History and Biological Teleology

Abstract

Arnhart's timely and provocative article attempts to resolve the value crisis of the modern biological and sociobiological sciences by reconciling these sciences with Aristotle's biological teleology. The idea that modern biology, like modern science in general, will engender a value crisis is hardly new. By engaging in ostensibly objective, quantitative, valuefree inquiry into the character of human and nonhuman organic life, scientific biology strips these forms of life of their traditional values. Biological science itself has failed to generate a new set of qualitative values to replace the discredited notions of myth, religion, and philosophy. This value nihilism has become particularly ominous in the contemporary period as military, ecological, and biomedical developments undermine our traditional assumptions about the character of organic life-and indeed may threaten the existence of that organic life. Perhaps it is an inevitable twist in the history of ideas that Aristotle's biological teleology, the bete noire of modern biological science, should be offered as a possible source for a new biological value system. Arnhart contends that Aristotle's biological teleology-i.e., the notion that species have their own ends and purposes-is both compatible with the most up-to-date biological research and can serve as a source for qualitative biological values. By adopting a teleological perspective, the ends and purposes of species not only describe essential elements of these species, but also prescribe an inherent, biological foundation for value judgments about them.