Teleological Thinking Research Articles

Using Cartographies to Map Time and Space in Teacher Learning in and Outside School

This article explores the relations between teachers’ visual cartographies and oral narratives to better understand the spatial and temporal relations on teacher learning. It builds on a research project whose main questions were: 1) How and where do secondary school teachers learn to teach? 2) What are the consequences of this learning in their pedagogical relations and their students’ learning processes and results? Since narrative research has been a common way of approaching the subject and have led to an emphasis on learning as a journey across contexts and over time, some of its contributions to explore teachers’ learning paths are theoretically discussed, and visual methods, particularly cartographies, are also examined. Furthermore, the article presents the analysis of cartographies and video recordings of 29 secondary school teachers focusing on the interactions in different spaces and moments in time described by them. Findings suggest that learning to be a teacher may happen in interactions with objects, people and spaces beyond the boundaries of school, university and formal places of training and learning. They also show that the rhizomatic character of the cartographies may not prevent teleological thinking or the idea that any kind of learning is purposeful. Finally, this paper concludes that teachers’ learning does not fit the representational frame that distinguishes between formal contents and leisure activities, classrooms and private spaces, lessons and bodies, emotions and knowledge.

Structures of the Earth: Metageographies of Early Medieval China by D. Jonathan Felt

Reviewed by: Structures of the Earth: Metageographies of Early Medieval China by D. Jonathan Felt Hieu Phung Structures of the Earth: Metageographies of Early Medieval China. D. Jonathan Felt. Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. Pp. xii+391, 2 photos, 11 illustrations, 17 maps, footnotes. $68.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-6742-5116-8. One of the most problematic geographical units in world history is "China." In contrast to the historiographies of classical societies like Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, or Angkor, the narrative of Chinese civilization continues to spark debate on the insidious influence of teleological thinking in the field. Moreover, emphasis on the theme of Chinese unification has overshadowed counternarratives of fragmentation. D. Jonathan Felt's Structures of the Earth is a delicate project that unveils the "ruptures, inconsistencies, and disjunctions" (11) in the historical geography of a place often oversimplified as "China." Structures of the Earth tells the spatial history of four centuries, from around 200 to 600 CE, a period during which a unified Chinese empire did not exist. Felt's central argument is that the framework of imperial unification is only one among many spatial paradigms that the various peoples living in historical China perceived. To illustrate, Felt analyzes four spatial schemes, or metageographies, that emerged in the eastern part of the Eurasian landmass between the third and seventh centuries. They include ecumenical regionalism, the Northern and Southern dynasties, the hydrocultural landscape, and the Indo-Sinitic bipolar worldview. Chapters 2 to 5 each analyze one of these spatial schemes. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the first chapter discusses in detail how geography emerged as a new literary genre in early medieval China. As suggested in its title, this monograph speaks of spatial history and historical geography. Inspired by the work of Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen, Felt's use of "metageographies" aims to identify the kind of spatial structures that were (and have been) unconsciously accepted as natural entities. For instance, Felt shows in chapter 3 that the metageography [End Page 94] of the Northern and Southern dynasties—as two halves of one "China"—was a teleological product that the literati of the later periods created to characterize the sociopolitical conditions of the fifth and sixth centuries. By contrast, the rulers and literati of both the Northern and Southern dynasties did not perceive themselves as part of a fragmented empire awaiting reunification. They instead presented themselves as universal empires. Felt also utilizes Henri Lefebvre's dialectic relationship between spatial practices, representations of space, and representational spaces (70). He argues that the decline of the Han imperial metageography, which emphasized top-down political control and the cultural ecumene, resulted from a series of interconnected transformations in spatial practices after the third century CE. The Han imperial order was replaced by several different fragmented sociopolitical entities. Thanks to major waves of immigration out of the original Sinitic core at the Yellow River valley, the period also saw the rise of the Yangzi basin as another core of civilization. Thus, early medieval literati sought to reconcile the relationship between imperial and local geographical models by means of the metageography of "ecumenical regionalism" (chapter 2). Likewise, the movement of travelers and ideas between the Indic/Buddhist and the Sinitic worlds compelled the literati to create a new metageography that synthesized geographical information from both cultures (chapter 5). The most important contribution of this study is its masterful analysis of the Shuijing zhu (SJZ, Guide to waterways with commentary). Despite the rich information preserved in this early medieval source, Felt's work is the first substantial analysis of the text within English-speaking scholarship. The statistics Felt extracts from this source are impressive. The SJZ contains information of "1,252 rivers and the physical and cultural geography surrounding them" in the land that goes beyond China proper "to include India, Inner Eurasia, and Southeast Asia" (12). Arguing persuasively that "the single defining feature of geographical writing was its spatially organized textual structure" (22), Felt brilliantly uses drainage basins as a spatial unit to visualize the distribution of information in the SJZ (e.g., maps 1.1, 1.2, 1.3). Moreover, the information from the SJZ serves as the...

Teleology and Biology: a defense of teleological thinking in biology

Teleological language refers to a forward-looking discourse, and various biologists are troubled with this issue. In this paper, I will discuss the misunderstandings that both philosophers of science and biologists have made against teleology. Among these misunderstandings, I can mention its relationship to anthropomorphism (i.e., a planning agent external to the world reference) and reference to a force immanent to the organisms (“vitalism”) beyond the reach of empirical investigation. I will argue that they are misconceptions and that teleology has shifted its meaning and focus from its pre-evolutionary form. Now it is in the position that it can be used and maintained without violating the principles of modern science. Using an example of the adaptation and function debate, I will discuss how the teleological language is the best interpretation of these issues.

Teleology and Biology: a defense of teleological thinking in biology

Teleological language refers to a forward-looking discourse, and various biologists are troubled with this issue. In this paper, I will discuss the misunderstandings that both philosophers of science and biologists have made against teleology. Among these misunderstandings, I can mention its relationship to anthropomorphism (i.e., a planning agent external to the world reference) and reference to a force immanent to the organisms (“vitalism”) beyond the reach of empirical investigation. I will argue that they are misconceptions and that teleology has shifted its meaning and focus from its pre-evolutionary form. Now it is in the position that it can be used and maintained without violating the principles of modern science. Using an example of the adaptation and function debate, I will discuss how the teleological language is the best interpretation of these issues.

Supplemental Material for Anthropocentric Biases in Teleological Thinking: How Nature Seems Designed for Humans

Supplemental Material for Anthropocentric Biases in Teleological Thinking: How Nature Seems Designed for Humans

Teleological generics

Certain “generic” generalizations concern functions and purposes, e.g., cars are for driving. Some functional properties yield unacceptable teleological generics: for instance, cars are for parking seems false even though people park cars as often as they drive them. No theory of teleology in philosophy or psychology can explain what makes teleological generics acceptable. However, a recent theory (Prasada, 2017; Prasada & Dillingham, 2006; Prasada, Khemlani, Leslie, & Glucksberg, 2013) argues that a certain type of mental representation – a “principled” connection between a kind and a property – licenses generic generalizations. The account predicts that people should accept teleological generics that describe kinds and properties linked by a principled connection. Under the analysis, car bears a principled connection to driving (a car's primary purpose) and a non-principled connection to parking (an incidental consequence of driving). We report four experiments that tested and corroborated the theory's predictions, and we describe a regression analysis that rules out alternative accounts. We conclude by showing how the theory we developed can serve as the foundation for a general theory of teleological thinking.

Methodological problems of reforming the agrarian sphere

The article shows that market reforms in Ukraine are based on methodology inappropriate for these purposes. After all, it was this methodology that defined the logic of the construction and operation of the command-administrative system in the past. This is indicated by the fact that the theory and practice of reforms is based on the collectivist system of values of equality and justice, as well as by the directive nature of reforms, in which the pace, scale and forms of changes in the system of economic relations are defined centrally. The teleological vision of social order nature and the interpretation of them as the result of purposeful human activity are at the heart of this methodology. In this case reforms are carried out on the principles of “social engineering”. “Social engineering” cannot be called a scientific method, since it is practically impossible to formulate objective criteria for choosing goals or assessing ways to achieve them. That is, their effects and effectiveness cannot be predicted or substantiated theoretically. Within this approach only those who have an influence on the process of forming decisions, or who owns the right of their practical implementation, has a crucial role. The result of the teleological thinking dominance in the practice of Ukraine's market transformation is that trends and forms of economic development are determined by the ideas and knowledge of a narrow circle of politicians, officials and scholars. According to the theory of dispersed knowledge, market and competition of Friedrich von Hayek, no scholar or official, any collegial body from among them, in fact, is not able to acquire the required amount of knowledge that would allow to determine the optimal ways of development and solving of local and global economic problems. This is only possible if the space is released to realize the knowledge and initiative of millions of people. This requires a change in the paradigm of reforms from teleological to evolutionary. That is, the essence of the reforms is not to be limited to the definition of specific areas and forms of economic development, but to the creation of prerequisites for evolutionary development on the basis of the freedom to realize individual interest and competition. The article offers the main directions of implementation of an alternative evolutionary approach: restriction and decentralization of state power, ensuring freedom of entrepreneurship, demonopolization of the economy and reduction of the level ownership concentration. In particular, it is emphasized that for the development of rural areas, it is especially important to take effective preventive measures to avoid concentration of land tenure.

Poverty Alleviation as an Economic Problem

Economists distinguish between technological problems, in which variable means confront a given end, and economic problems, in which given means are allocated across competing ends. James Buchanan and F. A. Hayek each offer constructive criticisms of the standard definition of an economic problem, arguing that economists too easily slide into mechanistic and teleological thinking. Building on these accounts, we argue that there are three key dimensions to the economic problem: exchange, coordination and governance. We then make a case that poverty alleviation is more like an economic problem than a technological one, an economic problem with a small ‘e’. We survey empirical evidence from economics, anthropology and sociology indicating that poverty is not a simple lack of objectively identifiable resources but rather a multidimensional and socially embedded phenomenon. Understanding what poverty alleviation would even look like requires thinking through problems of exchange, coordination and governance.

The Prague school, teleology and language as a dynamic system

The present article deals with the concept of “purposefulness” in the goal-oriented linguistic model developed by the Prague Linguistic Circle and presented in the Thèses (1929). This approach is often classified as a teleological viewpoint on language. Teleology being incompatible with the present-day scientific framework (both in the humanities and the natural sciences), this part of the Prague linguistic heritage has only rarely been dealt with in depth and has been almost forgotten in recent years. Patrick Sériot speaks of “allusions likely to be negligently skipped over today because they no longer make sense to the contemporary reader” (Sériot, 2014, 20). Here, I present the notion of “purposefulness” in a different light, avoiding teleological thinking and reinterpreting “purposefulness” in a more plausible way for a contemporary reader. The choice of the term “purposefulness” itself might have originated due to a lack of suitable terminology and might be reconstructed in connection with contemporary dynamic approaches in linguistics.

Anthropocentric by Default? Attribution of Familiar and Novel Properties to Living Things.

Humans naturally and effortlessly use a set of cognitive tools to reason about biological entities and phenomena. Two such tools, essentialist thinking and teleological thinking, appear to be early developmental cognitive defaults, used extensively in childhood and under limited circumstances in adulthood, but prone to reemerge under time pressure or cognitive load. We examine the nature of another such tool: anthropocentric thinking. In four experiments, we examined patterns of property attribution to a wide range of living and non-living objects, manipulating time pressure, response type, and property (either novel or familiar) in a total of 471 participants. Results showed no tendency toward increased similarity-based attribution patterns indicative of anthropocentric thinking under time pressure. However, anthropocentric thinking was consistently observed for unfamiliar properties. These findings suggest that anthropocentric thinking is not a developmentally persistent cognitive default, but rather a cognitive strategy deliberately employed insituations of uncertainty.

Theodizee als Anthropodizee. Zum transzendentalen Theodizeebegriff bei Kant

Abstract. For the sake of completeness, Kant’s teleological thinking should cover not only what is purposive, but also what is contrapurposive. Kant fulfils this systematic requirement by means of the concept of theodicy, which is typical of his general critical parting from traditional Metaphysics. Within the transcendental framework of the teleological reflection upon world and nature, theodicy could no longer proceed theoretically and speculatively, but had to gain a new foundation on practical grounds. And insofar as, within this framework, the standpoint of God is made dependent on the human cognitive faculties, theodicy could no longer count as a theo-, but should instead become an anthropodicy. To show this, I rely on the conceptual pair “doctrinal – authentic” and I argue that the former is not a description of traditional theodicies (as is held in the relevant literature), but plays a constitutive role in Kant’s own account of theodicy.

Intuitive biological thought: Developmental changes and effects of biology education in late adolescence

A large body of cognitive research has shown that people intuitively and effortlessly reason about the biological world in complex and systematic ways. We addressed two questions about the nature of intuitive biological reasoning: How does intuitive biological thinking change during adolescence and early adulthood? How does increasing biology education influence intuitive biological thinking? To do so, we developed a battery of measures to systematically test three components of intuitive biological thought: anthropocentric thinking, teleological thinking and essentialist thinking, and tested 8th graders and university students (both biology majors, and non-biology majors). Results reveal clear evidence of persistent intuitive reasoning among all populations studied, consistent but surprisingly small differences between 8th graders and college students on measures of intuitive biological thought, and consistent but again surprisingly small influence of increasing biology education on intuitive biological reasoning. Results speak to the persistence of intuitive reasoning, the importance of taking intuitive knowledge into account in science classrooms, and the necessity of interdisciplinary research to advance biology education. Further studies are necessary to investigate how cultural context and continued acquisition of expertise impact intuitive biology thinking.

Upper secondary and first-year university students’ explanations of animal behaviour: to what extent are Tinbergen’s four questions about causation, ontogeny, function and evolution, represented?

ABSTRACTIn 1963, the Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Niko Tinbergen proposed a framework for the scientific study of animal behaviour by outlining four questions that should be answered to have a complete understanding: causation, ontogeny, function and evolution. At present, Tinbergen’s framework is still considered the best way to guide animal behavioural research. Given the importance in science instruction of demonstrating how scientists work and ask questions, we investigated to what extent Tinbergen’s questions are addressed in biology textbooks in secondary education in Flanders, Belgium, and represented in upper-secondary and first-year university students’ explanations of behaviour in general and of specific animal behaviours. Our results revealed that teaching of animal behaviour mainly addresses ontogeny and causation, and that Tinbergen’s framework is not explicitly referred to. Students typically addressed only one or two questions, with the majority addressing causation or both causation and ontogeny when explaining behaviour in general, but function or causation and function when explaining specific animal behaviours. This high prevalence of function may be due to teleological thinking. Evolution was completely neglected, even in university students who had recently completed an evolution course. Our results revealed that transfer of the concepts of ontogeny and evolution was (almost) absent. We argue why Tinbergen’s framework should be an integral part of any biology curriculum.

Assessing virtue: measurement in moral education at home and abroad

How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer draws on quantitative research designs. By measuring the inputs and processes that produce the highest levels of virtue among participants according to some reasonable criterion, in this view, we can determine which programs engender the most desired results. Although many outcomes of character education can undoubtedly be assessed in this way, taken on its own, this approach may support favorable judgments about programs that indoctrinate rather than educate, because education in character entails teleological thinking that is volitional not merely determined. I argue instead that proper assessment of virtue requires an expansive view of character education in both particular and common goods that avoids the tendency to indoctrinate and an inclusive conception of measurement that takes into account qualitative in addition to quantitative methodologies.

The Mind of the Nation: Völkerpsychologie in Germany, 1851–1955 by Egbert Klautke

The Mind of the Nation: Volkerpsychologie in Germany, 1851-1955, by Egbert Klautke. New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2073. vii, 788. $72.00 US (cloth). This concise and lucid book makes the case that scholars have consistently mischaracterized and unappreciated Volkerpsychologie, a now obscure but once robust set of approaches to understanding national or collective psychology. The idea that there is a German character, an Austrian Mind, or a French soul seems naive if not downright childish today, but these notions are merely a cartoonish version of more nuanced ideas, which, as Egbert Klautke argues, trace back to mid-nineteenth-century attempts to establish a science of national or collective involving the rigorous study of people as members of national groups. Klautke's project is to explicate these ideas, place them in their intellectual and political historical contexts, and argue for their ongoing relevance. He fulfills these tasks admirably and for the most part persuasively. The first issue to sort out in a discussion of Volkerpsychologie is how to define and translate this unwieldy term. If Klautke's protagonists had had their way and succeeded in establishing it as a discipline, indeed as the queen of the nascent social sciences, these questions would be moot today. However, this is a story of failure, and there are no departments of Volkerpsychologie in Germany or anywhere else, nor are there professional journals, endowed chairs, scientific societies, or annual meetings. So what was Volkerpsychologie? On its most literal level, as Klautke shows, it would be translated as psychology of peoples, but that term finds little resonance among English speakers. Folk psychology, the translation Klautke falls back on, sounds better but renders the plural Volker into the singular folk and thus has slightly different connotations. Ethnic psychology, social psychology, and ethnic anthropology are all close but likewise flawed. Another variant, race psychology, obscures more than it clarifies because of the shifting meanings of race from the nineteenth century through the Nazi period and indeed because of Volkerpsychologie's eventual accommodation with the Nazi regime. Finally, there is the problem that the authors and practitioners of this course of study regularly changed their minds about its core mission, and it meant something slightly different in the three contexts that form the core of this book. Klautke's first chapter concerns the creation of academic Volkerpsychologie by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal. In 1859 the two scholars launched the Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (Journal of Folk Psychology and Linguistics), and the journal's twenty-year lifespan corresponded with the height of optimism about Jewish emancipation and social acceptance in Germany. Volkerpsychologie reflected this optimism, seeing the nation not as a fixed racial or ethnic entity, but as voluntaristic, open-ended, and evolving. Volkerpsychologie aimed to be an objective, scientific approach to understanding the spirit or essence of nations through the tools of linguistics, history, and anthropology, yet could never free itself of teleological thinking whereby Europe, and Germany in particular, was both the template for national development and the standard of cultural achievement. Interestingly, as German nationalism became more exclusive and xenophobic amid the anti-Semitic wave of the 1880s, Lazarus reoriented his method from valorizing the German people to extolling the Jews, whose synthesis of German Bildung with Jewish ethics, he believed, represented the height of human achievement. …

Ham Sŏkhŏn and the Rise of the Dynamistic Philosophy of History in Korea

The purpose of this paper is show the systematic significance and function that the concept of history has in Ham Sŏkhŏn’s philosophy. Even though he was not the first philosopher of history in modern Korea, Ham enthusiastically presented and argued for the dynamic operation of the goal (telos) and force which he calls ‘‘ Ssi-al ’’—the anonymous grassroots in the context of Korean history. In particular, the notion of suffering plays an important role in his teleological thinking, not by imposing a pessimistic outlook but rather as an integral part of the historical mission assigned to the Korean people. In the second part of the paper, I discuss how Ham applies these fundamental categories to the various phases of the historical development in Korea.

Evolutionary biology and the question of teleology

Teleology—what Aristotle called “final cause”—is trying to understand things in terms of the future, as when we ask about the plates on the back of the dinosaur, stegosaurus, and suggest that they might sometime be used to control the internal temperature of the brute. Recently the philosopher Thomas Nagel has argued for a wholesale embrace of teleological thinking in the sciences, particularly the life sciences. I argue that Nagel's thinking is shoddy and ill-informed, but that in some sense biologists do (with reason) seem drawn to teleological understanding, and so the correct response is not outright rejection of the very idea but a more informed and sympathetic approach to those aspects of nature that seem to call for final cause thinking.

On the debate about teleology in biology: the notion of "teleological obstacle".

Among the epistemological obstacles described by Gaston Bachelard, we contend that unitary and pragmatic knowledge is correlated to the teleological categories of Ernst Mayr and is the basis for prevailing debate on the notion of "function" in biology. Given the proximity of the aspects highlighted by these authors, we propose to associate the role of teleological thinking in biology and the notion of unitary and pragmatic knowledge as an obstacle to scientific knowledge. Thus, teleological thinking persists acting as an epistemological obstacle in biology, according to Bachelardian terminology. Our investigation led us to formulate the "teleological obstacle," which we consider important for the future of biology and possibly other sciences.

Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century

Something major happened in 1979, or around 1979, or in any case sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Orthodoxies crumbled, as did regimes, and the world was never the same. The centrality of the date is universally accepted, although no one can agree on when these changes began and when they were fully realized. In 2008 several historians organized a conference at Harvard University about the 1970s and eventually published an edited volume, The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2011), which tried to tackle these questions from different disciplinary and geographical perspectives.Christian Caryl's Strange Rebels is another attempt to grapple with these tremendous changes, but where Shock of the Global did so (inconclusively) by approaching the issue from different angles (and with different sets of questions), this book tries to put together a narrative involving four key personalities (Margaret Thatcher, Ayatollah Khomeini, Pope John Paul II, Deng Xiaoping) and one more amorphous group of actors (the mujahideen in Afghanistan who fought the Communist government and Soviet forces in that country). Interweaving the protagonists’ biographies with the broader changes taking place in their respective societies, Caryl tries to show what made these leaders decide to play their respective roles, what conditions made their actions possible, and what effects their leadership had.Caryl is a fluid and informed writer and tells his story well. Despite the title and focus on personalities, his book is not just “great man / great woman” history. In each of the cases, Caryl takes a long-term view and draws on extensive literature (at least what is available in English) to explain the unsettling effects of the shah's modernization program and the different responses to it, as well as the seeming failures of the postwar consensus in Britain that spurred Thatcher's rise within the Conservative Party and ultimately to her transformative leadership of the UK. Readers will no doubt find this book informative and useful for understanding the background of China's transformation since the late 1970s, or the power of Khomeini's vision, for example. This is one of Caryl's primary aims.What is not clear is how these disparate threads link together. Caryl says that 1979 “marked the beginning of the end of the great socialist utopias that dominated so much of the twentieth century.” I doubt anyone would call post-Beveridge Britain a socialist utopia, and I am certain that neither Pahlavi Iran nor Afghanistan under the Musahiban would qualify as one, either. Afghanistan's Communists may have thought they were starting to build one, but they did not get far. Caryl further says that in 1979 “the twin forces of market and religion, discounted for so long, came back with a vengeance.” This sounds suspiciously like teleological thinking and once again does little to explain how the protagonists of the story are connected. Were the Afghan mujahideen fighting for the market? Was Deng Xiaoping inspired by religious motives? Perhaps in Ronald Reagan's mind.Strangely, some other key leaders are left out. Mikhail Gorbachev more than anyone else is probably responsible for the beginning of the end of one of the socialist utopias, yet he is not part of this story. True, Gorbachev did not come to power until 1985, but his political rise is firmly associated with the late 1970s. He was first elevated from his provincial leadership post in Stavropol to the Soviet Politburo in 1978 precisely because some key officials in the leadership recognized the need for serious changes. Nor is either Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan in the picture, despite their role in dismantling the New Deal consensus in the United States, their embrace of religion and moralism in politics, and their vision of themselves as outsiders shaking up the status quo. For that matter, why not include Pakistan's Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who did so much to reorient Pakistan's domestic and international politics in the late 1970s?The book does not address the larger issues that keep turning our gaze to this period. Why did the postwar British consensus, the New Deal, the Soviet economy, and Mohammed Daoud Khan's modernization project all seem to fail around the same time? The contributors to Shock of the Global could not come up with a single answer or a unifying theory. There is little doubt that the “long 1970s” are crucial for understanding the world we live in today, but as of now there is still too much work to be done before we can attempt a unifying global history of the decade and its consequences.

Antigone: An Interruption Between Feminism and Christianity

There is an extensive feminist tradition of reading Sophocles’ Antigone within a framework of political theory in response to Hegel’s influential comprehension of the play in the 19th century. More than thirty articles have been published in recent years, and several significant books, in which Antigone, the heroine, has been made an icon and battleground of feminist theory. This article aims to take a quite different tack to illumine the force of this debate and its potential significance for the modern feminist political approach to ancient tragedy. It sets out to investigate two central interlinked questions which have been underappreciated in the continuing response to Hegel: first, the place of religion in Hegel’s reading of Greek tragedy; and, second and more importantly, following from this first question, the role of teleological thinking in the political use of tragedy in modern thought.