Concept
Teleonomy
Overview
Teleonomy is the quality of apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms brought about by natural processes like natural selection. The term derives from two Greek words, τέλος, from τελε-, ("end", "goal", "purpose") and νόμος nomos ("law"). Teleonomy is sometimes contrasted with teleology, where the latter is understood as a purposeful goal-directedness brought about through human or divine intention. Teleonomy is thought to derive from evolutionary history, adaptation for reproductive success, and/or the operation of a program. Teleonomy is related to programmatic or computational aspects of purpose.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings. Now that which serves the will as the objective ground of its self-determination is the end, and, if this is assigned by reason alone, it must hold for all rational beings. On the other hand, that which merely contains the ground of…
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
States what Teleonomy is; the author is tied to Teleonomy in the knowledge graph.
As regards this theory of Epigenesis, no one has contributed more either to its proof or to the establishment of the legitimate principles of its application,--partly by the limitation of a too presumptuous employment of it,--than Herr Hofr. _Blumenbach_.[122] In all physical explanations of these formations he starts from organised matter. That crude matter should have originally formed itself according to…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
States what Teleonomy is; the author is tied to Teleonomy in the knowledge graph.
Values cannot be both ideal and given, and their “given” character is emphasized, not transformed, when they are called eternal and absolute. But natural values become ideal the moment their maintenance is dependent upon the intentional activities of an empirical agent. To suppose that values are ideal because they are so eternally given is the contradiction in which objective idealism has intrenched itself…
John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought
States what Teleonomy is.
Related ideas
- Globe Pequot Publishing Group
- Ernest Nagel
- Princeton University Press
- Homeostasis
- Immanuel Kant
- Ancient Greek
- Vitalism
- Richard Dawkins
- Baruch Spinoza
- Emergence
- Complex system
- Intention
- Talcott Parsons
- Critique of Judgment
- George Christopher Williams
- Stuart Kauffman
- Antecedent (logic)
- Consequent
- Voluntarism (philosophy)
- Evolution
- Ernst Mayr
- Modern synthesis (20th century)
- David Hull (philosopher)
- Teleology in biology
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of metaphysics.