Kant's organicism : epigenesis and the development of critical philosophy / Jennifer Mensch.

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

Because it laid the foundation for nearly all subsequent epistemologies, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has overshadowed his other interests in natural history and the life sciences, which scholars have long considered as separate from his rigorous theoretical philosophy-until now. In Kant's Organicism, Jennifer Mensch draws a crucial link between these spheres by showing how the concept of epigenesis-a radical theory of biological formation-lies at the heart of Kant's conception of reason. As Mensch argues, epigenesis was not simply a metaphor.

Preface; Introduction: Kant's Organicism; 1. Generation and the Task of Classification; Mechanism and the Principle of Life; Leibniz's Organic Machines; 2. Buffon's Natural History and the Founding of Organicism; Hales and the Physiology of Plants; Buffon the French Newtonian; Maupertuis, Buffon, and the Problem of Form; Natural History and the History of Nature; 3. Kant and the Problem of Origin; Kant's Eclecticism; Matter and Cosmos; The Spectacle of Life; 4. The Rebirth of Metaphysics; A Philosophy Is Born; From Original Acquisition to the Epigenesis of Knowledge.

Concepts and Objects: Kant's Letter to Herz, 17725. From the Unity of Reason to the Unity of Race; The Unity of Reason; The Unity of Race; A Germ of Reason and a Germ for Race; 6. Empirical Psychology in Tetens and Kant; Epigenesis and Evolution in Tetens's Philosophical Essays; From Empirical Psychology to a Transcendental Theory of Imagination; Transcendental Philosophy and the Physiology of Pure Reason; 7. Kant's Architectonic: System and Organism in the Critique of Pure Reason; The Doctrine of Method: The Bauplan of the System; The Transcendental Deduction: The Bauplan at Work.

Organic Logic: A Cautionary TaleEpilogue: A Daring Adventure of Reason; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

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