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This paper investigates conceptions of explanation, teleology, and analogy in the works of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Richards (2000, 2002) and Zammito (2006, 2012, 2018) have argued that Kant's philosophy provided an obstacle for the project of establishing biology as a proper science around 1800. By contrast, Russell (1916), Outram (1986), and Huneman (2006, 2008) have argued, similar to suggestions from Lenoir (1989), that Kant's philosophy influenced the influential naturalist Georges Cuvier. In this article, I wish to expand on and further the work of Russell, Outram, and Huneman by adopting a novel perspective on Cuvier and considering (a) the similar conceptions of proper science and explanation of Kant and Cuvier, and (b) the similar conceptions of the role of teleology and analogy in the works of Kant and Cuvier. The similarities between Kant and Cuvier show, contrary to the interpretation of Richards and Zammito, that some of Kant's philosophical ideas, whether they derived from him or not, were fruitfully applied by some life scientists who wished to transform life sciences into proper sciences around 1800. However, I also show that Cuvier, in contrast to Kant, had a workable strategy for transforming the life sciences into proper sciences, and that he departed from Kant's philosophy of science in crucial respects., (Copyright © 2024 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Until well in the 19th century, the Aristotelian concept of the scala naturae (ladder of nature) was the most common biological theory among Western scientists. It dictated that only humans possessed a rational soul that provided the ability to reason and reflect. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) was the first philosopher influential enough to lastingly posit that animals are cognitive creatures. His view stirred a fierce controversy, with René Descartes (1596-1650) leading among his many adversaries. Only after it became accepted that animals and humans alike have cognitive abilities, did the research on the influence of conscious awareness and intention on the behavior of an animal become possible in the 20th century. We found the anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1515-1564) to have already rejected the Aristotelian view on the lack of the rational soul in animals in his 1543 opus magnum De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem. His observation "that there is a difference in size according to the amount of reason that they seem to possess: man's brain is the largest, followed by the ape's, the dog's, and so on, corresponding to the amount of rational force that we deduce each animal to have" resonated some 330 years later when Darwin concluded that "the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind." We conclude that Vesalius was instrumental in breaking with two millenniums of dominance of the concept of lack of animal cognition.

Kant's analysis of the concept of natural purpose in the Critique of judgment captured several features of organisms that he argued warranted making them the objects of a special field of study, in need of a special regulative teleological principle. By showing that organisms have to be conceived as self-organizing wholes, epigenetically built according to the idea of a whole that we must presuppose, Kant accounted for three features of organisms conflated in the biological sciences of the period: adaptation, functionality and conservation of forms. Kant's unitary concept of natural purpose was subsequently split in two directions: first by Cuvier's comparative anatomy, that would draw on the idea of adaptative functions as a regulative principle for understanding in reconstituting and classifying organisms; and then by Goethe's and Geoffroy's morphology, a science of the general transformations of living forms. However, such general transformations in nature, objects of an alleged 'archaeology of nature', were thought impossible by Kant in section paragraph 80 of the Critique of judgment. Goethe made this 'adventure of reason' possible by changing the sense of 'explanation': scientific explanation was shifted from the investigation of the mechanical processes of generation of individual organisms to the unveiling of some ideal transformations of types instantiated by those organisms.

The thought of Aristotle has stamped itself on the whole subsequent course of Natural philosophy including the philosophy of healing art since the 4th century B. C. He is known to be the great codifier of ancient Natural philosophy. He developed coherent theories of generation and functional morphology of animals and heredity in his treaties. Aristotle dissected about 70 species of animals and founded the basis of comparative Anatomy.