Chomsky's current Biolinguistic methodology is shown to comport with what might be called 'established' aspects of biological method, thereby raising, in the biolinguistic domain, issues concerning biological autonomy from the physical sciences. At least current irreducibility of biology, including biolinguistics, stems in at least some cases from the very nature of what I will claim is physiological, or inter-organ/inter-component, macro-levels of explanation which play a new and central explanatory role in Chomsky's inter-componential explanation of certain properties of the syntactic component (...) of Universal Grammar. Under this new mode of explanation, certain physiological functions of cognitive mental organs are hypothesized, in an attempt to explain aspects of their internal anatomy. Thus, the internal anatomy of the syntactic component exhibits features that enable it to effectively interface with other 'adjacent' organs, such as the Conceptual-Intensional system and the Sensory- Motor system. These two interface systems take as their inputs the assembled outputs of the syntactic component and, as a result of the very syntactic structure imposed by the syntax are then able to assign their sound and meaning interpretations. If this is an accurate characterization, Chomsky's long-standing postulation of mental organs, and I will argue, the advancement of new hypotheses concerning physiological inter-organ functions, has attained in current biolinguistic Minimalist method a significant unification with foundational aspects of physiological explanation in other areas of biology. (shrink)

Kant, von Baer, and causal‐historical thinking in biology. In his Kritik der Urteilskraft Kant set forth an analysis of bio‐causality which attempted to unite the best features of teleological and mechanical frameworks of explanation. Kant's analysis suggested that related organic forms must be materially interconnected in the unity of a fundamental plan or morphotype. In the hands of Karl Ernst von Baer these suggestions led to concrete researches and groundbreaking empirical discoveries, including the discovery of the mammalian ovum. Von Baer's (...) theories of developmental types, germ layers and fundamental organs offered a precise formulation of the research program initially outlined by Immanuel Kant. Above all through the embryological method von Baer introduced the analysis of causal‐historical relations as the basic tool for biological research, the power of which he revealed in the formulation of a limited theory of evolution. (shrink)