The Idea of Teleology

Abstract

Perhaps no other ideology has influenced biology more profoundly than teleological thinking. In one form or another it was the prevailing world view prior to Darwin. (Indeed it is one of the relatively few world views seriously considered by western man.) Appropriately, the discussion of teleology occupies considerable space (10-14%) in several recent philosophies of biology.' Such a finalistic world view had many roots. It is reflected by the millenarian beliefs of many Christians, by the enthusiasm for progress promoted by the Enlightenment, by transformationist evolutionism, and by everybody's hope for a better future. However, such a finalistic world view was only one of several widely adopted Weltanschauungen. Grossly simplifying a far more complex picture, one can perhaps distinguish, in the period prior to Darwin, three ways of looking at the world: 1. A recently created and constant world. This was the orthodox Christian dogma, which, however, by 1859 had largely lost its credibility, at least among philosophers and scientists.2 2. An eternal and either constant or cycling world, exhibiting no constant direction or goal. Everything in such a world, as asserted by Democritus and his followers, is due to chance or necessity, with chance by far the more important factor. There is no room for teleology in this world view, everything being due to chance or causal mechanisms. It allows for change, but such change is not directional; it is not an evolution. This view gained some support during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, but remained very much a minority view until the nineteenth century. A rather pronounced polarization developed from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, between the strict mechanists,