Conceptual Conservatism 131
mechanism but had to originate from the creative efforts of an intelligent God (Paley
1802). At more or less the same time in Germany, an idea with a comparable theological
load was defended by Immanuel Kant and several of his Romantic successors. The idea,
which migrated to France via the work of Georges Cuvier, concerns the existence of a
prior, abstract archetype that serves as the font of all living forms.^5 As Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe observed, there appear deep commonalities in the structure of all (or most)
animals, and a distinct set of commonalities in all plants. These common structures are
best explained, according to Goethe, by positing a very small number of antecedent types
containing two essential ingredients: the basic form, a kind of template, that all descen-
dents would embody, and an intrinsic creative drive to perpetuate that form (Richter
1985–1998). And these originating and motivating types, while allegedly effi cacious in
the natural order, could not have originated in nature as circumscribed by the Newtonian
view, since the resources of Newton’s mechanics were too paltry to determine the self-
perpetuating nature of living things.
Consider, for example, the view of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, an illustrious con-
temporary to Kant. Like Kant and his successors, Blumenbach was intent on understanding
scientifi cally the apparent purposiveness of living things. There was consensus at that time
that Newtonian mechanics could not explain the most striking features of living things,
namely, reproduction, growth, and regeneration. The laws of motion and gravity underde-
termined the highly specifi c purposes exemplifi ed by the parts of plants and animals.
Blumenbach proposed to fi ll this gap by positing a nonmechanical, form-giving power, a
precursor to Goethe’s archetype. He did so, moreover, on the basis of what appeared to
be a compelling line of Newtonian reasoning. Newton had insisted that it was rational to
accept the existence of gravity as a fundamental feature of the universe on the grounds
that it explains so much of the phenomena we observe, even though he had no account of
its mechanical origins or constituents. Likewise, Blumenbach asserted that it is rational to
accept an archetypal, form-giving power on the grounds that without it we could not
explain what is most distinctive of living things (Blumenbach 1781). Blumenbach could
not explain the origins or constituents of his form-giving power in mechanistic terms—
indeed he seems to have believed that this power exists prior to and somehow animates
all the mechanisms of life—but he nevertheless thought we are justifi ed in positing such
a power, since otherwise we would be unable to explain the capacity of living things to
reproduce, grow, and regenerate.
There is, then, an analogy between the views of Blumenbach and Paley, for both theo-
rists, in order to explain the apparent purposiveness of living organisms, posit a centralized
source and indeed an agentlike source of creative power that is diffi cult to square with a
naturalistic worldview. That is, both theories, though claiming to explain the purposiveness
of living things, offer very little in the way of explanatory power. This is clearest in Paley’s
view, where all the theoretical diffi culties are dumped into the lap of the Judeo-Christian
God. Paley offers no real explanation of the emergence and perpetuation of living forms,