摘要
Abstract
In Critique of Judgment,Kant introduces the concept of natural purposiveness(Naturzweck)and aims to bridge the divide between the mechanistic causality of the phenomenal world and the moral law of free will through"teleological judgment."By doing so,he conceives of nature as an intrinsically purposive whole.This paper,on the basis of exposition on the fractal and chaos theory,discusses the challenge and philosophical defense of Kant's theory of natural purposiveness in modern science and finds that fractal theory reveals the mechanism of local and global morphogenesis in nature through self-similarity and iterative rule,that chaos theory,on the other hand,explains the dynamics of self-organization in terms of the unpredictability of deterministic systems.Furthermore,this paper argues that fractals and chaos theory can only answer the question of"how"to generate structures,and cannot answer the ultimate question of"why"such rules are naturally selected or there is functional adaptation,although these theories extend the explanatory power of the mechanical law of causality and seem to diminish the necessity of natural purposiveness.At length,this paper concludes by arguing that although fractal and chaos theories deepen the understanding of the laws of nature,they do not end Kant's philosophical problems,and therefore natural purposiveess,as a regulating concept that communicates freedom and nature,science and philosophy,is still the eternal coordinates of rational inquiry into unity.关键词
自然目的性/分形理论/混沌理论/康德Key words
purposiveness of nature/fractal theory/chaos theory/kant分类
社会科学
