11 - Epigenesis of the Text: New Paths in Biology and Hermeneutics

Summary

Let me start by making four points before explaining what relates them in an essential way. At stake is the possibility of sketching new crossings between contemporary biology and philosophical and textual practices.

First, a definition of epigenesis. The term comes from the Greek epi, which means ‘above’, and genesis, ‘genesis’ or ‘constitution’. ‘Epigenesis’ refers to a mode of embryonic development through the successive addition of parts that form and are born from one another. Aristotle uses the term epigenesis for the first time in Generation of Animals to refer to the formation of the living individual. Modern usage of the term begins in 1650 with William Harvey who, in his book Exercises on the Generation of Animals, presents epigenesis as characteristic of an organism in which ‘all parts are not fashioned simultaneously, but emerge in their due succession and order’ (Harvey 1847: 336). Later, in the early eighteenth century, Maupertuis and Buffon argued for the superiority of epigenetism over preformationism, thereby instigating the conflict that became central to the mid-century. The theory of growth through epigenesis – embryonic formation by progressive complexification – is opposed to the preformationist theory that claims that the embryo is a fully constituted being, a miniature individual whose growth, which is solely quantitative, consists in the unveiling of organs and already formed parts.

Secondly, in §27 of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes use of the expression ‘system of the epigenesis of pure reason’ (1998: 265). §27 is part of the Transcendental Deduction, where Kant exposes the question of the origin of the necessity of the agreement (Übereinstimmung) that connects the categories to the objects of experience a priori. Kant claims that this agreement cannot be innate. If such were the case, we would have to consider that categories are ‘implanted [eingepflanzte] in us along with our existence’ (1998: 265). But nor can the agreement come from experience and derive from an empirical source. We must therefore opt for another approach: a pure production of the categories. This is the point where Kant has recourse to an analogy: the analogy of the biological process of epigenesis.