Review by Choice Review
A study of Kant's contribution to an issue in the philosophy of science, viz., the possibilities and limits of mechanistic reductionism in biology. McLaughlin focuses on the antinomy of judgment in the teleology part of Kant's Critique of Judgment. The first chapter states the problems of mechanistic biology in the mid-18th century, documents Kant's familiarity with the contemporary biological debate, and introduces Kant's paradoxical notion of a "natural purpose." The second chapter examines the antinomy of pure reason from the Critique of Pure Reason. The emphasis is on Kant's account of the part-whole relation and on the idea of a noumenal causality. The concluding chapter develops a controversial interpretation of the antinomy of judgment in the Critique of Teleological Judgment. McLaughlin rejects interpretations that attribute to Kant the adoption of a holistic alternative to mechanistic reductionism. According to McLaughlin, Kant offers a solution to the insufficiency of mechanistic biological explanation that is compatible with mechanism. He further emphasizes that Kant's mechanistic reductionism is not an ontological doctrine about the nature of reality but a research program that reflects the operational procedures of the human mind. Recommended for graduate-level collections with strong holdings in German philosophy. -G. Zoeller, University of Iowa
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
