Loc.2716 “Observation of Nature”
C* starts seeking universals (and itself) in things, but this proves an endless task, so it limits itself to finding the essential properties of things. But these ‘characteristics’ also prove changing, and hence it must regard them as ‘vanishing moments’. Thence it seeks the law which underlies these universal yet changing characteristics. It does this by experiments and moves to more and more general application in order that its results not merely apply to small instances.
Thus C* is ready for a new shape of ‘observing reason’. At the moment, it perceives laws via sensuous things, that is by the law’s relating of things. It is led thence to the idea of a universal that is removed from sensuous being and is a ‘simple concept’ (§253).
The object for the new shape is organic things, that exhibit the self-identity of reason more so than did inorganics (which were different only by their defining properties). C* seeks laws for organics: first their physical relations (e.g. northerners have thick pelts), but because it can’t give a reason (i.e. universal connection) for this, it thinks that there is an external (viz. teleological) relationship with their environment. [Not clear how this connects to the next bit].
Reason conceives organisms as preserving themselves and thus preserving their self-identity which is also what makes them rationally structured beings. But R* does not define this action as “purposeful” because it thinks of purpose as external to them. R* distinguishes the inner/outer aspects of an organism (e.g. purpose/action), although they are unified, and that ‘the outer is the expression of the inner’ (§262) – they are represented by the inner sensibility/irritability/reproduction and outer nervous / muscular / innards systems. All R* can do at this stage, is give relations between these systems, that are yet empty and no revealing anything about them.
An effect of this breaking up of the organism is that in its study of it, R* loses sight of the organism’s unity, and thus misses out on what it sought in studying it in the first place. Thus R* is led to study the laws that determine its own self-c*. {Loc.2823}
