PURPOSE IN NATURE

[A687/B715] In the Dialectic, Kant speaks of "the highest formal unity, which rests solely on concepts of reason, [which] is the purposive unity of things." He asserts that we must, as a regulative idea, "regard all order in the world as if it had originated in the purpose of a supreme reason", although he cautions that often when we seek a teleological connection, "we find only a mechanical or physical connection". Such failures do not "affect the teleological law itself, in its general bearing", which is grounded in "the unity upon which reason insists in its empirical employment".