In science, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher noted for his 1790 Methodical System of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment in which he divides all things in nature into “inorganic”, in which natural causes are said to prevail, and the “organic”, in which the active teleological, i.e. purposeful, principle of adaption is supposed to prevail. [1] In Kant’s mind there was a divide or cleft between the domain of primeval matter and the domain of life, for in the latter he assumes the presence of a supernatural principle, of final causes acting toward definite ends.

Thermodynamics
Kant had views on free will, a common issue in human thermodynamics, which he viewed to be under the guide of universal laws, and his 1785 “categorical imperative” seems to be the model of German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald’s 1912 “energetic imperative” and American physicist Robert Lindsay’s 1959 “thermodynamic imperative”.

Likewise, in the application of thermodynamics to evolution, this same divisional issue debate continues, for many scientists, making classifications such as animate vs. inanimate, living matter vs. non-living matter, or life vs. non-life, etc. From the modern 21st century molecular evolution table perspective, however, a view emerges that all motile structures are types of larger and larger molecules, e.g. bacteria molecule, human molecule, earth molecule, etc., and the view that there is such a thing as a “living molecule” concedes to the view that the theory of life is a defunct scientific perspective. [3]

References
1. Kant, Immanuel. (1790). Methodical System of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment. Publisher.
2. Osborn, Henry F. (1916). The Origin of Life: on the Theory of Action, Reaction and Interaction of Energy (pg. xi). The Science Press.
3. Thims, Libb. (2009). “Letter: Life a Defunct Scientific Theory”, Journal of Human Thermodynamics, Vol. 5, pgs. 20-21.

External links
● Immanuel Kant – Wikipedia.