instruments of judgment- inscribing organic processes in late 18th century germany 2002

Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 33 (2002) 79131www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc

Instruments of judgment: inscribing organicprocesses in late eighteenth-century Germany

Joan SteigerwaldScience and Society, Bethune College, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada M3J 1P3

Received 11 May 2000; received in revised form 7 May 2001

Abstract

The paper argues for the importance to Kants critique of judgment of epistemologicalreflections upon the problematics of experimentation on organic processes. It examines theinvestigations of generation by Wolff and Blumenbach, demonstrating how their experimentalpractices mediated reflectively between organic phenomena and their conceptualisation, actingas instruments of their judgments of these processes. It then reads Kants Kritik der teleolog-ischen Urteilskraft in light of these experimental investigations, arguing that Kant highlightshow the problematic relation between organic phenomena and their conceptualisation mani-fested in such investigations is opened up as a space for reflection, thus making this act ofjudgment conscious. The relation between Kants critiques of judgment in his first and thirdcritiques are then discussed, and it is argued that the reflective character of judgment high-lighted in the judgment of organic processes draws into focus the problematic aspects of alljudgments of natural phenomena, by making conscious the synthetic process of judgmenteffected by unconscious acts of the imagination in the first critique. Finally, the paper examinesHumboldts galvanic experiments, showing how they were informed by Kants critical philo-sophy, but also how they contributed to the blurring of the boundaries between the judgmentof organic and inorganic processes. Thus it is claimed that the reflections upon judgment inthe Kritik der Urteilskraft problematized rather than clarified Kants treatment of judgment inthe first critique. 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Blumenbach; Humboldt; Kant; Wolff; Experiment; Judgment; Imagination

E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Steigerwald).

1369-8486/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S 13 69 -8486( 01 )0 0036-X

80 J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 33 (2002) 79131

Histories of the life sciences in the eighteenth century have had a persistent pre-occupation with marking out metaphysical typologies, with the categories of vitalism,mechanism, materialism and the like. Immanuel Kants Kritik der teleologischenUrteilskraft is usually introduced into these histories as placing strictures on suchmetaphysical speculations, or as introducing a cautious metaphysics, that of teleo-mechanism.1 Certainly Kants critical project started from a critique of the dogmaticmetaphysics of the eighteenth century, and sought a method for guarding against theerrors and contradictions of reason in its speculative, non-empirical use. Kants criti-cal works, however, were conceived as treatises on method, as investigations ofcognitive processes rather than their products; they were an examination of howcognition is possible, of the sources and conditions of cognition, of in what waysand by what right reason arrives at its concepts. They were epistemological treatises,upon which, Kant argued, any metaphysical system, as the inventory of all ourpossessions through pure reason, must be dependent.2 The Kritik der teleologischenUrteilskraft was thus concerned with the process of teleological or reflective judg-ment, and specifically the conditions of judgments made in the investigation oforganized bodies or nature as an organized system. Indeed, in his critical examinationof teleological judgment Kant referred to the strategies employed by contemporaryanatomists, natural historians and physiologists in their investigations of organizedbodies, and suggested methodological guidelines informed by those strategies.Accordingly, the scientific context of Kants third critique was the investigativeactivities of anatomists, natural historians and physiologists, rather than simply thetheories produced by these investigations. This paper examines aspects of that con-text, relating the Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft to some of the reflectionsupon the experimental investigations of organic processes to which it responded andto which it contributed, focusing upon those of Caspar Friedrich Wolff, Johann Fried-rich Blumenbach and Alexander von Humboldt. It will offer a reading of Kants1790 work from the perspective of the epistemology of experiment.

The emphasis here on the epistemology of experiment is influenced by work inscience studies during the last two decades which has been critical of the emphasesof previous histories of science on scientific theories and which concentrates insteadupon experimental practices. It is perhaps surprising to include Kant in a discussionof experiment. Kant, after all, has often been invoked negatively as an exemplar ofan emphasis upon theoretical reason by those advocating instead attention to experi-mental practices. Bruno Latour, for example, is critical of the influence of KantsCopernican Revolution, which he characterizes as a shift from the mind of scientistsrevolving around the things to the things revolving around the mind. In Kants sun-centered perspective, Latour contends, things are passively shaped by the categories

1 The term teleo-mechanism was introduced by Timothy Lenoir in a series of works in the early 1980s.These important and influential works have informed most studies of the life sciences in Germany in thelate eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See in particular Lenoir (1982), Ch. 1; and Lenoir (1980).

2 All citations from the Kritik der reinen Vernunft are taken from the translation by N. Kemp Smith(Kant, 1993), hereafter abbreviated as KrV (KrV Axx). See also the Preface to both editions and theIntroduction, Aviixxii/Bvii-xliv and A116/B130.

81J. Steigerwald / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 33 (2002) 79131

impressed upon them by a transcendental subject.3 But if one reads Kant carefullyand contextually, rather than taking him as a representative of the viewpoint of adisembodied mind, one finds that his metaphor of a Copernican Revolution issubtler than Latour suggests. Kant did argue that given the failure of contemporaryphilosophy to extend our knowledge of objects on the supposition that all our knowl-edge must conform to objects, we should examine whether we might be more suc-cessful on the supposition that objects must conform to our knowledge we canonly know what has meaning for our forms of cognition. But Copernicus primaryhypothesis was that, failing satisfactory progress in explaining the movements ofthe heavenly bodies on the supposition that they all revolve around the spectator,he tried whether he might not have more success if he made the spectator to revolveand the stars to remain at rest.4 For Kant the mind may be the active componentin knowledge formation, but it occupies the position of the earth, not the sun, in theCopernican system. Kant does not play the God-trick.5 In fact, he was critical ofdogmatic metaphysics for such presumptions, and started from the premise of thelimitations of human cognition in contrast to an imagined divine or archetypal intel-lect. Kant, of course, did claim to prove the universality, necessity and objectivevalidity of a priori concepts in terms that cannot be accepted today. But Kantscritical philosophy becomes much more interesting if an attempt is made to read itin the terms of its context, and as some of his immediate and most competent readersread it.6 This is especially true of the Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, wherethe subject, from its partial perspective of the revolving earth, finds no a priori con-cept by which determinately to judge organized bodies, but rather must move reflec-tively between phenomena and their conception, seeking a principle as an instrumentto guide this movement from the act of judgment itself.

Kants critique of judgment in his third and final critical work, and his argumentsfor the absence of a determinate concept for the judgment of organized systems,opened up an interesting problematic. In the vast territory in which the cognition ofobjects is possible, for beings with our particular cognitive powers, Kant dis-tinguished two domains, that of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in which understand-ing legislates through the concept of nature, and that of the Kritik der praktischenVernunft, in which reason legislates through the concept of freedom. Between thesetwo domains is fixed an immense gulf [Kluft] . . . just as if they were two differentworlds.7 It is this total separation of the two domains, and the lack of a domain

3 On Kants Copernican Revolution and Latours Counter-Copernican Revolution, see Latour(1987), pp. 22433; Latour (1991), pp. 5562, 769; and Latour (1999), pp. 57, 16, 305.

4 KrV, B xvixvii.5 The expression is Donna Haraways: she accuses scientists, philosophers and sociologists of playing

this game, albeit from different perspectives. See Haraway (1991), pp. 183201. Latour refers to Hara-ways argument in making his. See Latour (1999), p. 4.

6 The concept of contemporary, competent readers is discussed in Jardine (2000), first supplemen-tary essay.

7 All of the citations from Kritik der Urteilskraft are taken from the translation by W. S. Pluhar (Kant,1987), hereafter abbreviated KU. Page numbers refer to the Akademie edition (Kant, 190813, Vol. 5),which are also given in the Pluhar translation (KU 1756).


in which a concept legislates, the lack of an ontology for the space in between, atwhich Latour protests.8 Yet it is in this indeterminate space that judgment must act,mediating between experience and reason. Kant highlighted the contingency of theharmony of diversity and complexity in nature with the need and ability of ourcognition to grasp order in that complexity. His critique of judgment accentuatedthe synthetic and dynamic character of judgment, as it brings together disparateelements. In the Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft the lack of a determinateconcept for organized bodies brings this synthetic action reflexively into conscious-ness. But judgment is also at the center of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, a judgmentin which the application of given a priori concepts to phenomena make possibleobjective and determinative knowledge. Judgment as represented in the first critiqueis also a synthetic act, but the act of relation remains unconscious, effected by thetranscendental imagination. The fundamental difference between the kinds of judg-ment discussed in the first and third critiques thus appears to be the differencebetween a conscious reflexive act of synthesis, and a synthesis enacted unconsciouslyand automatically. But both, as synthetic or productive acts, are problematic.

The problem of synthetic judgments also confronted those investigating organicprocesses at the time the Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft was written. Havingno way to make visible the linkages between the successive stages in a complexorganic alteration, such as generation or muscle contraction, investigators such asWolff, Blumenbach and Humboldt nevertheless needed to find concepts to makesense of those phenomena. How were such judgments to be made? Experimentalinterventions and their conceptual counterparts were used as instruments of judgment.Intervening in the phenomena of generation, disrupting the process and marking itsrecovery, studying regeneration, tracing the imagined action of generation with theaid of an experimental tool, investigating muscle contraction under diverse conditionsand attending to the various components affecting its action these experimentalinterventions became means for judging such phenomena. The literature on experi-ment from Fleck and Bachelard through Hacking, Holmes, Shapin and Schafferto Pickering, Barad, Rheinberger and Galison has made us aware of the complexprocesses of experimental reasoning: how knowledge is gained through producingand intervening, how experimentalists think through or with tools, how these toolsbecome a form of extended imagination, and how experimental technologies becometheories materialized.9 The anatomists, naturalists and physiologists investigatingorganic processes at the end of the eighteenth century used experiments as techniquesfor conceiving how such processes occurred, as they tried to reproduce with theirinstruments the actions they studied. Concepts of formative actions or forces, suchas a Bildungstrieb or Lebenskraft, were similarly used as instruments of judgment,guiding such experimentation, but also being produced from and reconceived withinexperimental activity. Kant appealed to the instruments used by such investigators

8 Latour (1991), p. 56.9 See, for example, Fleck (1979), Bachelard (1984), Hacking (1983), Shapin and Schaffer (1985),

Holmes (1985), Pickering (1995), Barad (1996), Rheinberger (1997) and Galison (1997).


in his Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft as both products of and guides to judg-ment in its reflective activity, in its attempt to apperceive organic phenomena.

These instruments of judgment acted as a kind of stylus, inscribing in organicmaterial specific conceptualisations, making the processes studied manifest andmeaningful. The term inscription was introduced into science studies by Latour andSteve Woolgar to refer to all types of transformations, with the help of instrumentsand other devices, through which an entity is materialized into a sign, an archive, adocument, a piece of paper, a trace.10 Drawing upon Gaston Bachelards notion ofphenomeno-technology, they emphasize the process of producing inscriptions andthe dependency of phenomena upon the apparatus producing them.11 But their notionof inscription is derived from Jacques Derrida, in that they conceive the products ofthe laboratory as a kind of writing, as material signifiers. Their conception of writingis closer to the common sense view than Derridas, however, in that they emphasizeparallels between writing at the lab bench and writing in the office space, takinginscriptions as the written documents that are the end results of complex processesin the laboratory the tables, graphs or pictures finally used in a published paper and excluding prior intermediary forms, and in that they regard such textual inscrip-tions as immutable mobiles, which, although subject to translations, have relativelyfixed forms. In contrast, Derrida emphasizes the instability of such material signifiers,their dissemination, with signifiers always referring to other signifiers, so that sig-nifier always already means more than the writer meant to say; and he emphasizesthe primacy of writing, writing being put ahead of objective things and subjectiveideas, so that not only language but even the world and subjectivity are materializedas writing.12 Hans-Jorg Rheinberger has developed the notion of inscriptions articu-lated in experimental contexts, drawing upon a closer reading of Derrida. He doesnot distinguish between apparatuses that transform pieces of matter from one stateto the next and inscription devices that transform pieces of matter into writtendocuments. Rather he takes all instruments in an experimental arrangement as pro-ductive of graphemes, of material signifiers, so that printed tables, graphs and dia-grams are but further transformations of a graphematic disposition of pieces of mat-ter. But again the emphasis is upon the inseparability of inscriptions from theinstruments of their writing; graphemes cannot be conceived apart from their spacesof representation, the experimental arrangement in which they are produced.13 Lat-our, Woolgar and Rheinberger are, of course, concerned with the complex experi-mental processes of the modern laboratory. But recent work, such as that found inthe collection Inscribing science: scientific texts and the materiality of communi-cation, has extended the notion of inscription to a wider range of experimental and

10 Latour and Woolgar (1979), pp. 4553, 889 and 245. Latour also uses the notion in his Science inaction (Latour, 1987, pp. 6471), but has subsequently distanced his ideas from Derrida. See Latour(1991), pp. 58 and 625. Latours treatment of the semiotic turn is the more ambitious and less convinc-ing part of his critique of the modern constitution.

11 Latour and Woolgar (1979), pp. 639. See Bachelard (1984), p. 13.12 See Derrida (1997, 1982, 1981, 1978). See also Bennington and Derrida (1993).13 Rheinberger (1997), pp. 10212.


representational activities.14 Those experimenting upon organic processes at the endof the eighteenth century produced relatively simple forms of inscription; with theirinstruments they wrote in the organic material itself, as with their pens they wroteverbal narratives, as means of articulating, of representing these processes, and ofgiving them material significance.

There were temporal and even teleological dimensions to the writing of theseinscriptions, complex relations between the means of inquiry and its end or result.In the Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft Kant remarked upon the apparent pur-posiveness of nature in its complex forms for human judgment, as if the organizedforms of nature were the result of a higher cause. The critical project started fromthe premise that reason only has insight into what it produces after a plan of its ownand constrains nature to answer questions of its own determination. But in the judg-ment of organized bodies, there was no determinate concept commensurate withnature. Judgment, in its reflection upon organized bodies, Kant contended, arrivesat two possible principles it can use as a guide, the principle of the mechanism ofnature or the principle of purposiveness. Depending upon which principle guidedjudgments reflections, different phenomena were made manifest. In addition,depending upon which instruments and techniques were used in investigations, dif-ferent phenomena were inscribed in the organic matter. The purposiveness oforganized nature for our cognitive capacities might thus seem a product of an investi-gators own designs rather than those of a higher reason. But these conceptual andexperimental activities were not wholly intentional or within investigators control.Specific conceptual and instrumental resources, the specific skills of investigators,constrained the character of investigations and shaped the phenomena in tacit ways.As Rheinberger argues, the spaces of representation are created through graphematicconcatenations if productive of graphemes, they are also engendered by them.15The result was a lacuna between what an investigator meant to make evident andwhat he was constrained to inscribe. Moreover, phenomena were not completelymalleable to conceptual or instrumental prodding. Some resisted being comprehendedin terms of a mechanical principle. Sometimes the organic material studied respondedto an experimental intervention in unexpected ways. The materiality of a specificexperiment wrote the inscription in a manner exterior to its authors intent; resultswere produced that were outside the experimenters control, unanticipated andunstable. Humboldt actually made the instability of experiments on organic matter his reflective judgment that each experiment had a unique material specificity andthat each experimental intervention altered that material specificity so that no experi-ment could actually be reproduced into his definition of the organic as continualMischungsveranderungen [alterations of combinations].16 The techniques whichHumboldt used in his experiments in the mid-1790s, those of new investigations inphysics and chemistry, had begun to destabilize the mechanical concepts that had

14 Lenoir (1998).15 Rheinberger (1997), pp. 1058.16 This expression is used throughout Humboldts publications on his galvanic experiments. See Hum-

boldt (1796, 1797a,b,c,d).


dominated eighteenth-century sciences; Humboldts use of them to study organicprocesses would contribute to a blurring of the boundary between the inorganicand organic.

Although it is useful to borrow terms from current theorizing on experimentationin attempting to make sense of experiments on organic bodies at the end of theeighteenth century, the notion of experiment discussed in this paper is not intendedas a contribution to a general theory of experiment. As Galison argues, the meaningof experiment is unstable and changing;17 clearly the reflections upon experimen-tation presented here are historically and culturally specific. These reflections arealso necessarily selective; they do not exhaust the practices and epistemology ofexperiment in Germany at this time. Moreover, this paper makes no claim to providean exhaustive account of the influences, scientific or otherwise, upon Kants Kritikder teleologischen Urteilskraft; perhaps its most glaring omission is a discussion ofthe relationships between the two parts of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, the Kritik derteleologischen Urteilskraft and the Kritik der asthetischen Urteilskraft.

What this paper does argue is the importance of epistemological reflections uponthe problematics of experimentation on organic processes to Kants critique of judg-ment. The first part of the paper examines the investigations of the processes ofgeneration by Wolff and Blumenbach, both of whose works Kant knew, demonstrat-ing how their experimental practices mediated reflectively between organic phenom-ena and their conceptualisation, acting as instruments of their judgments of theseprocesses. The second part of the paper reads Kants Kritik der teleologischenUrteilskraft in light of these experimental investigations, arguing that Kants critiqueof judgment highlights how the problematic relation between organic phenomenaand their conceptualisation manifested in such investigations is opened up as a spacefor reflection, as an indeterminate space in which synthetic and reflective judgmentacts, thus making this action conscious, and even concrete. The third part of thepaper discusses the relation between Kants critiques of judgment in the Kritik derUrteilskraft and the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, arguing that the indeterminate andreflective character of judgment highlighted in the judgment of organic processesdraws to attention the problematic aspects of all judgments of natural phenomena,by making explicit or conscious the synthetic process of judgment that is effectedby unconscious acts of the imagination in the first critique. The fourth and finalsection of the paper examines Humboldts galvanic experiments, showing how theywere informed by Kants critical philosophy, but also how they contributed to theblurring of the boundaries between the judgment of organic and inorganic processes.Thus, if Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft forcefully articulated the epistemological prob-lems encountered by new experimental investigations of organic processes, its reflec-tions on judgment, thus stimulated, problematized rather than clarified Kants treat-ment of judgment in the first critique.

17 Galison (1997), pp. 57.


1. Experiments on generation: Wolff and Blumenbach

In the years just prior to the publication of Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, Wolffand Blumenbach were the only individuals who experimentally investigated and pro-posed detailed theories of generation. Kant evidently knew Blumenbachs work ongeneration since he cited it favourably in his Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraftand praised it in correspondence with Blumenbach. As Reinhard Low has argued,there are also good reasons to suppose that Kant knew of Wolffs theory of gener-ation, as he was knowledgeable of the debate between supporters of evolution orpreformation and of generation or epigenesis before the appearance of Blumenbachswork.18 Wolffs work attained a high profile in this debate in the German lands dueto his dispute with Albrecht von Haller, the influential Professor of Medicine firstat Gottingen and then Berne, who was an advocate of preformation. The problemfor both Wolff and Blumenbach in developing their theories of generation was tofind a means to represent how, from its absence, organization was generated inorganic matter, when there was no evident or determinate cause of this generativeactivity. Their experiments on generation were used as instruments of judgment, astools for demonstrating generative processes in organic matter and for thinkingthrough how such processes occurred.

Wolff introduced his theory of generation in a dissertation defended at the Univer-sity of Halle in 1759, Theoria generationis. Haller had published a study of chickdevelopment, Sur la formation du coeur dans le poulet, shortly before Wolff com-pleted his dissertation, and so Wolff sent him a copy of his dissertation, hoping toconvince him of his account. Hallers response was a critical review in the Gottingen-sche Anzeigen, denying generation and advocating preformation. Haller and Wolffengaged in a protracted dispute over the next fifteen years through private correspon-dence and published articles. In 1764 Wolff published a detailed response to thecriticisms of his theory, especially those of Haller, Theorie von der Generation inzwo Abhandlungen erklart und bewiesen. Wolff also encountered opposition inBerlin when he attempted to obtain a permanent position at the Collegium Medico-Chirurgicum in 1763, notably from Johann Friedrich Meckel the elder, another influ-ential proponent of preformation and a disciple of Haller. Finally, at the age of thirty-three, he received an appointment in 1766 as Professor of Anatomy and Physiologyat the Academy of Science in St. Petersburg, through the support of Lenhard Euler.His interest in generation continued, and he used his position at the Academy to seta prize question on the role of a nutritive force in generative or vegetative processes.The winning essays by Blumenbach and Carl Friedrich Born were published togetherin 1789 with an extended essay by Wolff.19

The theory of generation which Wolff presented in his publications had severalaspects. It involved, first of all, the claim that generation occurred, a claim that wascontentious at the time. Wolff defined the generation of an organic body specifically

18 Low (1980), pp. 1757.19 Wolff (1896), Haller (1758, 1760) and Wolff (1764, 1789).


as the gradual genesis of its parts and its formation from these parts. But he includedin his concept of generation several vegetative processes the original developmentof an organic body, and its continued growth and nutrition.20 Wolff argued furtherthat a theory of generation must not only describe these vegetative processes, butalso explain how they occur; it must provide not only historical knowledge, butalso what he termed philosophical knowledge of generation.21 Whereas an historicalaccount of generation merely recounts changes in appearances, a philosophical orscientific theory of generation explains how the parts arise and in what connection,and the grounds or causes of these formations. Famously, Wolff argued that thesufficient cause of the generation of both plants and animals is a vis essentialis oressential force, acting together with the solidification of nutritive juices. Wolff wasnot, however, concerned with reflections on the nature of a special vital force, butwith the action the vis essentialis effected the distribution of nutritive juicesthroughout the organic body, carving out and altering structures and adding newmaterials. Although Wolff distinguished between the vis essentialis as a cause andthe action of the nutritive juices as its effect, in his texts the vis essentialis was notrepresented beyond this action of the juices. Indeed, as he would argue in a 1789essay, in response to what he regarded as misunderstandings of his introduction ofthe vis essentialis:

One could thus have omitted it, and ascribed the movement of the juices to othercauses, as one wanted; or one could have accepted no cause for it, and left themovement unexplained; still this movement of the juices would not itself bedenied; and the manner of the production and formation of parts, as the mainpoint of a theory of generation, would then always remain the same.22

Wolff did not provide a positive determination of the vis essentialis; he did notspeculate on its origin, or its relation to the first appearance of life. In his theory ofgeneration, it functioned primarily as a synthetic concept for the various actions ofthe nutritive juices within organic bodies.

For Wolff a theory of generation must also be demonstrative. It must be demon-strative in the sense of determining the essence of generation, and deriving all veg-etative phenomena from this essence. Wolff was particularly concerned to distinguishthe principal cause of generation, the movement and solidification of nutritive juices,from accessory causes, such as warmth, or the action of the heart and irritability inanimals. It was this essential formative action that Wolff used to define an organicbody, as opposed to the mechanical structures that were its products. The heart dis-tinguished animals from plants, but it was a product of generation the result of

20 Wolff (1896), Erklarung des Plans 131.21 Wolff based this distinction on that between empirical and rational psychology. See Wolff (1986),

1011, and Wolff (1764), pp. 38. Kant made a similar distinction between a description of nature[Naturbeschreibung] and a history of nature [Naturgeschichte] in his 1775 essay Von den verschiedenenRacen der Menschen, in Kant (1912), p. 451n.

22 Wolff (1789), p. 50n.


the specific qualities of the nutritive juices of animals, which led them to solidifymore slowly, and accordingly to more ramifying vessels being carved out by themovement of the juices, thus necessitating a heart as their terminus.23 Wolff repeat-edly insisted that it is the actions of the nutritive juices that demonstrate or explaingeneration. But he also understood demonstrative to mean to demonstrate or displayexperimentally.24 His texts were peppered with the claims that formative action isproved with necessity from his experiments, that he will demonstrate ad oculosthis action, that it is proved from observations.25 He referred to the action of thenutritive juices in carving out organic structure as the instrument of generation,26an instrument he claimed to demonstrate with his experimental tools. Wolffs theoryof generation thus had three fundamental aspects the gradual formation of partsand structures, the explanation of this formation as the action of the nutritive juices,and the demonstration of this essential action experimentally. It was with the epis-temological problem of demonstrating generative action that he was primarily con-cerned in developing his theory, rather than metaphysical speculations on the natureof a vis essentialis.

It is difficult to determine how Wolff made these judgments regarding his theoryof generation, as little is known of the circumstances surrounding the production ofhis dissertation Theoria Generationis, or its defence and publication.27 AlthoughWolffs experimental investigations have been described, historians have attemptedto understand the development of his work by placing it in the context of contempor-ary metaphysical traditions, such as speculative debates over mechanism versus vital-ism or preformation versus epigenesis, or the rational philosophies of Christian Wolffand Benedictus Spinoza.28 Wolffs texts did refer to his contemporaries, but largely todifferentiate his theory of generation from their accounts. Proponents of preformationtheories, such as Haller and Charles Bonnet, deny generation and attribute the forma-tion of organic structure to a divine creation rather than to natural processes. Evenproponents of generation such as William Harvey, Wolff argued, do not explain theformative process but merely provide an historical or anatomical description of thegradual appearance of structure. Thus neither approach provided a theory of gener-ation. Similarly, John Tuberville Needhams account of the emergence [Entstehung]of simple animalcules from organic matter under the action of expansive and resistantforces, based on his infusion experiments, could not be considered a true theory ofgeneration since it did not explain the formation of the complex organization ofperfect animals, and did not demonstrate the action of the expansive force in thisprocess.29 Wolff did employ a model of explanation drawn from rational philo-sophies he used Christian Wolffs argument from a sufficient cause, and praised

23 Wolff (1896), 24153.24 On the various senses of the term demonstrate, see Hankins and Silverman (1996), pp. 1112.25 Wolff (1896), 21, 71 and 166.26 Wolff (1764), pp. 1556.27 Gassinowitsch (19567), pp. 214.28 See, for example, Mocek (1995); Larson (1994), Ch. V; Roe (1981); and Gasking (1967), Ch. 8.29 Wolff (1896), 23155; Wolff (1764), pp. 1434.


Rene Descartess exemplification of the proper form of an explanation, although herejected Descartess actual explanation of generation.30 But rather than forcing hisobservations into the straightjacket of his deductive method,31 these philosophicalmodels led Wolff to the problem of demonstrating how the movement and solidifi-cation of nutritive juices caused the formation of organic structure. For Wolff suchdemonstrations involved not only finding the essential cause of generation, but alsodisplaying the generative process experimentally. Significant portions of Wolffstexts, and presumably his reasoning in developing his theory of generation, wereattempts to provide experimental demonstrations of this process, tracing the move-ment of the nutritive juices with his instruments, inscribing this action in the organicmatter, thinking with his tools. Although Wolff was aware of the various forces andsystems invoked by his contemporaries and predecessors to account for the develop-ment of organic bodies, he invoked the Newtonian rhetoric that had become a com-monplace by the mid-eighteenth century to avoid speculations over the nature of theforce of generation: it is enough that we know that it is, and that we know it accord-ing to its effects.32 The vis essentialis, functioning as a synthetic concept for theactions of the nutritive juices, was used by Wolff as an instrument for his judgmentson generation. The experimental investigation of those actions, those effects, wasalso an important instrument of these judgments.

The demonstration of generation posed a problem for eighteenth-century experi-mental technologies, however, in that the slow process of the formation of structurecould not be made visible. But nor could supporters of preformation make visiblethe structures they claimed pre-existed, even through a microscope. It is thus surpris-ing that so much of the dispute between proponents of generation and preformationtook place in the arena of appearances. Haller criticized Wolff in his review of hisdissertation for basing his arguments on the principle that what one does not see,is not there.33 Wolff was at pains to make clear that his argument was quite different.He contended that organic structures were made of vessels and vesicles that werevisible before the structures themselves; that more complex structures were graduallyformed from simpler parts that appeared first.34 In his own impressive two-volumestudy of the development of the chick, published in 1758, Haller contended thatdevelopment consisted of pre-existent parts becoming more solid and opaque, andaccordingly more visible. The action of the preformed heart, the essence of the ani-mal form for Haller, acted as the primary cause of these alterations rather than astheir effect.35 Much of Wolffs dispute with Haller was over such visible appear-ances, each focusing his microscope ever more carefully on the contested structures,especially the appearance of vessels and the heart in the area vasculosa and the

30 Wolff (1896), 23155; Wolff (1764), pp. 57.31 Larson (1994), p. 145. See also Roe (1981), pp. 10220.32 Wolff (1764), p. 160.33 Haller (1760), p. 138.34 Wolff (1896), 23640; Wolff (1764), pp. 67101.35 Haller (1758).


membranes around the yolk and embryos intestines.36 Both used similar micro-scopes, similar means of preparing specimens, similar staining techniques; theirpoints of contestation were not these technologies, which had been stable since theseventeenth century, but the appearances made visible through them.37 But descrip-tions, however careful, of the gradual appearance of structures did not provide thedemonstration of the action of the nutritive juices that Wolff demanded of a theoryof generation. They provided only historical knowledge of generation, rather thanscientific knowledge of the causal action linking the sequence of appearances.

Wolff provided an experimental display of these actions in his dissertation, beforethe dispute with Haller turned his attention to detailing apparent structures. The tech-nique Wolff employed in the opening pages of his Theoria Generationis was to takeon the role of the action of the nutritive juices himself through the means of hisexperimental instruments. Referring to a slice of a plant root or stem under themicroscope, he described the long vessels and small round drops of fluid visiblewithin them. He then showed how, with the help of an instrument such as a needle,he could move the small drops back and forth, to indicate how the vis essentialisdistributed the fluid. Next, focusing on the vesicles, he showed how he could pushthem around with his needle, to demonstrate how their form altered and how twocould be joined together. He described a similar experiment with the vessels. Bybringing the small drops of nutritive juice into motion with his needle, Wolff showedhow he could produce new vessels in different directions, as he purported the move-ment of the nutritive juices did.38 Inscribing in organic matter the action of the nutri-tive juices, the effects of the vis essentialis, using his experimental instruments, Wolffdemonstrated the process of generation. He asked rhetorically in 1764 in what kindof way, through what kind of force, with what kind of instrument,39 generationoccurs. In making such judgments, an important instrument was his set of experi-mental tools through which he was able to display the action of the nutritive juices,and thus the way in which generation occurred. His definition of organic bodies asessentially formative activity and the role that the synthetic concept of the vis essen-tialis played in his theory of generation reflected these experimental acts.

36 For details of these disputes, see Larson (1994), pp. 14358, and Roe (1981), Ch. 3.37 It should be borne in mind in considering the observations of Wolff and Haller that to prepare and

bring a particular structure to attention with the microscope required considerable skill. Expertise wasrequired not only to focus the rudimentary eighteenth-century microscopes, but also to adjust the lightsource and to prepare the specimen. But the microscope was a stable technology after an active periodof development of the compound and single lens microscopes in the seventeenth century, no significantchanges in the optical quality of the microscope occurred until the nineteenth century. See Turner (1989,1981). The techniques Wolff and Haller used to prepare their specimens derived from those used byMarcello Malpighi in his studies of chick development at the end of the seventeenth century Hallercut the embryo out of the egg and spread it on water, and Wolff spread it on a glass sphere. Both stainedtheir specimens with alcohol and vinegar, neither noting that purely artifactual structures often resulted.(Adelmann, 1966; Haller, 1758, Vol. 1, pp. 278, 10423 and 122-3, and Vol. II, pp. 1368; Wolff,1896, 188).

38 Wolff (1896), 124.39 Wolff (1764), pp. 1556.


In these displays Wolff was dependent upon narrative forms, literary technologies,to bring witnesses to his experimental demonstrations.40 These narratives also actedas an additional technology for demonstrating the action of the nutritive juices. Muchof Wolffs texts consisted of detailed accounts of the gradual formation of the partsof plants and animals. These verbal representations were not depictions of staticappearances, but relations of continuous activity. As he held that the action of thenutritive juices provided the link between the events in generation, so the story lineof Wolffs narrative linked the sequence of events leading to the formation of astructure, enabling the reader to imagine processes that could not be made visible.By relating how the nutritive juices flowed, pushed, carved, and so on, theiraction in the formation of structure could be demonstrated, the verbs providing thelinks between generative events that could not be made visible.41 It was Wolffsnarrative which reproduced the action of the nutritive juices, guiding the readerthrough the dynamic change of form in generation verbally, in a manner similar tothat in which he guided the nutritive juices with his needle to reproduce their action;both acted to inscribe the invisible process of generation, the concept of the visessentialis, in a material form.

Wolffs demonstrations of generative activity required interventions on his part.Processes too slow to be seen could be made evident through experimental interme-diations with his needle. Wolff also used experimental interventions to display howthe solidification of the nutritive juices completed the construction of the vessels andvesicles forming the plant, by pressing a leaf under the microscope to discharge aclear fluid, and observing it thicken and harden into a solid mass as water evaporatedfrom the fluid. He repeated these experiments with animal materials, employing heatto hasten the process.42 Such experimental interventions were designed to reproducethe normal course of generative activity. In the 1770s and 80s, Wolff also becameinterested in variations in vegetative processes. In part this new interest was stimu-lated by his becoming curator of the anatomical cabinet at the Academy of Sciencesin St. Petersburg. The existence of bastards (hybrids), degeneration (variation) andmonstrosities had been used as arguments for generation in the mid-eighteenth cen-tury by Pierre-Louis Maupertuis and Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon.43Georges Canguilhem has argued that monsters were an instrument of science in thedebates between proponents of preformation and epigenesis.44 For one committed toa theory of generation, like Wolff, varieties and monstrosities allowed the explorationof alterations or deviations of vegetative processes, indeed they allowed him toexperiment on those processes, not through his own interventions, but through inter-ventions produced by nature in the ordinary course of generation. In his dissertation

40 On literary technologies and witnessing, see Shapin and Schaffer (1985), Ch. 2.41 Gillian Beer argues that in the Origin of Species Darwin used verbal narratives in a similar manner,

to help the reader imagine the processes of evolution that were too slow to be perceived (Beer, 1986).42 Wolff (1896), 249 and 1712.43 Maupertuis (1745) and Buffon (17491804).44 Canguilhem (1969), pp. 1789. Michael Hagner has applied this notion to Wolffs studies of mon-

sters. See Hagner (1999), pp. 1916.


Wolff contended that differences in the quality of the nutritive juices determined thedifferences between plants and animals.45 In his work in the 1780s he gave increasedsignificance to these juices, what he came to call vegetable substance, in determiningvegetation.46 If the formative process remained the essence of the organic body,Wolff now contended that the quality of the vegetable substance determined theessence of each species of organic body. Varieties were due to the effects of externalconditions on organic structure, but left the vegetable substance unaffected; hencethe reversion to typical form when these varieties were returned to their typicalenvironment. Monsters, he argued, were the result of an excess quantity of vegetablesubstance.47 These investigations allowed Wolff to examine the necessary constraintsas well as the capacity for spontaneous adaptation to these constraints in generativeactivity. Nature provided Wolff with the alterations in environmental conditions andin vegetable substance that he needed to examine regularities and deviations in theordinary course of vegetative processes, with the means to intervene experimentallyin these processes.

Wolff demanded of a theory of generation the demonstration of generation. Suchdemonstrations required determining the essence of generation, its sufficient cause,which Wolff argued was the action of the nutritive juices. He used the vis essentialisas a synthetic concept, an instrument, to guide his judgments as to how these actionsformed the organic body. A demonstration of generation also required displayingthese formative actions. Wolff used experimental interventions as well as verbalnarrative to provide such a demonstrative display. Wolffs experiments on generativeprocesses displayed a high level of interaction with organic bodies. Interfering inthese processes, he prodded organic matter to expose the constraints on generation;taking his tools in his hand, he prompted formative activity to display naturescapacity for spontaneity. These interactive experiments acted as instruments of judg-ment not only as tools for demonstrating formative action in organic matter, butalso as tools for thinking about how these actions occurred. Intervening in organicprocesses, using his tools to intermediate in these processes, disrupting or hasteningordinary generative action his inscriptions of formative activity in the organicmatter helped Wolff imagine, concretely, how these actions occurred. The demon-stration of generation thus involved Wolff in a complex judgment, acting betweenmaterial phenomena and their theoretical representation.

In making his judgments on generation, Blumenbach was confronted with a similarproblematic. Like Wolff, his thinking was guided not only by debates regarding thenature of development by his contemporaries and predecessors, but also by his own

45 Wolff (1896), 1712 and 215.46 In his 1789 publication, the role of the vis essentialis was reduced to attraction and repulsion of

vegetable substance, whose specific actions at specific locations and moments were dependent upon thespecific qualities of that matter. The redefinition of the vis essentialis was in part to distinguish it fromthe building forces postulated by others as the cause of generation, and with which Wolff maintained thevis essentialis had been inappropriately identified. See Wolff (1789), especially pp. 65n66n.

47 On Wolffs investigations of varieties and monsters, see Hagner (1999), pp. 1917; Gassinovitch(1990); Roe (1981), Ch. 5; and Raikov (1964).


experimental interventions in generative processes. His experiments acted in turn toinscribe his conception of generation, not only in the organic material but also inthe minds of his contemporaries, much more effectively than Wolff through a seriesof highly influential publications. A Professor of Medicine at Gottingen, Blumenbachhad initially followed the lead of his influential predecessor, Haller, in supportingpreformation when he published his dissertation De generis humanii varietate nativain 1775. Blumenbach was following the exemplar of Buffon in introducing his workson natural history with an account of development. By the publication of the firstedition of his Handbuch der Naturgeschichte in 1779, this introductory discussion,although still beholden to Haller, also noted the arguments for epigenesis put forwardby Buffon, Wolff and others. In 1780 Blumenbach came forward with his ownaccount of generation in an essay published in the Gottingsche Anzeigen, which wasreprinted in 1781 as a short treatise U ber den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgesch-afte. This work was extremely influential, going through several editions and beingwidely cited; as his scientific reputation grew Blumenbach also promoted his accountof generation through his many publications on natural history and physiology.Although Blumenbach distinguished his account from Wolffs, he also sought toexplain generation through the activity of organic matter and sought experimentaldisplays of this activity. But rather than attempting to display the gradual formationof organic structure like Wolff, Blumenbach turned to experiments on regenerationand variation of formative activity for his demonstrations of generation.

In the first edition of U ber den Bildungstrieb, Blumenbach argued that the primaryprinciple of generation is a Bildungstrieb, a nisus formativus or formative impulse:in all living creatures lies a special, innate, effective impulse, active lifelong, initiallyto confer their definite form, then to preserve it, and if it is injured, where possible,to reproduce it.48 Blumenbach was concerned to distinguish this formative impulsefrom the chemical and mechanical forces of bodies in general and the other forcescharacteristic of organized bodies in particular. He also sought to disassociate theBildungstrieb from the vis plastica that had been invoked so often in the past inaccounts of generation but, he argued, merely as an empty word, with no clear con-ception of it or clear account of its action in the phenomena of generation. He parti-cularly emphasized the differences between the Bildungstrieb and Wolffs vis essen-tialis. Blumenbach, however, only specified the nature of these differences in hissubsequent editions of U ber den Bildungstrieb, from 1789: the vis essentialis ismerely a power for distributing nutritive substance in plants and young animals,something necessary to the operation of the Bildungstrieb but distinct from its action;the vis essentialis is manifest in even the most deformed excrescences of plants,where no determinate Bildungstrieb acts; and finally the vis essentialis can bedeficient in organic bodies which are badly nourished, where the Bildungstriebremains unaffected.49 Wolff, in turn, used his 1789 essay Von der eigenthumlichenund wesentlichen Kraft published together with the winning essays by Blumen-

48 Blumenbach (1971), p. 12.49 Blumenbach (1791), pp. 3841.


bach and Born to the prize question Wolff had set for the Academy of Science to offer a critique of Blumenbachs account, suggesting that although Blumenbachwas to be praised for having identified phenomena that could not be explained byknown causes, by simply naming it a Bildungstrieb he had not explained thisphenomenon. An explanation, as Wolff argued, required showing how a forcespecifically works with different concurrent causes and under different conditionsto produce specific parts of an organic body. Such a force, Wolff stressed, is notBildungskraft.50 But despite these perceived differences in their accounts of gener-ation, there are evident similarities between the two. Both regarded a range of veg-etative phenomena as variations of the same formative process nutrition, growthand generation with Blumenbach adding an emphasis on reproduction or regener-ation. And as Wolff represented the vis essentialis as the action of the nutritive juices,so Blumenbach represented the Bildungstrieb as an impulse or action stimulated inorganic matter, in the combined seminal substances from both parents, which hadmatured to achieve a particular quality and which subsequently produced organizedstructure. Like Wolffs vis essentialis, Blumenbach employed the Bildungstrieb asa synthetic concept for these actions, but left the nature of the Bildungstrieb indeter-minate.

Blumenbach did make an attempt to demonstrate formative activity, in Wolffssense of the term. He argued that he knew no more sensible means for renderingthe existence and the activity of this impulse evident than the unprejudiced obser-vation of the development and propagation of [simple] organized bodies throughthe assistance of the microscope.51 In the 1781 edition of his text, he described hisobservations of the generation of a simple water plant (coniferva sontinalis) in thebeginning of spring; in the 1789 edition he added an account of the generation ofanimals by means of the polyp. The transpicuous, simple structure of these creaturesmeant that nothing seems concealed or obscured to the eye of the observer. Blumen-bach could see nothing like a germ in them, and hence no grounds for supportingpreformation.52 The rapid growth and transparent texture of both the water plantand polyp offered a means to note easily not only their complete structure, but alsoslight alterations within it. Blumenbach related how, in the water plant, he observedshoots springing out from small round bodies, promoted merely by the parts of thevesicular texture of these spheres, and how as the filament increased in length thelittle round body decreased in magnitude and became smaller. In the polyp, hedescribed the gradual formation of a bud, from the first swelling to the shootingout first of the cylindrical body and then tentacles of the young.53 Thus the activityof the Bildungstrieb was made almost visible but only almost. These alterationsoccurred over hours, if not days, and so could not be marked through continuousobservation. Like Wolff, Blumenbach employed a narrative to enable his reader to

50 Wolff (1789), pp. 65n67n.51 Blumenbach (1791), pp. 823.52 Blumenbach (1971), p. 53; Blumenbach (1791), pp. 859.53 Blumenbach (1971), pp. 4753; Blumenbach (1791), pp. 829.


witness events, to represent verbally linkages between various stages of generation,that could not be made present to the eye.

But Blumenbach found in the polyp a more striking demonstration of the actionof the Bildungstrieb, that of its reproductive or regenerative capacities. The polyphad come to prominence through a remarkable set of experiments by Abraham Trem-bley, which he detailed in his 1744 Memories, pour servir a` lhistoire dun genrede polypes deau douce, a` bras en forme de cornes. Noting its reproductivecapacities, he determined to investigate their extent: he tried cutting the polyp in avariety of ways, both transversely and longitudinally, and into increasingly smallfragments; he tried grafting two polyps together; and, in his most impressive experi-ment, he even managed to turn a polyp inside out. In each case he found fragmentswere able to form again into whole polyps, and to continue to live, eat and propa-gate.54 This remarkable creature captured the imagination of educated Europeans,and after Trembleys publication those promoting preformation had to imagine howthe regenerative capacities of the polyp could be included in their theory. Indeed,the polyp prompted Haller to convert briefly to an epigenetic theory.55 But Trembley,a naturalist, was concerned solely with the question of whether the polyp was a plantor an animal, and he found that its regenerative capacities were only one of thecharacteristics that made its classification problematic. Subsequent studies of thepolyp, also by naturalists, were similarly framed by this problem, and cited its extra-ordinary reproductive capacity as only one of its defining characteristics.56 EvenBlumenbachs experiments were initially those of a genteel naturalist, providingsome edifying entertainment for his guests. But during these playful displays, Blu-menbach noted a significant phenomenon. The newly expanded polyps, althoughamply fed, were always far smaller than before. A mutilated rump always diminishedin proportion very evidently, and seemed to become shorter and thinner, as it regener-ated the lost parts.57 This occurrence seemed to have been overlooked by earlierobservers, Blumenbach suggested in a note, either through inattention or preoccu-pation with phenomena of greater magnitude in the history of this animal. But Blu-menbach did not leave these observations over reproduction in polyps as simplysignificant characteristics of its natural history. He related them to an observationmade immediately following his experiments with polyps. One of his patients hadcaries in his lower femur, which produced a deep ulcer. Blumenbach was struck byhow, when the wound gradually healed, it left a broad but shallow indentation, thesame case mutatis mutandis as with my green polyps.58 It was after further experi-ments and reflection on these phenomena that, Blumenbach claimed, he was per-suaded to reject the existence of pre-existent germs and conceive of generation in

54 Lenhoff and Lenhoff (1992). See also Dawson (1987).55 Haller (1966).56 See, for example, Schaffer (1755a,b), Rosel von Rosenhof (174661), Baker (1758) and Ellis (1767).

Even Blumenbach originally studied the polyp in this way (Blumenbach, 1780?).57 Blumenbach (1971), p. 10.58 Ibid., pp. 1011.


terms of a Bildungstrieb the gradual formation of organization through the activityof organic matter.

The study of reproduction of lost or mutilated parts gave Blumenbach a meansto intervene in generative processes and thus make them manifest. Blumenbachregarded generation and reproduction as modifications of one and the same activity,so what elucidates the one, elucidates the other. In the cutting up of polyps and inwounds formative activity became evident in its restoration of organized form. Thatthe reproduced form was slightly altered from the original, smaller in size or dis-figured in some way Blumenbach interpreted as manifestations of variations in theBildungstrieb. His experiments on reproduction set out to examine these variationsand determine the regularities of formative activity. Polyps were particularly suitedto such investigations. Blumenbach divided the polyp into fragments and observedits growth into so many new ones; he brought two different kinds of polyps togetherto form a monster; he split the body of a polyp longitudinally and observed itreform into a whole polyp. He suggested that these experiments with polyps couldbe supplemented with similar ones on simple worms or starfish. Experiments onwarm-blooded animals were more difficult, as their powers of reproduction are morelimited. But Blumenbach cited examples of a hare growing a bony stump after itsfoot was shot off or nails growing on the stump of a finger or toe when the frontjoint was amputated.59 In a treatise published in 1786, Geschichte und Beschreibungder Knochen des menschlichen Korpers, he introduced bone regeneration and thefixing of foreign inserted teeth into fresh holes as further instances of reproduction.60He also became interested in monstrosities as displays of variation in the Bildungstri-ebs action, as well as the excrescences that often formed on plants through insectinjury and the callus that sometimes formed with the healing of bones. Blumenbachsexpertise in natural history led him to relate the variations in the action of the Bil-dungstrieb to variations of species and bastards or hybrids.61 Rather than passivelyobserving different stages of development, Blumenbach held that it was by interven-ing in generative processes, interacting with the Bildungstrieb, that it was made evi-dent, inscribed in the organic material. Through investigating pathological conditions,produced either through his own instruments or through the instrument of nature oraccidental injury, Blumenbach was able to experiment on formative activity, inter-acting with it and altering its action. Like Wolffs interventions in generative pro-cesses, his experiments demonstrated the material constraints on these processes aswell as their capacity to change spontaneously in response to altered conditions.Blumenbach, however, engaged in a much greater range of such experimental inter-

59 Ibid., pp. 7484.60 Others had investigated bone regeneration, as Blumenbach noted in his treatise. Duhamel, for

example, had drawn a parallel between the healing of bone fractures and the repair of broken trees, andanalogies had also frequently been drawn between the reproduction of polyps and plants. See Blumenbach(1786), Trohler and Maehle (1991) and Delaporte (1983). Blumenbach, however, related these diverseobservations and experiments in a general theory of generation, accounting for the propagation, nutritionand reproduction of plants and animals under the action of the Bildungstrieb.

61 Blumenbach (1971), pp. 26, 5769.


ventions than Wolff, and eventually conceived laws of the regularities and variationsin the activities of the Bildungstrieb.62 These experiments acted as instruments ofjudgement, guiding Blumenbach to his distinctive conception of generation throughthe action of the Bildungstrieb.

Robert J. Richards reads Blumenbachs discussion of the Bildungstrieb as an argu-ment for a teleological cause fully resident in nature, endowing the homogenous,formless mixture of male and female semen with its most essential character form, organization.63 He gives particular importance to Blumenbachs speculationsin his 1790 Beytrage zur Naturgeschichte as to how the Creator might have employednatural forces such as the Bildungstrieb for the production of a new organic creationafter a general catastrophe. But this brief speculation made no assertion about thecapacity of the Bildungstrieb to produce life from inorganic matter, and indeed Blu-menbach professed ignorance of how subsequent creations might have occurred, incontrast to contemporary accounts that explicitly argued for the formation of livingbeings from inorganic materials.64 Blumenbach left indeterminate the relationshipbetween the Bildungstrieb and the hand of God, between the Bildungstrieb and thefinal cause of nature, between the Bildungstrieb and the origin of life, being con-cerned rather to demonstrate alterations in the action of the Bildungstrieb under thehand of man or the hand of nature. The Beytrage zur Naturgeschichte was accord-ingly concerned with arguments for the mutability of the created world for vari-ations of species under changed material conditions, for the extinction of speciesunder catastrophic changes in these conditions, for how changes in material con-ditions have effected variations in human beings, and for how men have effectedalterations in domestic plants and animals through alterations in their material con-ditions. Richards also emphasizes Blumenbachs introduction of comparisons of theBildungstrieb with Newtons attraction or gravity in the 1789 edition of U ber denBildungstrieb and 1788 edition of Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, arguing that thesecomparisons indicate that Blumenbach understood the Bildungstrieb as an actualforce.65 But prioritising such a metaphysical reading seems misplaced. The by thenstandard Newtonian rhetoric provided authority precisely for avoiding such meta-physical speculations, Newtons wider unpublished reflections on the nature of grav-ity being largely unknown at the time. There is no evidence, as yet, that Blumenbachengaged in such speculations on the nature of the Bildungstrieb he claimed it tobe only an impulse, an effect of some unknown cause, an activity of organic matter,that generated organized bodies. Blumenbach, like Wolff, was introducing a concep-

62 The first edition of U ber den Bildungstrieb presents regularities in the action of the Bildungstrieb;see ibid., pp. 436 and 556. By 1789 these regularities are expanded and represented as laws; seeBlumenbach (1791), pp. 10116.

63 Richards (2000), p. 22.64 As, for example, was found in Maupertuis (1945), La Mettrie (1745) or even Buffon (1778).65 Richards (2000), pp. 1822. Richards is right to correct Lenoirs suggestion that the organic material

in which the Bildungstrieb is stimulated is already organized. But it should also be noted that Blumenbachcontended that the Bildungstrieb is only stimulated within generative material with its unique qualities.See Lenoir (1982), pp. 1721; Larson (1994), pp. 913 and 15960; and McLaughlin (1982).


tion of the organic that was distinct from that of both their predecessors and contem-poraries, one based on his experimental interactions with generative and reproductiveprocesses. As his instrumental interventions inscribed these processes in the organicmatter, making its varied activities manifest by disrupting their course and markingtheir reproduction, he reconceptualised organic bodies and their generation.

Blumenbach, like Wolff, was engaged in a complex process of judgment, movingreflectively between material phenomena and their theoretical representation. Hisexperimental interventions, like Wolffs, acted as an instrument for such judgments,inscribing, reproducing, representing, guiding his thinking, as he re-imagined organicactivity materially with his tools. Blumenbach employed the Bildungstrieb, as Wolffdid the vis essentialis, as a synthetic concept for organic activities, and as an instru-ment to guide further judgments of these activities and to guide further experimentalinteractions with these activities. Prodding nature to tell its story with their tools,they inscribed in organic matter their conceptions of the vis essentialis or Bil-dungstrieb, but they also found that the organic material responded to their inter-ventions in ways not wholly under their control, a specific experiment producinginscriptions generated by its material specificity rather than its authors intent. Thisperceived capacity of organic matter to respond spontaneously to their interventionsbecame a central part of their theoretical understandings of formative activities, theirconceptions of the vis essentialis or Bildungstrieb. Both Wolff and Blumenbach leftthe nature of the generative impulse or force indeterminate indeterminate in itsorigin as well as indeterminate in its final end focusing on its capacity for spon-taneous alterations in the face of material, necessary constraints. They were interestedin investigating the space between first origin and final end, between unorganisedorganic matter and organized form, the space in which formative activity took place,and in which they could demonstrate the activity of the vis essentialis and Bil-dungstrieb.

2. Kants Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft

Although Kant only directly cited Blumenbach in his Kritik der teleologischenUrteilskraft, his knowledge of debates between preformationists and epigenesistsprior to the publication of Blumenbachs work and the high profile of Wolffs theoryof generation in those debates provide good evidence for Kants familiarity withWolffs arguments as well. What he found attractive in these theories of epigenesiswas their minimal appeal to metaphysical speculations, to the supernatural. Outsidethe question of first creation, which they left indeterminate, they attributed the propa-gation and formation of organized bodies to natural processes; although they allowedthe possibility of a first cause beyond nature, they removed the problem of organizedbodies from the domain of theology. What Kant added to such theories was a criticalexamination of the epistemological principles guiding investigations of the phenom-ena of generation. But although theories of the gradual formation of organized bodiesdeal with natural processes, Kant contended that they cannot be a part of the domain


of natural science because it is not possible to provide a determinate judgment ofthis formation in terms of a concept of mechanical causation. Accordingly, Kantargued, the problem of organized bodies and their formation does not belong to anydoctrine, but only to critique the critique of reflective judgment (KU 4167, 4224). Such a critique is concerned with examining how reflective judgment is possible,and the sources and conditions of such judgments, and with making explicit theprocess of reflective judgment and through it our conception of organized and self-organizing beings. The principles that Kant proposed in his Kritik der teleologischenUrteilskraft as instruments to guide reflective judgment allowed for both mechanicalnecessity and spontaneous action in the formation of organized bodies, much asWolff and Blumenbach had done. Indeed, in formulating his principle of judgment,Kant not only attempted to produce a methodological guide for the further study oforganized bodies but explicitly referred to individuals like Blumenbach who hedeemed employed correct principles for their investigation. If Kant expressed thoseprinciples in the terms of his critical philosophy, he was clearly influenced by theepistemology of experiment guiding Wolffs and Blumenbachs investigations of thephenomena of generation.

The extent to which Kant drew upon the work of anatomists, naturalists and phys-icians those who dissect and investigate plants and animals can be seen in hischaracterization of organized bodies. An organized being such as a tree, Kant argued,preserves itself as a species, both producing itself and being produced by itself cease-lessly. It also engenders itself as an individual through growth, which is a form ofgeneration, in that it involves assimilating material and giving that material the qual-ities and organization particular to that species of tree. Finally, a tree engenders itselfin that there is a mutual dependence between the preservation of one part and thatof the others the leaves are produced by the tree and in turn preserve it, and anyinjury to one part will be compensated for or regenerated by the others (KU 3712). To account for these capacities, Kant contended that an organized being musthave within itself a formative force [bildende Kraft], and a formative force that thisbeing imparts to the kinds of matter that lack it (thereby organizing them) (KU374). This formative force thus propagates itself, thereby propagating the organizedbeing. Advocates of preformation appeal to an extrinsic cause denying a formativeforce within organized beings, they attribute their organization directly to the handof the creator (KU 423). Kant argued, in contrast, that with regard to organizedbodies, natural products, nature must organize itself. Kant praised Blumenbachspecifically for discussing only a formative impulse present in organized matter andits role in the propagation of that organization, rather than attempting to explain howthat organization or impulse first arose.66 The extent to which Kant was indebted to

66 See KU 424. Richards is right to emphasize that Kants attribution of the Bildungstrieb to organizedmatter is a misreading of Blumenbachs work (Richards, 2000, p. 29). On the other hand, it is importantto recognize the extent to which the terms organized and organic were in flux around 1790. Organizedbodies were being reconceived as organic bodies, with both expressions in use at the time. Plants andanimals defined in terms of organized or anatomical structures were redefined in terms of organic Formund Mischung [form and mixture] during the 1790s, as chemical concepts became more significant in the


epigenetic theories, particularly Blumenbachs theory of generation and the Bil-dungstrieb, is evident in these arguments.

Kant, critically examining such theories, was concerned to emphasize the extentto which organized beings are not conceivable or explicable within the terms of anyphysical ability or causality known to us. Kant argued that an organized beingappears to be both cause and effect of itself, or what he termed a natural purpose[Naturzweck]. It is purposive in that the possibility of its parts, as regards theirexistence and form, must depend on their relation to the whole, so that the conceptor idea of the whole determines a priori everything within it. Yet, as a product ofnature, it must have reference to purposes within itself and its inner possibility with-out reference to an extrinsic cause, so that its parts combine into the unity of thewhole because they are reciprocally cause and effect of their form. Thus each partexists not only as a result of all the rest, but also for the sake of all the rest (KU373). Kants definition of a natural purpose as both an organized and a self-organiz-ing being evidently drew upon the characterization of organized bodies that he tookfrom anatomists, naturalists and physicians such as Wolff and Blumenbach. But Kantrepresented this definition critically as based upon a critique of how we judge[urteilen] organized bodies. The judgment of an organized bodies as a natural pur-pose is drawn from the concept of nature, as it considers real and objective productsexhibited in nature, the products of natural causes rather than human or extrinsiccauses. Yet it is also drawn from the concept of reason, as it considers certain naturalthings as if they were products of a cause whose causality could be determined onlyby a representation [Vorstellung] of the object (KU 232), the product of final causesrather than efficient or mechanical causes.67 Kant held that judgment moves reflec-tively between both, relating what can be known definitively through the understand-ing and what can be merely thought speculatively through reason, relating the conceptof nature and the concept of reason, relating natural necessity and purposiveness.We cannot connect it with the mere concept of nature without regarding nature asacting from a purpose [Zweck]; and even then, though we can think this causality,we cannot grasp it (KU 3701). We cognise [erkennen] something as a naturalproduct and yet . . . estimate [beurteilen] it to be a purpose, and hence a naturalpurpose (KU 370). Like Wolff and Blumenbach, in the Kritik der teleologischenUrteilskraft Kant is not concerned with speculations on the nature of organized

study of life. One can see the beginnings of such reconceptualisations in the significance Wolff gave tonutritive juices and vegetable substance in determining the nature of species, and in Blumenbachs argu-ment that the Bildungstrieb is stimulated in seminal fluids, organic matter, after it is properly mixedand prepared. Humboldt, discussed in Section 5 below, developed an idea of vital chemistry based onMischungsveranderungen in organic materials.

67 See both the published Introduction to the Kritik der Urteilskraft, VIII, as well as the first unpub-lished Introduction, IX. The first Introduction is also translated in the Pluhar edition, with primed num-bers indicating its pagination in Volume 20 of the Akademie edition. Pluhar translates Vorstellung aspresentation, but representation is more accurate. Beck renders Vorstellung as representation in his trans-lation of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. See Rudolphe Gasche on the difference between Vorstellung[representation] and Darstellung [presentation] in Kant: Gasche (1991), pp. xixxx.


bodies but with how we are to investigate and estimate their capacity for organiza-tion. It is this process of judgment that Kant opens up to critical examination.

This concept of a thing as a natural purpose is not a constitutive concept eitherof understanding or reason, but a regulative concept for reflective judgment (KU375). Kant argued in the Kritik der Urteilskraft that this reflective judgment oforganized bodies is distinct from the determinative judgment that he had developedin the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, through which the necessary concept of mechanicalcausation is applied directly to natural phenomenon, and is constitutive of thatphenomenon. In a determinative judgment, concepts are given a priori and thephenomena are subsumed under them, and judgment does not need its own principleto guide its action (KU 17980, 1824, 385). But in the judgment of organized bodiesthere is no a priori basis for the assumption of purposes that are not ours. Nor canexperience prove that there actually are such purposes although experienceprompts us to adopt the concept of natural purposes, this concept is needed to com-prehend such experiences. Thus there is no objective ground for the concept of anatural purpose (KU 35960, 376). Rather, reflective judgment, moving betweenphenomena and their conceptualisation, must give itself a principle to guide its move-ment. This principle of reflective judgment is a transcendental principle: one bywhich we think the universal a priori condition under which alone things can becomeobjects of our cognition in general (KU 181). The principle of purposiveness is thusnecessary for our estimation of organized beings. But it is not a universal law ofdeterminative judgment that applies to certain natural products and explains theirproduction objectively. Rather we must appeal to purposiveness in our estimationof organized bodies because of the apparent contingency of their production. Kantsproblem was that his conception of natural science was restricted to mechanicalcausality. But nature, considered as mere mechanism, could have structured itselfdifferently in a thousand ways without arriving at the apparently purposive organiza-tion found in plants or animals (KU 360). On the other hand, to use the concept ofpurposiveness as a law for determinative judgment, thus taking a concept of reasonas having objective application, is to treat it dogmatically, rather than critically inrelation to our cognitive powers and in relation to the subjective conditions underwhich we think it (KU 395). Concepts of reason are only determinative for humanpurposive action independently of phenomenological determination. The argumentof Kants critique of judgment was that judgment, moving reflectively between thedomains of phenomenological determination and reason but lacking a domain of itsown, must give itself a principle to regulate its action in synthesizing phenomenaand reason in the estimation of organized bodies. Lacking a determinative conceptfor the territory in which it acts, reflective judgment must appeal to both the conceptsof nature and of reason to develop its concept of organized bodies; but the conceptof natural purpose it thus develops cannot determine the nature of organized bodies.The concept of a natural purpose is thus a subjective principle which reflective judg-ment gives to itself as an instrument to guide its action, a regulative rather than aconstitutive principle for bringing natures appearances under rules and for guidingfurther investigation of organized bodies.

Kant developed this argument that the principle of reflective judgment is a regulat-


ive and subjective rather than constitutive principle in the Dialectic of TeleologicalJudgment of the Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft. In the Dialectic Kantpresented two possible principles that investigators might use in their judgments ofnatural products: the first is the maxim that all production of material things andtheir forms must be judged to be possible in terms of merely mechanical laws; andthe second is the maxim that some products of material nature cannot be judged tobe possible in terms of merely mechanical laws. (Judging them requires a quitedifferent causal law viz., that of final causes) (KU 387). Kant emphasized thatas long as these maxims are principles to guide judgment in its reflections, as tohow natural products must be judged or cannot be judged, they are not in conflict.It is only if they are misread as objective principles of determinate judgment, state-ments of how natural products are constituted, that are they contradictory. As in theTranscendental Dialectic of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, the antinomy that wouldthen arise would be due to a conflict in the legislation of reason, a confusion of thelegislation through the concept of nature as performed by the understanding withthat through the concept of freedom as performed by reason, a confusion of thedomain of phenomenological determination with that of the free spontaneity of thenoumenal. But read as regulative principles of reflective judgment, as instrumentsto relate the legislation of the understanding with that of reason in the judgment oforganized beings without confusing the one domain with that of the other, no contra-diction between these two principles arises. Kant proposed that those investigatingorganized bodies should simply follow the first maxim as far as possible, judgingthem as to their possibility in terms of mechanical laws, but having recourse to thesecond maxim when the phenomena of organic life defy mechanical explication, andthen judging them as to their possibility in terms of final causes.

Kants representation of the antinomy of judgment can be read as contending thatboth maxims, the principle of the mechanism of nature and the principle of finalcauses, are regulative principles. Such a contention contrasts with the Kritik derreinen Vernunft, in which Kant claimed to prove that the category of causality, whichhe conceived in the terms of the mechanical causality of Newtonian physics, univer-sally determines phenomena, that it is constitutive of all natural products, thatmaterial things must be understood as due to the operation of mechanical laws. Theinvestigation of organized bodies has problematized that claim. Indeed, in the Kritikder teleologischen Urteilskraft Kant contended that mechanical causality could nolonger be applied determinately to all natural products; rather we must estimatewhich natural products can be explained through mechanical causality. In otherwords, even the judgment to apply the concept of mechanical causality to certainphenomena becomes a question of reflective judgment.68

68 McFarland notes this point, but underplays its significance. He argues that even in the first critiqueKant allowed chemical phenomena to be investigated by different principles from the mechanical. Kantargued in both the Kritik der reinen Vernunft and the Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissensch-aft, however, that chemical phenomena are explicable mechanically in principle, which is different fromhis argument here (KrV A6456/B6734; Kant, 190813, Vol. 5, p. 468 and 4701). McFarland alsoshifts the discussion to the system of nature, which Kant discussed in both the Dialectic of the Kritik der


In the study of organized bodies, which principle is used to guide investigationwill affect the conception of organized bodies that results. Kant praised those whoemploy the principle of mechanism in their investigation of organized bodies thecomparative anatomists who study the common structures amongst species as ameans to gain insight into their common mode of production, and the investigatorswho study the relationships between the modes of production of crude matter suchas in crystallization and those of organic bodies (KU 41819). Yet Kant also notedthat those who investigate the structure of plants and animals effectively use theprinciple of final causes to gain insights into the functions of those structures (KU377). The consequences of these disparate directions of investigation can be rep-resented teleologically. Depending upon what means are used to investigateorganized bodies, different conceptions will result. These results feed back into thoseinvestigations, guiding them further in a particular direction. Thus, depending uponwhether mechanical or final causality is used as a principle, as an instrument, toguide investigation, diverging representations of organized bodies are produced, areinscribed in the plants and animals investigated. In this sense, Kants claim in theKritik der Urteilskraft that nature is purposive for our intellect might be seen simplyas a product of the investigators designs. But Kant did not contend that the esti-mation of which principle should direct investigation is strictly rationally ascertained.There were also material constraints to such judgments some organic phenomenadefying comprehension through mechanical causality. His arguments here are verysimilar to those of Wolff and Blumenbach they found that organic materialresponded to their experimental interventions in ways not wholly under their control.The question of which principle should guide specific investigations of organizedbodies, Kant concluded, was one for reflective judgment.

To help make comprehensible how the principle of final causes can be used toguide the investigation of organized bodies Kant drew an analogy between suchnatural products and artistic products or human technics.

We adduce a teleological basis when we attribute to the concept of an object . . .a causality concerning [the production of] an object, or, rather, when we conceiveof the objects possibility by analogy with such a causality (which we find inourselves) and so think of nature as technical in what it itself can do (KU 360).

In a natural technic, as in a human technic, the production of an organized entityseems possible only in terms of final causes. In a natural technic, as in a humantechnic, the structure of the object is of such a character that our judgment mustbase its possibility on an idea, on a design, that directs production. To regard natureas proceeding technically, proceeding as in artistic production, when its products areorganized systems is to employ a technical rule for judging that . . . object in terms

reinen Vernunft and the Introduction of the Kritik der Urteilskraft. But the introduction of reflectivejudgment for the investigation of nature as a system is different from its introduction for the investigationof particular natural products as Kant suggested in the Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft (McFarland,1970, pp. 11920). Low, in contrast, gives this point particular emphasis (Low, 1980, pp. 20615).


of subjective principles for reflection on [such an] object (KU 21718). This anal-ogy with artistic production provides a subjective principle for reflective judgment,a technical rule or an instrument aiding our technique of judgment. Investigatorssuch as Wolff and Blumenbach similarly attempted to make evident the formationof organized bodies through experimental interventions, through attempting to repro-duce with their experimental instruments the production of plants and animals. Theseexperimental interventions were techniques, instruments for judging generative pro-cesses, means to inscribe in organic matter their conceptions of how these processesoccurred, reproducing organized bodies according to their design. Kant similarlysuggested that the production of organized bodies might be estimated through theinstrument of human production, as if they were produced analogously. Kantstressed, however, an important difference between a natural technic and a humantechnic. A human technic has an extrinsic cause. A natural technic has intrinsiccapacities for self-propagation, self-generation and regeneration. Thus human tech-nics could only be used as instruments to aid reflective judgments of natural technics,but not to determine their nature, just as Wolff and Blumenbach could only regardtheir inscriptions in organic matter as instruments of judgment and not as naturesactual process of generation. Natural technics organize themselves

instruments of judgment- inscribing organic processes in late 18th century germany 2002

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