Concept
Teleology in biology
Overview
Teleology in biology is the use of the language of goal-directedness in accounts of evolutionary adaptation, which some biologists and philosophers of science find problematic. The term teleonomy has also been proposed. Before Darwin, organisms were seen as existing because God had designed and created them; their features such as eyes were taken by natural theology to have been made to enable them to carry out their functions, such as seeing. Evolutionary biologists often use similar teleological formulations that invoke purpose, but these imply natural selection rather than actual goals, whether conscious or not. Some biologists and religious thinkers held that evolution itself was somehow goal-directed (orthogenesis), and in vitalist versions, driven by a purposeful life force. With evolution working by natural selection acting on inherited variation, the use of teleology in biology has attracted criticism, and attempts have been made to teach students to avoid teleological language.
Nevertheless, biologists still often write about evolution as if organisms had goals, and some philosophers of biology such as Francisco Ayala and biologists such as J. B. S. Haldane consider that teleological language is unavoidable in evolutionary biology.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Now if the teleological principle of the production of these beings be assumed (as is inevitable), we can place at the basis of the cause of their internally purposive form either _Occasionalism_ or _Pre-established Harmony_. According to the former the Supreme Cause of the world would, conformably to its Idea, furnish immediately the organic formation on the occasion of every union of intermingling materials.
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
States what Teleology in biology is; the author is tied to Teleology in biology in the knowledge graph.
Thus, the notion of correlation is first used in current science as it might be used by an advocate of finality; it is understood that this is only a convenient way of expressing oneself, that one will correct it and fall back on pure mechanism when explaining the nature of the principles and turning from science to philosophy. And one does then come back to pure mechanism, but only by giving a new meaning to the…
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
States what Teleology in biology is; the author is tied to Teleology in biology in the knowledge graph.
The former cogitates its object either by means of pure transcendental conceptions, as an ens originarium, realissimum, ens entium, and is termed transcendental theology; or, by means of a conception derived from the nature of our own mind, as a supreme intelligence, and must then be entitled natural theology. The person who believes in a transcendental theology alone, is termed a deist; he who acknowledges the…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
States what Teleology in biology is; the author is tied to Teleology in biology in the knowledge graph.
Related ideas
- Analogy
- Ernest Nagel
- Genetics
- Henri Bergson
- Immanuel Kant
- Ancient Greek
- Intelligent design
- Philosophy of biology
- Spiritualism (philosophy)
- Jesuits
- Human condition
- Vitalism
- Watchmaker analogy
- Christian Wolff (philosopher)
- Hypothesis
- Natural selection
- Natural theology
- Francisco J. Ayala
- Élan vital
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- Potentiality and actuality
- Princeton University
- Richard Dawkins
- Transhumanism
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of biology.