Now it is quite indeterminate, and for our Understanding always
indeterminable, how much the mechanism of nature does as a means
towards each final design in nature. However, on account of the
above-mentioned intelligible principle of the possibility of a nature
in general, it may be assumed that it is possible throughout according
to the two kinds of universally accordant laws (the physical and
those of final causes), although we cannot see into the way how this
takes place. Hence we do not know how far the mechanical method of
explanation which is possible for us may extend. So much only is
certain that, so far as we can go in this direction, it must always
be inadequate for things that we once recognise as natural purposes;
and therefore we must, by the constitution of our Understanding,
subordinate these grounds collectively to a teleological principle.
Hereon is based a privilege, and on account of the importance which the
study of nature by the principle of mechanism has for the theoretical
use of our Reason, also an appeal. We should explain all products
and occurrences in nature, even the most purposive, by mechanism as
far as is in our power (the limits of which we cannot specify in
this kind of investigation). But at the same time we are not to lose
sight of the fact that those things which we cannot even state for
investigation except under the concept of a purpose of Reason, must, in
conformity with the essential constitution of our Reason, mechanical
causes notwithstanding, be subordinated by us finally to causality in
accordance with purposes.
METHODOLOGY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGEMENT.[119]
§ 79. _Whether teleology must be treated as if it belonged to the
doctrine of nature_
Every science must have its definite position in the encyclopaedia of
all the sciences. If it is a philosophical science its position must be
either in the theoretical or practical part. If again it has its place
in the former of these, it must be either in the doctrine of nature, so
far as it concerns that which can be an object of experience (in the
doctrine of bodies, the doctrine of the soul, or the universal science
of the world), or in the doctrine of God (the original ground of the
world as the complex of all objects of experience).
Now the question is, what place is due to Teleology? Does it belong
to Natural Science (properly so called) or to Theology? One of the
two it must be; for no science belongs to the transition from one to
the other, because this transition only marks the articulation or
organisation of the system, and not a place in it.
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