Epigenesis

Kant uses the term “epigenesis” as early as 1769–70 (R4104, 17:416) – in his teaching notes for §770 of Baumgarten’s textbook on metaphysics, Metaphysica, a section devoted to the origin of humankind – and as late as the 1790s, both in his Lectures on Metaphysics (MD, 28:684 [1792–3]/CELM:385–6) and in his preparatory work on Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Rel draft, 23:106–7 [1793]). The term itself was taken over from ongoing debates in the life sciences regarding organic generation and the subsequent processes by which embryogen esis occurred. Kant seems to have been fully aware of these debates as early as 1763, given his lengthy consideration of the various viewpoints in his essay The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (OPA, 2:113–16 [1763]/CETP70:155–7). Within the bio logical debates, epigenesis was promoted by opponents of “preformation” or “preexistence” theory, according to which God had not only fixed all existing species lines at the point of creation, but had indeed created every possible individual at this point as well. These submicroscopic, fully formed individuals were carried forward by generations until the point at which they would begin to grow via the expansion of their preformed parts. Although epigenesis had been used by the physician William Harvey in 1651 to describe the progressive development of a chicken embryo from homogeneous mass to heterogeneously structured organism, he had refrained from any speculation regarding the basis, mechanical or otherwise, of this organizational drive. By the time Kant was writing in the 1760s, the term conveyed also the capacity on nature’s part for its self-organization and thus stood for those opposed to preexistence theory