Kant’s Concept of Organism Revisited: A Framework for a Possible Synthesis between Developmentalism and Adaptationism?

Contemporary biology is affected by a controversy between the adaptationist viewpoint, central to the neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis (MS), and the developmentalist viewpoint, central in Evo-Devo. The possibility of a synthesis between those viewpoints, as granting unity between the laws of form and the laws of function in biology, is therefore currently hotly debated. Kant’s concept of organism is often seen as the philosophical precursor of developmentalism. Yet this view is incomplete, and Kant’s unique regulative notion of purposiveness relies on two criteria in order to capture organisms as natural purposes: a design criterion and an epigenesis criterion. While the former is fulfilled within MS, the latter is satisfied by organisms from the developmentalist viewpoint. Under some conditions, Kant’s notion of organism can thus allow for a synthesis of developmentalism and adaptationism.