Immanuel Kant

Two authors use the same Kantian image against vague biological terms. Binet doubts the word irritability, which he finds ambiguous, and recalls that Kant likened obscure properties to easy-chairs where the mind rests¹. Lotka quotes Bunge, who called vital force a convenient resting place where reason can repose on the pillow of obscure relations². Lotka notes the oddity that Bunge, an advocate of vitalism, made this admission.

Thompson reports that Kant judged the chemistry of the day to be a science, but not science in the strict sense. The criterion, as Thompson gives it, was a relation to mathematics³. Du Bois Reymond repeated the saying a century later. Thompson then argues that physiology gains by using the chemistry and physics of its age without waiting for that ideal. Henderson, writing on the fitness of the environment, adds that since Kant philosophy has treated matter and energy as different in kind from space and time⁴.

Driesch both borrows from Kant and corrects the Kantian account. He reads Kant's chapter on freedom and natural necessity as meaningful only if freedom is a non-mechanical, nonspatial kind of natural happening, like his own entelechy⁵. He also denies that the transcendental deduction reaches absolute objectivity, calling its consciousness in general a fiction⁶. Rádl places Driesch as a philosopher close to Kant, seeking a pure natural science built on basic logical principles⁷.