Epigenesis by experience: Romantic empiricism and non-Kantian biology

Abstract

Reconstructions of Romantic-era life science in general, and epigenesis in particular, frequently take the Kantian logic of autotelic "self-organization" as their primary reference point. I argue in this essay that the Kantian conceptual rubric hinders our historical and theoretical understanding of epigenesis, Romantic and otherwise. Neither a neutral gloss on epigenesis, nor separable from the epistemological deflation of biological knowledge that has received intensive scrutiny in the history and philosophy of science, Kant's heuristics of autonomous "self-organization" in the third Critique amount to the strategic capture of epigenesis from nature, for thought, in thought's critical transcendence of nature. This essay looks to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his English contemporary Erasmus Darwin to begin to reconstruct the rigorously materialist, naturalist, and empiricist theories of epigenesis (still) marginalized by Kantian argumentation. As theorists of environmental and social collaboration in the ontogeny of viable forms, Lamarck and Darwin illuminate features of our own epigenetic turn obscured by the rhetoric of "self-organization," allowing us to glimpse an alternative Romantic genealogy of the biological present.

Nerve poetry and fiber art: Biosemiosis and plasticity in Erasmus Darwin

“…The present essay builds on groundwork laid out in a companion‐piece (Goldstein, ) in which I have demonstrated in detail that in allowing Kant's theory of “self‐organization” to define our historical and ongoing understanding of epigenesis, we inadvertently re‐deploy his clever mechanism for co‐opting and containing it in advance. Kant's strategy of re‐definition, deflation, and re‐appropriation not only reduced the causal possibilities of what the 18th century called “epigenesis” (the real‐time production and differentiation of living form during embryonic generation) to the incipient organism's own, self‐directed power but also transferred that “self‐organizing” power from the natural beings‐in‐context who manifested it to the human subject of critique who contemplated them across an insuperable metaphysical divide .…”

“…Whether Kant's theory of “self‐organization” is a theory of “epigenesis” is in fact a matter of dispute in the history and philosophy of science; see Roe (), Goldstein (), as well as Zammito (, , , , , , ) and note 3, above.…”

“…But Malabou's thesis is both exactly true to the third Critique and exactly blind to the ironic terms of its concession to biology. Kant indeed accepts—in fact, appropriates—“epigenesis” (re‐signified as “self‐organization”) as the causal principle of the genesis of transcendental rationality, but only on the condition that it is no longer considered a natural and biological phenomenon at all (Goldstein, ). Now what was once epigenesis “belongs … only to critique” (Kant, 2000, §79, p. 286): epigenesis re‐defined as a regulative principle of “self‐organization” permanently necessitates a transcendental supplement of which critical philosophy is the sole, indispensable custodian.…”

“…Epigenesis as self‐organization belongs “only to critique,” Kant states plainly (2000, §79, p. 286). And it authorizes its human agents to “subject the whole of nature” to their ends (Goldstein, ). See Mensch () for a clear statement of how Kant denies “self‐organization” constitutive status for biologywhile adopting it as the causal structure of critical rationality.…”

Introduction: sketches of a conceptual history of epigenesis

“…Further metaphysical implications of epigenesis are explored by Goldberg, whose essay discusses William Harvey's, but also Margaret Cavendish's treatment of the topic, and Boris Demarest, who delves into Kant's analysis of epigenesis and seeks to show how the German philosopher shifted the ground of the epigenesis-preformationism debate. In contrast to this Kantian focus (and the fixation on self-organization that often comes with it), Amanda Goldstein's essay seeks to reconstruct an alternative, "Romantic genealogy of the biological present" in which Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin come to the fore (Goldstein 2017; see also Müller-Sievers 1997).…”