Abstract
In recent years Kant’s pre-critical work on natural history has gained significant attention. Scholars have recognised that Kant’s nebular hypothesis of the formation of the solar system, his identification of the Milky Way as a rotating galaxy, and his reproductive account of heredity make innovative contributions to key debates in eighteenth century natural history. Of course, none of these ideas are especially novel.
Highlights
In recent years Kant’s pre-critical work on natural history has gained significant attention
In a letter to Reinhold in 1787 Kant gives us a clue to understanding how his critical examination of teleology in the third Critique emerged from this development
He apologies to Reinhold for not praising his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy in the Teutsche Merkur, and explains the reason for his neglect as follows: an essay in that very journal, written by the younger Herr Forster and directed against some other ideas of mine, made it difficult to do this without taking on both projects together
Summary
In recent years Kant’s pre-critical work on natural history has gained significant attention. To do so I examine Kant’s extensive reflections on natural history’s teleological method throughout the 1770s and 1780s, giving particular focus to debates with interlocutors Johann Georg Forster and Johann Gottfried Herder in the mid-1780s This analysis will show that Kant remained concerned with developments in the field of natural history throughout the critical period and that his critique of leading research programmes provided the conceptual work for the teleological principle that grounds his third Critique. The result is a teleological method for the practice of natural history that does not provide knowledge of historical development but guides the empirical investigation of objects whose form cannot be understood apart from temporal variation.[9]
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