition of the treatise on the Bildungstrieb. Both the distinction between ‘drive’ and mere force, and between the domain of the living and the non-living become more pronounced. When Blumenbach states that “no one can be more profoundly persuaded than I am of the massive gap which nature has implemented between the animated, and the inanimate creation, between the organized, and unorganized creatures,” he takes the vitalist point as a premise rather than a problem: there is a difference in kind between animate and inanimate matter.41 The formative drive only acts in animate matter and cannot account for the transition from inanimate to animate matter. But once active, it will generate structure that had not been present before its action. Such spontaneous generation is a characteristic of animate matter, present to various degrees throughout its life but ceasing with it: there is no such thing in nature as preformed germs: rather, a special drive becomes active in the previously raw and unformed matter of generation, once it has matured and reached its place of destination, and then remains active life-long.42 In the 1789 edition, Blumenbach also adds the clarification that the spontaneous generation of structure does occur in inanimate matter, such as crystals, as the result of a formative forceeebut a force lacks the teleological connotation of the drive that sets animate matter apart. The substantive distinction translates into a normative and programmatic one for Blumenbach. As suggested by the fruitful comparison between the generation of structure in inanimate and animate matter, one can indeed legitimately “employ the phenomena of either of these two major parts of creation for explaining phenomena of the other.”43 As an explanatory strategy, however, this move relies on a prior distinction between the subject matter of biology and physics, as we would say retrospectively, and anticipates a process of institutionalized disciplinary division that had just begun when Blumenbach was writing.44 The coincidental, multiple coinings of the term ‘biology’ around the turn of the century are taken to be suggestive of such a trend of disciplinary division.45 It is in this broader institutional context in which Blumenbach suggests, as a result of his own research as a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Göttingen, an epistemically productive division of labor in the sciences. Seen from this perspective, Blumenbach’s notion of the Bildungstrieb demarcates a limited domain of inquiry for the life sciences. A second limiting move, this time not on domains of inquiry but on the action of the formative drive itself, is Blumenbach’s argument for the constancy of species in his Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte (1780 and later editions). It takes species to be representations of possible forms of the organization of matter. In every single newly generated individual, the Bildungstrieb acts on the specific physiological composition of matter passed down from the parent generation. Crucially, this composition limits the possible results of formative action. As Peter McLaughlin argues, “For Blumenbach, epigenesis of the individual implies generic preformation.”46 Just like the distinction between Bildungskraft and Bildungstrieb, this implication did not escape Kant’s attention; indeed, Kant proved himself to be a perceptive commentator in characterizing epigenesis as a “system of generic preformation” in the Critique of Judgment.47 The specific form to be reached in epigenetically described 41 Blumenbach (1789), 71. Blumenbach (1789), 24. 43 Blumenbach (1789), 72. 44 This disciplinary diversification is one of the characteristics of 18th-century science. Approaching the question from the study of experimental practice rather than from an institutional perspective, Klein and Lefèvre date the introduction of “organic substances” as those created by the processes of life as occurring around 1790. Klein and Lefèvre (2007), ch. 13. 45 McLaughlin (2002). 46 McLaughlin (1982), 17e18. 47 Kant (1790), AA 5, 423. 42 37 In the 1789 edition, Blumenbach specifies those as “contractibility, irritability, sensibility etc.,” i.e. as the mechanical forces described by Haller and others as being at work in the physiological functioning of the animal bodies. Blumenbach (1789), 25. 38 Blumenbach (1781), 12 (our translation). 39 See Witt (2008) for a recent discussion. 40 Blumenbach (1781), 17 (our translation). D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 ontogenesis is always prescribed, and in that sense limited, by virtue of the individual’s being part of a species. 3. 1787 There is a noticeable difference between Kant’s views of epigenesis qua scientific theory in the late 1780s and 1790, on the one hand, and his notes from the 1770s and early 1780s, on the other. In 1787 Kant made use of the phrase “the epigenesis of pure reason,” and in 1789 he published the essay “On the use of teleological principles in philosophy” in which he first mentions Blumenbach’s Handbuch. “The idea of Bildungstrieb,” Kant writes in the essay, “brought so much light into the doctrine of generations, not to inorganic matter but only to the members of organized beings,”48 thus emphasizing Blumenbach’s distinction between organic and inorganic matter. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant identifies Blumenbach with epigenesis, and epigenesis with immanent natural development. Epigenesis “considers nature . as itself producing [als selbst hervorbringend] rather than merely as developing [als entwickelnd] those things that can initially be represented as possible only in accordance with the causality of ends, and thus with the least possible appeal to the supernatural, leaves everything that follows from the first beginning to nature.”49 Thus Kant singles out two different reasons for his endorsement of Blumenbach’s theory of epigenesis as a scientific theorydand in so doing, incisively highlights Blumenbach’s main programmatic points. Firstly, and in line with his long-standing methodological demands, Blumenbach’s version of epigenesis did not require any appeal to divine or supernatural forces. As a scientific theory, his account specifically emphasizes the immanent development, or in Kant’s words, regards nature as self-producing (selbst hervorbringend). Secondly, in its limitation to organic matter, it had a clearer demarcation of explanatory scope than Wolff’s theory. While we do not know for certain when Kant first read Blumenbach, his first published mention of the term ‘epigenesis’ appeared in his 1785 review of Herder’s Ideen, which owed a great deal to Blumenbach.50 It was also in this review that Kant first formulates a viable conception of epigenesis, which remained at the core of his later account of epigenesis in the Critique of Judgment. In the review, Kant provides numerous quotations from the Ideen, some commentary on these quotations, and finally a brief, albeit highly critical, response to Herder’s methodology and his conception of reason. This highly critical attitude toward Herder’s methodology strongly contrasts with Kant’s more tempered reaction to Herder’s views of epigenesis. Kant begins the review by noting Herder’s disagreement with the word ‘epigenesis.’ The prefix ‘epi,’ Herder explains, misleadingly implies action from outside of newly generated material. For this reason, Herder offers the alternative term Bildung to imply formation that is internal to nature. Kant quotes Herder: “It is Bildung (genesis), an effect of inner forces for which nature had prepared a mass to which they give their form, in which they are to make themselves visible.”51 Kant is not averse to this point. Rather, he writes that “the reviewer fully concurs [ihm der Recensent völlig beitritt]” with Herder’s notion of Bildung, which Kant describes as “a principle of life, which appropriately modifies itself internally in accordance with differences of the external circumstances [innerlich nach Verschiedenheit der äußeren Umstände].”52 The parallel between Herder’s portrayal of epigenesis, as endorsed by Kant, and Blumenbach’s formulation, is striking. Herder emphasizes Blumenbach’s point that the formative force is a “principle of life,” not a force that might act in organic or inorganic matter. But the similarities of vocabulary go further. In the first volume of the Ideen (1784), Herder contends that “no eye has seen preformed germs,” and goes on to state that if a being possesses “organic forces [wirkende organische Kräfte],” then it can “generate itself [so erzeugt es selbst].”53 Blumenbach, in the 1781 version of his treatise, had pointed to the fact that the “perfection [Vollkommenheit] of our magnification lenses” is no good news for the yet unseen preformed germs, and continues to describe the action of epigenesis instead: in the “raw matter of the future creature,” after its due “period of preparation,” the “formative drive is stirred and can begin the formation of the hitherto unformed matter.”54 In his review of Herder, Kant reiterates the language of matter as “prepared”: what accounts for generation is an action inherent to, and limited to, this kind of matter, i.e. organic matter. Kant does, however, have one reservation regarding Herder’s take on epigenesis: if the cause organizing itself from within were limited by its nature only perhaps to a certain number and degree of differences in the formation of a creature (so that after the institution of which it were not further free to form yet another type under altered circumstances), then one could call this natural vocation of the forming nature also “germs” or “original predispositions,” without thereby regarding the former as primordially implanted machines and buds that unfold themselves only when occasioned (as in the system of evolution), but merely as limitations, not further explicable, of a self-forming faculty, which latter we can just as little explain or make comprehensible.55 In this comment, Kant anticipates his later formulation of “generic preformation” by suggesting that the main explanatory advantage of preformation, which Kant had used in his 1775 race essay, can be accommodated by an epigenetic theory, with one caveat: the limitation of form. Thus he stresses a point that (pace Kant) Herder had failed to emphasize in his account of epigenesis, but which Blumenbach had clearly made in the Handbuch der Naturgeschichte: the form to be reached in ontogenic development is limited phylogenetically. It is also clear that Kant does not consider the language of “germs” to be inherently in contradiction with that of epigenesis: in the terminology he uses here, “germs” correspond to Blumenbach’s “prepared matter” rather than “primordially implanted machines.” This looseness of terminology explains why Kant does not see a need to remove the language of Keime and Anlagen in the 1787 edition of the Transcendental Analytic.56 It is important that Kant’s first published use of the term ‘epigenesis‘eein a quotation from Herdereecoincides with the one moment in his review of the Ideen where Kant’s tone is not entirely critical, but surprisingly agreeable. Kant’s reworking of Herder’s conception of epigenesis is, in turn, strikingly similar to Blumenbach’s formative drive. It thus seems that Kant’s interest in epigenesis in the late 1780s was prompted by Herder, and 53 Herder (1784/1785 [1989]), 6, 171 (our translation). Blumenbach (1781), 42. Kant (1785), AA 8, 62e63 (emphasis added on “limited” and “limitation”). 56 For this reason, and in contrast to the majority of the scholarship, we do not think that Kant was actually offering two competing or paradoxical formulations in the 1787 edition of the first Critique. Given that he came to conceive of epigenesis along Blumenbachian lines, he did not regard the language of Keim and Anlage as inherently opposed to epigenesis. See n. 1 above. 54 55 48 49 50 51 52 Kant (1788), AA 8, 180. Kant (1790), AA 5, 424. Richards (2002), 225. Kant (1785), AA, 8, 50. Kant (1785), AA, 8, 62. 103 D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 104 specifically coincides with Blumenbach’s version of epigenesis.57 What appeals to Kant in this conception of epigenesis is its two inbuilt limitations. Blumenbach’s formative drive is restricted to the domain of the living, and he construes it as a genuinely formative, yet inherently limited faculty acting within that domain. In x81 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant explicitly calls this implication of Blumenbach’s epigenetic theory “generic preformation.” It is this conception of epigenesis as Bildung with limits that Kant invokes metaphorically in the second edition of the first Critique. 4. Reason and Herder’s Ideen Herder’s Ideen played a key role in Kant’s formation on at least two counts. As we have shown, it was in the review that Kant first formulated a viable conception of epigenesis as a scientific theory. It was also in the context of the review that he recognized the epistemic significance of epigenesis as a metaphor for his theory of reasoneeleading him to employ the metaphor in 1787. A key claim of Herder’s Ideen is that “reason is nothing but something received, a learned proportion and direction of ideas and forces to which the human being is formed through its organization and way of life .” This means, he continues, that “reason is not innate. . . ”58 Rather, it develops over time and is thus necessarily historical. It is, furthermore, effected by its natural (and historical) environment, such that a proper understanding of reason involves understanding its natural history. The study of reason that Herder enumerates in the Ideen radically differs from the picture Kant had offered in the first Critique. According to Herder’s account, to grasp reason, one must trace its development and emergence in history, andeein deep contrast to Kant’s transcendental conditions of possibilityeedistinguish the natural conditions of its possibility. One such condition, Herder argues, is uprightness. Importantly Herder’s explication of the development of reason does not amount to an explanation of the generation of reason through the coming together of isolated parts whose emergence (and individual existence) is entirely contingent (i.e., dependent on a variety of environmental circumstances). Rather, his view is that the development of reason goes hand in hand with the development of the whole organism, such that it is impossible to speak of reason as independent of the other parts of the human organism. Thus Herder writes that “every creature is suitably organized to live and move in its element . every creature . has its own, a new world.”59 He offers several examples to clarify what he means, illustrating how in each case, the animal or plant is structured according to its needs, and its complexity is commensurate with its particular situation and environment. In the case of the human being, Herder begins by noting that uprightness is specifically human, adding that this is not an accident but accords with the structure and shape of the human body: the foot of man is more firm and broad: he has a great long toe, while the ape has only a thumb; his heel too is on a level with the sole of his foot. All the muscles acting in this position are adapted to it. The calf of the leg is enlarged; the pelvis is drawn backwards; the hips are spread outwards from each other; the 57 This is in contrast to both Sloan and Zöller, who do not specifically identify Herder (and Kant’s reworking of Herder in the review) with Blumenbach. Rather, Sloan (2002) sees Herder as promoting a Wolffian version of epigenesis, while Zöller (1989) sees Kant’s comments in the review as evidence of Kant’s “familiarity with Wolff’s and Blumenbach’s concept of epigenesis” (81). On Herder’s familiarity with Blumenbach’s work, see Richards (2002), 225e6 and Nisbet (1970), 196. 58 Herder (1989), p. 144; see also p. 93. 59 Herder (1989), p. 89. spine is less curved; the breast is widened; the shoulders have clavicles; the hands have fingers endowed with the sense of feeling; to crown the structure, the receding head is exalted on the muscles of the neck . 60 It is on account of the whole organismeeits structure, the relations between its parts, and its relation with its environmentee that, Herder goes on to explain, uprightness becomes possible. Importantly, he notes that uprightness is not essential to being human, as is evident in children or humans who live among animals. Nonetheless, the very structure of the human body makes uprightness possible. This means that uprightness is something acquired in the right conditions. The same, Herder contends, holds for reason. Thus, as one of the chapter titles so clearly puts it, “the human being is organized for reason [Der Mensch ist zur Vernunftfähigkeit organisiert].”61 In other words, reason is possible given the structure and environment of the human being. As such, it is not something with which we are simply born. Rather, reason must be developed in the right circumstances. Thus, even if rationality in the human being is not entirely contingent (the structure of the human body makes rational thought possible, in contrast to other animals who lack this structure), it is also not entirely independent of these circumstances. It is, in other words, not self-grounding; rather, it is inextricably linked both to the total structure of the human being and the environment. In his review of Herder, Kant sees this move as a kind of naturalization of reason. The review begins with an enumeration of Herder’s key claims, including the claims that “alteration of the animals and of the human being [is] in accordance with the climates” and that organization pervades all of nature, including dead or inanimate nature, such as the ice crystal or snowflake.62 Kant emphasizes Herder’s use of the terms organic and organic force, noting that Herder “does not reckon with germs . but rather with an organic force [Kraft], in plants as much as animals.”63 This force, Kant goes on, underlies all of creation manifesting itself differently in different beings. It is the transformation of this one force, Kant maintains, that determines differences between beings. In the human being, Kant continues, this force is manifest at the erect gait. While Kant’s characterization of Herder’s account emphasizes uprightness in a way that overlooks Herder’s holistic understanding of development, the point that Kant wants to draw out and which he finds most problematic holds: for Herder, reason is not innate but acquired, and its acquisition depends on the natural development of the human being in general. As such, it can be studied in the same way that other aspects of the human organismeeand of nature in generaleecan be studied. It can be studied, in other words, through the comparative method that Herder employed in the Ideen and which he designated as anthropology. It is Herder’s naturalization of reason and his corresponding elimination of the task of metaphysics (and its replacement by anthropology) that Kant found deeply problematic. In turn, it is in light of these problematic views that Kant went on to develop and put to use the notion of “the epigenesis of pure reason” as a metaphor in explicating the character of the categories. Kant’s programmatic aim in the adoption of that metaphor mirrors Blumenbach’s in insisting on a separate domain of inquiry for the life sciences: just as Blumenbach had argued that the generation of structure in animate matter is the result of a capacity inherent to 60 61 62 63 Herder (1989), 112. Herder (1989), 116. Kant (1785), AA 8, 47. Kant (1785), AA 8, 48. D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 animate matter and animate matter alone, and thereby created a distinctive domain of knowledge, so Kant sought to show that the development of the categories employed by reason can only be explained within an independent theory of reason, and not as the product of natural-historical processes. Their development cannot be explained through the action of natural forces, nor can it be derived from nature, just as the generation of organization in animate matter cannot be explained as the action of mere formative forces (as in inorganic matter such as crystals) but only as that of a formative drive. Where Blumenbach establishes a domain of the study of life, Kant sought to reaffirm metaphysics as the singular domain for the study of reason. 5. B166-168 The significant passages in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant mentions the “epigenesis of pure reason,” and uses the notion to describe the only possible way by which to understand the relation between the categories and experience, comes toward the end of the Transcendental Deduction at B167. Kant introduces the notion of epigenesis here in a parenthetical remark, following a dismissal of an alternative way by which to understand the relation between experience and concepts. He writes: Now there are only two ways in which a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects can be thought: either the experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make the experience possible. The first is not the case with the categories (nor with pure sensible intuition); for they are a priori concepts, hence independent of experience (the assertion of an empirical origin would be a sort of generatio aequivoca). Consequently only the second way remains (as it were a system of the epigenesis of pure reason): namely that the categories contain the grounds of the possibility of all experience in general from the side of the understanding.64 It is important to begin by emphasizing the exact way in which Kant is invoking epigenesis here; he is not stating that the mind is a biological organism, which develops according to the laws of biological epigenesis. Rather, his claim is that epigenesis offers a model by which to understand the workings of the mind, more specifically, the relationship between the categories and experience. After he invokes this model, Kant goes on to reject a third model, which he identifies with “a kind of preformation-system of pure reason.”65 Such a picture of the mind, he explains, implies that “the categories were neither self-thought [selbsgedachte] a priori first principles of our cognition nor drawn from experience, but were rather subjective predispositions for thinking.”66 From this, it is evident that the epigenetic model means that the categories are “self-thought.” This contrasts with the very first option he had offered, in which the categories are merely empirical, “drawn from experience.” In turn, the final (third) option that Kant offers (and identifies with preformation) contrasts with the first two in that the categories are neither self-thought, nor drawn from experience, but rather “implanted [eingepflanzt]” in the mindeeas one would imagine the germs are implanted in the natural organism. In other words, the “preformation-system of pure reason” implies something like innate ideas. 64 65 66 Kant (1781/1787), B166-7. Kant (1781/1787), B167. Ibid. 105 Kant rejects this third option because “in such a case the categories would lack the necessity that is essential to their concept.” He elaborates via example: “the concept of cause, which asserts the necessity of a consequent under a presupposed condition, would be false if it rested only on subjective necessity, arbitrarily implanted in us, of combining certain empirical representations according to such a rule of relation.”67 Precisely because they are “arbitrarily implanted in us,” Kant contends, innate ideas do not bear any necessity with regard to their concept. That is to say, the necessity is not inherent to the concept, but external to it: they “lack the necessity that essentially belongs to their concept.”68 Thus, they cannot produce objectively valid knowledge. This might seem like an odd claim. Why, one might ask, would innate ideas not deliver objective knowledge? Günter Zöller has responded to this question by focusing on the distinction between innate ideas and the a priori categories born out of the selfgenerating character of reason. The claim is that insofar as reason is self-grounding and self-generating, the categories must be understood not as original or innate, but as “acquired” in and through the activity of thinking.69 This contrasts with the innatist view, which rests on “mere coincidence, due to some divine prearrangement.”70 The categories are not arbitrary, then, because they are the “self-thought” products of the activity of thinking itself. Although Zöller is right to emphasize the self-generating character of reason, and on that basis distinguish the categories from innate ideas, the notions of self-generation and “self-thought” alone do not fully explicate the character of the categories, account for their objective validity, or distinguish the specificity (and thereby the real significance) of Kant’s use of the metaphor of epigenesis.71 For Zöller, Kant’s conception of epigenesis amounts to the self-generation of reason, and can thus be modeled on either Wolff’s or Blumenbach’s theories.72 As we have argued, however, already in 1785, Kant had formulated a conception of epigenesis that mirrors Blumenbach’seea conception that distinctively emphasizes limitation on two counts: the delimitation of living from non-living beings, and phylogenetic limitation. The real import of Kant’s metaphor, then, cannot simply be the notion of selfgeneration, but rather generation with limitation. This becomes clear when we examine the context of the metaphor. It appears in the Deduction, where Kant aims to justify the categories. As numerous commentators have argued, this means that he must show not only that the application of the categories is 67 Kant (1781/1787), B168; emphasis added. Kant (1781/1787), B168. 69 And not, as is the case in Herder, through the overall development of the natural organism in its environment. Zöller quotes Kant: “The Critique admits absolutely no divinely implanted (anerschaffene) or innate (angeborene) representations. It regards them all, whether they belong to intuition or to concepts of the understanding, as acquired.” Zöller (1989), 227. 70 Zöller (1989), 231. Zöller explains that the innatist problem would not arise for a theory of knowledge that is entirely based on innate ideas, without any input from mind-external entities. It is only a theory of knowledge that regards knowledge as the outcome of both something non-empirical and something empirical that requires a distinction between necessary (a priori) and non-necessary (empirical) ideas. 71 We agree with Mensch (2013) who has shown that the significance of epigenesis in the Transcendental Deduction goes beyond the claim that reason is self-generating and the categories are self-thought; in addition, she argues, epigenesis implies a “transcendental affinity within cognition itself,” an affinity which grants unity to the “experience of nature’s coherence” (134). Our claim is that this unity is achieved through limitation. 72 See n. 57. Precisely because Zöller does not recognize the way in which Kant reinterprets epigenesis as a form of “generic preformation” in the Herder review, he misses the fact that by 1787 Kant is specifically identifying epigenesis with generic preformation (i.e., Blumenbach), such that its real import rests not simply in the notion of self-generation, but also in the notion of limitation. 68 106 D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 possible, but also that the categories constrain or limit experience, such that it is this limiting capacity that “ensure[s] that the logical function of subject-predicate judgment is used in a certain way .”73 In other words, to demonstrate the objective validity of the categories, Kant needs to show that, as products of the activity of thought, the categories are also limiting forces of and on this activity.74 Precisely because the categories are the “self-thought” products of the operation of the understanding, they are not originally present in the mind but formed through the activity of thinking. This formation, in other words, takes place according to the rulebound activity of the understanding. The categories are thus the products of the mind applying itself according to its own rules. The categories are therefore both the outcome of a rule of thoughteesuch that they can be described as “self-thought”ee and the application of this rule onto experience. As the application of this rule onto experience, the categories play a limiting functioneethe carve out experience into entities that must always be subjects or entities that are predicated of these subjects. And it is this limiting function of the categories that warrants their objective validity: they non-arbitrarily impose cognitive parameters on experience. The manner in which the categories actually determine and constrain our experience in certain ways is beyond the scope of this paper. Our purpose is not to explain how this application occurs, but rather to show that it is this rule-bounded and limiting character of the categories, mirroring the account of limited natural generation that Kant had formulated in his review of Herder, which led Kant to adopt the metaphor of epigenesis to explicate his conception of the mind.75 The categories, then, to quote Kant’s statement from the review, are “limitations, not further explicable, of a self-forming faculty [weiter nicht erklärliche Einschränkungen eines sich selbst bildenden Vermögens].”76 The parallel between this conception of the pure concepts of the understandingeeas the outcome of the rule-governed activity of the understanding and the limiting application of this ruleeeand Kant’s conception of epigenesis qua scientific theory is clear. As we have argued, Kant’s understanding of epigenesis after 1785 involves 73 Guyer (1992), 131. Zammito (2003) makes a similar point with regard to Zöller’s interpretation. As he puts it, “Spontaneity of the categories was not sufficient for Kant’s transcendental deduction, he also needed their constitutive sovereignty over experience” (92). Zammito takes this to be the ability of the mind to “produce new knowledge,” which is to say that the mind “had to be a real cause (of knowledge) .” leading him to conclude that “Kant’s epigenesis analogy . built intellectual causation (determination; constitution) into the fundamental structure of the transcendental deduction of the possibility of experience.” As Zammito notes, such a conception waseeon Kant’s transcendental principleseeunacceptable; but Kant had, according to Zammito, not fully understood the meaning of the analogy he was drawing, because he “was especially ignorant of the revolution in thinking about this phenomenon inaugurated by Blumenbach in 1781” (93). We have tried to show that this was indeed not the case, rather, that Kant did have a grasp of the revolution in thinking brought about by Blumenbach, and that it was precisely on account of this revolution that he came to adopt this metaphor. Thus, in contrast to Zammito’s interpretation of where the “sovereignty” of the categories comes from on an epigenetic model, we argue that it has nothing to do with the production of new knowledge (i.e., content), but rather with the (formal) application of the rules inherent to thought. 75 Sloan (2002) thinks that Kant’s preference for preformation and his insistence on the use of the language of preformation to speak about the activity of cognition has to do with the limitations that the preformative theory places on the selfstructuring capacity of living beings (244e245). As we have shown, however, Kant’s conception of epigenesis following his Herder review involves limitation, such that in the 1787 edition of the first Critique, he can invoke the metaphor of epigenesis and imply limitation. Preformation, by contrast, is regarded as a deeply problematic metaphor for the mechanism of cognition. 76 Kant (1785), AA 8, 63. 74 two key factors: the first, which many have emphasized, concerns the self-generating character of living beings and reason. The second, much less noted aspect, involves limitation. It is precisely this second aspect that attracted Kant to Blumenbach’s specific conception of epigenesis and that Kant formulated in his Herder review. As we have shown, for Blumenbach the term ‘epigenesis’ involves limitation on two levels. First, it involves the limitation of the formative drive by the composition of the reproductive matter of a given species. On the cognitive level for Kant, this implied the limitations of the categories, insofar as they are the outcomes of rules of thought and the application of these rules. Limitation for Blumenbach also meant the delimitation of biological entities as opposed to physical oneseewith the corresponding differentiation between biology and physics. For Kant, too, epigenesis involved limitation on this level, specifically, the delimitation and independence of the domain of reason from the domain of nature. Metaphysics, as the study of reason, is thus separated from natural history and anthropology. As “self-forming” or “self-born,” reason is not born out of something other than itself (i.e., natural forces) and thus cannot be studied in the same way that other beings are studied. Contra Herder, metaphysics for Kant is preserved as an independent domain of study. References Blumenbach, J. F. (1780). Professor Blumenbach über den Bildungstrieb (nisus formativus) und seinen Einfluß auf Generation und Reproduction (pp. 247-266). Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur, 1. Jg., 5. Stück. Blumenbach, J. F. (1781). D. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte. Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich. Blumenbach, J. F. (1782). Handbuch der Naturgeschichte. Zweyte durchgehends verbesserte Ausgabe. Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich. Blumenbach, J. F. (1789). Über den Bildungstrieb. Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich. Guyer, P. (1992). The transcendental deduction of the categories. In P. Guyer (Ed.), The cambridge companion to Kant (pp. 123-160). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herder, J. G. (1989). Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. In J. Brummack, & M. Bollacher (Eds.), Johann Gottfried Herder: Werke in zehn Bänden (Vol. 6) Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Klassiker Verlag. First published 1784 and 1785. Kant, I. (1763). Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes. In AA vol. II, pp. 63e164. Kant, I. (1766). Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik. In AA II, pp. 315e374. Kant, I. (1772e1776). Reflexionen zur Metaphysik. In AA XVII, pp. 227e754 and AA XVIII, pp. 3e725. Kant, I. (1775). Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen. In AA II, pp. 427e444. Kant, I. (1781/1787). Kritik der reinen Vernunft (A¼1781; B ¼ 1787) In AA vol. 3, and AA vol. IV, pp. 1e252. Kant, I. (1785). Recensionen von J. G. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Theil 1. 2. In AA vol. VIII, pp. 43e66. Kant, I. (1788). Über den Gebrauch der teleogischen Principien in der Philosophie. In AA vol. VIII, pp. 157e184. Kant, I. (1790). Kritik der Urteilskraft. In AA vol. V, pp. 165e486. Klein, U., & Lefèvre, W. (2007). Materials in eighteenth-century science: A historical ontology. Cambridge: MIT Press. Löw, R. (1980). Philosophie des Lebendigen. Der Begriff des Organischen bei Kant, sein Grund und seine Aktualität. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Maupertuis, P. L. (1984). Essai de Cosmologie. Systeme de la nature. Response aux objections de M. Diderot. Presentation de François Azouvi [1751]. Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin McLaughlin, P. (1982). Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb. Zum Verhältnis von epigenetischer Embryologie und typologischem Artbegriff. Medizinhistorisches Journal, 17, 357-372. McLaughlin, P. (2002). Naming biology. Journal of the History of Biology, 35, 1-4. McLaughlin, P. (2007). Kant on heredity and adaptation. In S. Müller-Wille, & H.J. Rheinberger (Eds.), Heredity produced: At the crossroads of biology, politics and culture (pp. 277-291). Cambridge: MIT Press. Mensch, J. (2013). Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the development of critical philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Piché, C. (2001). The precritical use of the metaphor of epigenesis. In T. Rockmore (Ed.), New essays on the precritical Kant (pp.182-200). New York: Humanity Books. Roe, S. (1981). Matter, life, and generation: 18th-century embryology and the HallerWolff-debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D. Helbig, D. Nassar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 98e107 Sloan, P. (2002). Preforming the categories: eighteenth century generation theory and the biological roots of Kant’s a priori. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 40(2), 229-253. Witt, E. (2008). Form e a matter of generation. Science in Context, 21(4), 649-664. Zammito, J. (2003). This inscrutable principle of an original organization’: epigenesis and ‘looseness of fit’ in Kant’s philosophy of science. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 34(1), 73-109. Zöller, G. (1988). Kant on the generation of metaphysical knowledge. In H. Oberer, & G. Seel (Eds.), Kant: Analysen-Probleme-Kritik (pp. 71-90). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Zöller, G. (1989). From innate to a priori. The Monist, 72(2), 222-235. 107 Further reading Kant, I. (2000). In P. Guyer (Ed.), Critique of the power of judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2002). In H. Allison, P. Heath, G. Hatfield, & M. Friedman (Eds.), Theoretical philosophy after 1781. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2007). In G. Zöller, & R. B. Louden (Eds.), Anthropology, history, and education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.