Conceptual Conservatism 133
example, that the primary constituents of matter are indivisible particles, and particle is
given at least some explication. By contrast, Blumenbach gives nothing comparable to
help us understand the realm of the nonmechanical. We are told only what the formative
power is not.
What, then, are we to make, relative to the standards of justifi cation of Blumenbach’s
own day, of an alleged formative power that is explicitly nonmechanical and unexplicated?
Bearing in mind that the natural order as conceived in the late eighteenth century was
constituted by the mechanical view, we should conclude that Blumenbach’s postulation
was tantamount to the bald assertion of a mystery. Newton was not offering us a mystery;
he was confessing his ignorance and placing his bets on further inquiry. Blumenbach, by
contrast, was asking that we accept an unexplicated force from the silent realm of the
nonmechanical. On his view, the nature of life is explained by positing a hermetically
sealed mystery. And this makes it diffi cult to see how Blumenbach’s view can be construed
properly as an “expansion” of an emerging naturalistic worldview epitomized by Newto-
nian methods.
Now consider (1). Part of the power of Newton’s argument is indeed the fact that gravity,
whatever its source, is a relatively simple property of attraction. It is simple in the same
sense that his laws of motion are simple. Newton’s laws quantify over properties of matter
that are universal and irreducible; they apply without exception to the simplest constituents
of matter. The properties posited by these laws, then, are simple relative to the full range
of behavior that they explain at the level of compound objects. Likewise, the property of
gravitational attraction is a universal and irreducible property of the simplest constituents
of matter, yet it helps explain the behavior of all observable objects. It is in this sense that
gravity is relatively simple. The same, however, cannot be said of Blumenbach’s formative
power. This too is no small difference. The apparent purposiveness of living things, as we
have seen, is introduced by Blumenbach to fi ll the explanatory gap left by Newton’s
mechanics. But consider how the gap is fi lled. Not by specifying additional mechanisms,
since the formative power is nonmechanical. The gap is fi lled instead by positing a forma-
tive power that comprises the following powers: it motivates the mechanical parts of cells,
tissues, organs, and so forth to metabolize, reproduce, regenerate, et cetera, and it imposes
a template of the species’ form on all the processes of growth and reproduction. This is
to attribute to the formative power a broad range of remarkable powers. They are so
remarkable, in fact, because they resemble the phenomena they are supposed to explain!
Growth, for example, is explained by appeal to a nonmechanical and unexplained power
for growth! Just as Paley dumps the theoretical diffi culties involved in explaining the
perpetuation of living forms into the lap of the divine, Blumenbach dumps them into the
lap of an unexplicated, nonmechanical power—a hermetically sealed mystery. The only
difference, so far as I can see, between the two thinkers is that Paley cloaks his mystery
in the shroud of God while Blumenbach cloaks his in the shroud of Newton’s argument
for gravity.