ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Alexander von Humboldt’s physiognomic conception of "plant forms" illustrates the Kantian conception of the organism and the logic of synthesis proper to reflective judgment. Humboldt was primarily interested in the overall associative unity proper to the category of totality. The chapter explores some of the basic assumptions and explanatory principles of the Post-Kantian tradition and illustrates several logical senses in which Frederick Clements' account of prairie succession supposes on a conception of organic form in the Kantian sense. The conception of nutritive forms is different from organic forms in the Kantian sense in a variety of ways. The conception of organic form in Clements' logic of plant collectives is illustrative of an epistemological idealism that operates with a notion of associative synthesis that is univocal to biological individuals and collectives. Henry Chandler Cowles' account of succession also supposed a directionality, but in a different logical sense in which Clements attributed an organic development to plant collectives.
