Conceptual Conservatism 135
organisms. Biologists today can explain all the phenomena—all of them—that inspired
Paley, Blumenbach, Kant, and Kant’s successors to posit a surrogate agent, a center of
command and control, that is diffi cult to square with a naturalistic point of view. The
appeal to a form-giving agent that operates outside the mechanical realm was perhaps
understandable, perhaps robustly scientifi c, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centu-
ries, prior to the publication of work by Darwin and Wallace. But it is utterly unscientifi c
in light of progress in science during the twentieth century (more on this presently). Instead
of being a concept we ought to preserve, “design” is a concept that is dubious by virtue
of cultural descent.
The question then is, if the worldview from which “purpose” descends to us no longer
plays a role in our best developed scientifi c theories, why should philosophers—especially
philosophers familiar with these historical changes—nevertheless aspire to preserve this
notion? This concept is dubious by virtue of descent from a worldview we no longer regard
as true or promising; this is something we know or something we believe on the basis of
excellent historical evidence. So why, in light of its dubious genealogy, are we so plainly
conservative regarding this concept? Is it not the case that, contrary to the conservative
orientation in contemporary philosophy, we now know too much about our own history
to continue letting this concept serve as a parameter of our intellectual tasks?
8.2.2 History of Science
A second lesson learned from the history of science is that we make progress in under-
standing natural systems as we analyze inward and synthesize laterally. High-level
systemic capacities—capacities, for example, such as reproduction, growth, and regenera-
tion—are rendered explicable and predictable as we analyze into relevant low-level
systems and identify components and relations among components that instantiate these
capacities. This is what occurred throughout the twentieth century in biological theory. As
biologists succeeded in analyzing the mechanisms of reproduction, metabolism, and the
like, the underdetermination theses of Paley, Blumenbach, and Kant became increasingly
implausible, as did the more general theological presuppositions of their worldview. More-
over, any proposed taxonomy of low-level mechanisms is constrained by synthesizing
laterally. We confi rm or disconfi rm a given taxonomy, at least in part, as we look for
coherence across well-confi rmed theories in related areas of inquiry.
There is a wealth of case studies describing the central importance of inward analysis
and lateral synthesis in the growth of scientifi c knowledge.^13 And one crucial lesson we
learn from these case studies is that as our knowledge of natural systems progresses, the
relevant conceptual categories evolve. The concepts in terms of which we understand
natural systems—their high-level capacities and their low-level mechanisms and rela-
tions—are altered as our knowledge grows. Lessons from the history of science therefore
make it rational to expect substantive alteration in our conceptual categories as we analyze