Teleology is the philosophical study of the idea that final causes exist, of evidence that design and purpose are inherent in nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος - telos, root: τελε-, "end, purpose."
Teleology was explored by Plato and Aristotle, by Saint Anselm around 1000 A.D., and later by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement. It was fundamental to the speculative philosophy of Hegel.
A thing, process or action is teleological when it is for the sake of an end, i.e., a telos or final cause. In general it may be said that there are two types of final causes, which may be called intrinsic finality and extrinsic finality.
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In the Phaedo, Plato argues that true explanations for any given physical phenomenon must be teleological. He bemoans those who fail to distinguish between a thing's necessary and sufficient causes, which he identifies respectively as material and final causes (Phaedo 98-9):
Imagine not being able to distinguish the real cause, from that without which the cause would not be able to act, as a cause. It is what the majority appear to do, like people groping in the dark; they call it a cause, thus giving it a name that does not belong to it. That is why one man surrounds the earth with a vortex to make the heavens keep it in place, another makes the air support it like a wide lid. As for their capacity of being in the best place they could be at this very time, this they do not look for, nor do they believe it to have any divine force, but they believe that they will some time discover a stronger and more immortal Atlas to hold everything together more, and they do not believe that the truly good and 'binding' binds and holds them together.—Plato, Phaedo 99
Plato here argues that, e.g., the materials that compose a body are necessary conditions for its moving or acting in a certain way, but that these materials cannot be the sufficient condition for its moving or acting as it does. For example (given in Phaedo 98), if Socrates is sitting in an Athenian prison, the elasticity of his tendons is what allows him to be sitting, and so a physical description of his tendons can be listed as necessary conditions or auxiliary causes of his act of sitting (Phaedo 99b; Timaeus 46c9-d4, 69e6). However, these are only necessary conditions of Socrates' sitting. To give a physical description of Socrates' body is to say that Socrates is sitting, but it does not give us any idea why it came to be that he was sitting in the first place. To say why he was sitting and not not sitting, we have to explain what it is about his sitting that is good, for all things brought about (i.e., all products of actions) are brought about because the actor saw some good in them. Thus, to give an explanation of something is to determine what about it is good. Its goodness is its actual cause - its purpose, telos or "reason for which" (Timaeus 27d8-29a).
Similarly, Aristotle argued that Democritus was wrong to attempt to reduce all things to mere necessity, because doing so neglects the aim, order, and "final cause," which brings about these necessary conditions:
Democritus, however, neglecting the final cause, reduces to necessity all the operations of nature. Now they are necessary, it is true, but yet they are for a final cause and for the sake of what is best in each case. Thus nothing prevents the teeth from being formed and being shed in this way; but it is not on account of these causes but on account of the end....—Aristotle, Generation of Animals V.8, 789a8-b15
In the Physics Aristotle rejected Plato's assumption that the universe was created by an intelligent designer using eternal forms as his model. For Aristotle, natural ends are produced by "natures" (principles of change internal to living things), and natures, Aristotle argued, do not deliberate:
"It is absurd to suppose that ends are not present [in nature] because we do not see an agent deliberating."
These Platonic and Aristotelian arguments ran counter to those presented earlier by Democritus and later by Lucretius, both of whom were supporters of what is now often called metaphysical naturalism, or accidentalism:
Nothing in the body is made in order that we may use it. What happens to exist is the cause of its use.—Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), IV, 833; cf. 822-56.
In the various neo-Hegelian schools - proposing a history of our species some consider to be at variance with Darwin, as well as with the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and with what is now called analytic philosophy — the point of departure is not so much formal logic and scientific fact but 'identity'. (In Hegel's terminology: 'objective spirit'.)
Individual human consciousness, in the process of reaching for autonomy and freedom, has no choice but to deal with an obvious reality: the collective identities (such as the multiplicity of world views, ethnic, cultural and national identities) that divide the human race and set (and always have set) different groups in violent conflict with each other. Hegel conceived of the 'totality' of mutually antagonistic world-views and life-forms in history as being 'goal-driven', that is, oriented towards an end-point in history. The 'objective contradiction' of 'subject' and 'object' would eventually 'sublate' into a form of life that leaves violent conflict behind. This goal-oriented, 'teleological' notion of the 'historical process as a whole' is present in a variety of 20th Century authors, although its prominence declined drastically after the Second World War.
In contrast teleology and "grand narratives" are eschewed in the postmodern attitude[5] and teleology may be viewed as reductive, exclusionary and harmful to those whose stories are erased.[6]
Against this, Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that a narrative understanding of oneself, of one's capacity as an independent reasoner, one's dependence on others and on the social practices and traditions in which one participates, all tend towards an ultimate good of liberation. Social practices may themselves be understood as teleologically orientated to internal goods, for example practices of philosophical and scientific enquiry are teleologically ordered to the elaboration of a true understanding of their objects. MacIntyre's book After Virtue famously dismissed the naturalistic teleology of Aristotle's 'metaphysical biology', but he has cautiously moved from that book's account of a sociological teleology toward an exploration of what remains valid in a more traditional teleological naturalism.
Teleology informs the study of ethics.
Businessmen commonly think in terms of purposeful action as in, for example, management by objectives. Teleological analysis of business ethics leads to consideration of the full range of stakeholders in any business decision, including the management, the staff, the customers, the shareholders, the country, humanity and the environment.[7]
Teleology provides a moral basis for the professional ethics of medicine, as doctors are generally concerned with outcomes and must therefore know the telos of a given treatment paradigm.[8]
Within the framework of thermodynamics, the irreversibility of macroscopic processes is explained in a teleological way.[9] Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Max Planck, and Alfred North Whitehead, among others, have claimed that least action principles are teleological. The immediately future state of the system depends on the whole path of the system, including future states.[10]
Teleological arguments in the field of chemistry have once again often centred around the fitness of materials to form the complex molecular bonds of life. For example, Lawrence Joseph Henderson, an American bio-chemist, advanced such a view in the early 20th century.
Teleology is a recurring issue in evolutionary biology,[11] much to the consternation of some writers.[12]
A central clue to teleological sentences is statements along the lines of "in order to", whereby a species did X "in order to" to achieve Y (circumvent obstacles or predators etc.). Some past biology courses incorporated exercises requiring students to rephrase such sentences so that they do not read teleologically (e.g. Y occurred as a result of X). Nevertheless, evolutionary writings are replete with teleological sentences. These issues have recently been discussed by John Reiss.[13] He argues that evolutionary biology can be purged of such teleology by rejecting the analogy of natural selection as a watchmaker; this analogy has been promoted by writers such as Richard Dawkins.[14]
Other authors are more skeptical. James Lennox has argued that Darwin was a purposeful teleologist,[15] and biologist philosopher Francisco Ayala has argued that all statements about processes can be trivially translated into teleological statements, and vice versa, but that teleological statements are more explanatory and cannot be disposed of.[16] Karen Neander has argued that the modern concept of biological 'function' is dependent upon selection. So, for example, it is not possible to say that anything that simply winks into existence without going through a process of selection has functions. We decide whether an appendage has a function by analysing the process of selection that led to it. Therefore, any talk of functions must be posterior to natural selection and function cannot be defined in the manner advocated by Reiss and Dawkins.[17]
Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Norbert Wiener have conceived of feedback mechanisms as lending a teleology to machinery. Wiener, a mathematician, coined the term 'cybernetics' to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms."[18] Cybernetics is the study of the communication and control of regulatory feedback both in living beings and machines, and in combinations of the two.
In recent years, end-driven teleology has become contrasted with "apparent" teleology, i.e. teleonomy or process-driven systems.
For a very detailed discussion of the recent resurgence of teleology in natural science, see Barrow and Tipler (1986). Their work includes:
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