 Immanuel Kant  explicitly articulated a dialectic between a teleological outlook on organismal functioning (including ecological relationships, physiology, and development specifically) and a mechanistic understanding of causation modeled on Newtonian mechanics (Critique of Judgment, Part II; see Mensch 2013, Zuckert 2010). Kant’s maintenance of this tension between the reciprocal causal relations of parts in an organism (“teleology”) and the linear-mechanical causality justified within his critical philosophy was a way of splitting apart epistemological and metaphysical issues. It can be characterized as a hybrid position with elements of epistemic anti-reductionism (organismal processes have to be understood in terms of their reciprocal contribution to a systemic goal—an epistemological subordination of mechanism to teleology) and ontological reductionism (all causation is ultimately linear-mechanical). But Kant also understood linear-mechanical causation as a category by which the mind frames experiences of the world.Thus, his understanding of metaphysics differs from the realist one underlying most contemporary accounts of ontological reduction. In addition to the theme of reductive relations between parts and wholes, Kant also addressed relations among different scientific domains in his discussion of sciences having their own distinct concepts and subject matter (Critique of Judgment, §68, 79).