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Teleology (telos: end, purpose) is the philosophical study of design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in nature or human creations. Contrasted with philosophical naturalism Teleology traditionally is contrasted with philosophical naturalism, which views nature as lacking design or purpose. For example, naturalism would say that a person has sight simply because they have eyes. In other words, function follows form (eyesight follows from having eyes). Teleology is the reverse of this position: a person has eyes because they have the need of eyesight. In this case, form follows function (eyes follow from having the need for eyesight). Two classic examples of these opposing views are found in Aristotle and Lucretius, the former as a supporter of teleology and the latter as a supporter of what is now called philosophical naturalism: Extrinsic and intrinsic finality Teleology depends on the concept of a final cause or purpose inherent in all beings. There are two types of such causes, intrinsic finality and extrinsic finality. Over-emphasizing extrinsic finality is often criticized as leading to the anthropic attribution of every event to God's will, and mere superstition. For instance, "If I hadn't been at the store today, I wouldn't have found that $100 on the ground. God must have intended for me to go to the store so I would find that money." Such abuses were criticized by Francis Bacon ("De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum," III, iv), Descartes ("Principia Philosophiæ", I, 28; III, 2, 3; "Meditationes", III, IV), and Spinoza (Ethica, I, prop. 36 app.). Intrinsic finality, while more subtle, provides the basis for the teleological argument for the existence of God, and its modern counterpart, intelligent design. Proponents of teleology argue that it resolves a fundamental defect in philosophical naturalism. They argue that naturalism focuses exclusively on the immediate causes and mechanisms of events, and does not attend to the reason for their synthesis. Thus, it is argued, if we take a clock apart, we discover in it nothing but springs, wheels, pivots, levers etc. But having explained the mechanism which causes the revolutions of the hands on the dial, is it reasonable to say that the clock was not made to keep time? Philosophers of science respond that since Aristotle, biology has been profoundly concerned with the constraint function places on structure, and that the arrival of Darwinian evolutionary theory did not alter this concern. A classic and early example is Darwin's interest in functional constraints on the evolutionary development of the beaks of Galapagos finches. Of these birds, Darwin wrote, "Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends. " (Origin of Species, chapter 19) Classical Greek teleology Plato summarized the argument for teleology as follows in Phaedo, arguing that it is error to fail to distinguish between the ultimate Cause, and the mere means by which the ultimate Cause acts: Thus, it is argued, those who attempt to explain nature in terms of nature alone are forced to deny the ultimate binding Good (or other such invisible forces, such as gravity and electromagnetism) in the universe, and hope that they will someday discover a stronger supporting argument ("Atlas" or, for example, God) to hold their universe together. Similarly, Aristotle argued that it is error to attempt to reduce all things to mere necessity, because such thinking neglects the purpose, order, and final cause that causes the apparent necessity. He wrote: There are 4 main causes of nature in Aristotle's view. The material cause, efficient cause, formal cause and the final cause. Modern/postmodern philosophy The area in which, within modern philosophy, teleology has had a powerful influence right through to the present has been in Hegel and the various neo-Hegelian schools, including that of Marx. In this interpretation of the history of our species on this globe — an interpretation at variance both with Darwin 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 (the multiplicity of world views, ethnic, cultural and national identities) which divide the human race both now and in the past, and which set off (and always have set off) different groups of people against each other in violent conflict. Hegel conceived of the 'totality' of mutually antagonistic world-views and life-forms in history as being 'goal-driven', i.e. oriented towards an end-point in history in which the 'objective contradiction' of 'subject' and 'object' would eventually 'sublate' into a form of life which has left violent conflict behind it. This goal-oriented, 'teleological' notion of the 'historical process as a whole' is present in a variety of 20th Century authors, from Lukács and Jaspers to Horkheimer and Adorno. According to Jean-François Lyotard (1979) teleology and "grand narratives" are eschewed in a postmodern attitude. Teleology may be viewed as reductive, exclusionary and harmful to those whose stories are erased. Syntropy In special relativity the energy-momentum relation relates the energy of an object (E) with its momentum (p), and mass (m), where c is the speed of light: . This equation has a dual energy solution, one positive , which moves forward in time, and one negative , which moves backward in time. If the momentum is zero then the equation simplifies into the famous . However, in quantum mechanics, as a consequence of the discovery of the spin of elementary particles, which consists of a momentum (p) which can never be equal to zero, the energy-momentum relation does not simplify in . In 1926 Klein and Gordon generalized the Schrödinger equation into a relativistic equation by inserting the energy-momentum relation (Klein-Gordon equation). In this way, they discovered the existence of a dual wave solution: retarded waves which propagate from the past to the future and anticipated waves which propagate from the future to the past . In 1928 Paul Dirac tried to solve the unacceptable negative solution by applying the energy-momentum relation to the study of electrons, turning them into relativistic objects (Dirac equation). But, also in this case, the unwanted negative solution emerged in the form of electrons and its antiparticles . In 1942 Luigi Fantappiè, one of the major Italian mathematicians, noted that the mathematical properties of those phenomena which are determined by past causes (causality, ), such as the physical and chemical processes, are governed by the law of entropy, while the mathematical properties of those phenomena which are attracted towards causes located in the future (retrocausality, ), agree with a symmetrical law which Fantappiè named syntropy. Fantappiè immediately recognized the coincidence between the mathematical properties of syntropy and the properties of living systems. Einstein used the term Übercausalität (supercausality) to refer to this new model of causality and retrocausality (final causes). There is "an open access journal" Syntropy dedicated to the study of retrocausality in the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, ecology and spirituality which can be found in English at http://www.sintropia.it/english/2006-eng-3.htm. Anthropic principle In recent decades, a form of teleological reasoning has reappeared in certain quarters of physics and cosmology, under the heading of anthropic principle, a term Brandon Carter coined in 1973. The problem the anthropic principle tries to address is: Why did the universe begin in a very simple state (Big Bang) but has since grown ever more complex, to the extent that, at least in our corner of it, it is hospitable to life as complex as homo sapiens? For a very detailed discussion of this resurgence of teleology in natural science, see Barrow and Tipler (1986). While long stretches of this monograph are technically challenging, it also includes: Contemporary accounts of teleology within biology are heavily influenced by Larry Wright's "etiological" account of teleology. Wright's sought to supply a definition of "function" that could be applied to natural phenomena as well as human artifacts - that is, human constructions such as a hammer. Most contemporary accounts of teleology follow in the steps of Wright's etiological account (Ruth Millikan for instance). There is, however, disagreement over its use. Some, such as Godfrey-Smith and Ernst Mayr, object to any sort of etiological theory of teleology that attempts to explain both natural phenomena as well as human artifacts. Their accounts are therefore naturalistic accounts of teleology. Technology Teleology has a long history in the study of purpose in human creations such as technology. The study of "teleological mechanisms" in machinery (i.e. machines with corrective feedback) dates back at least to the late 1700s when James Watt's steam engine was equipped with a governor. More recently, Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Norbert Wiener conceived of teleology in machinery as being a feedback mechanism. Wiener, a mathematician, coined the term 'cybernetics' to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms," which was popularized through his book Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and machine (1948). Cybernetics is the study of the communication and control of regulatory feedback, both in living beings and machines, and in combinations of the two. Since that time the term "teleologic" in particular has been frequently used in the scientific literature to capture the sense of purposeful goal-directed behavior in biological and technological control systems. See also Further reading | |||||||
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