Teleology Quotes
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“I am drawn to a fourth alternative, natural teleology, or teleological bias, as an account of the existence of the biological possibilities on which natural selection can operate. I believe that teleology is a naturalistic alternative that is distinct from all three of the other candidate explanations: chance, creationism, and directionless physical law. To avoid the mistake that White finds in the hypothesis of nonintentional bias, teleology would have to be restrictive in what it makes likely, but without depending on intentions or motives. This would probably have to involve some conception of an increase in value through the expanded possibilities provided by the higher forms of organization toward which nature tends: not just any outcome could qualify as a telos. That would make value an explanatory end, but not one that is realized through the purposes or intentions of an agent. Teleology means that in addition to physical law of the familiar kind, there are other laws of nature that are "biased toward the marvelous".”
Thomas Nagel
“It looks as if the offspring have eyes so that they can see well (bad, teleological, backward causation), but that's an illusion. The offspring have eyes because their parents' eyes did see well (good, ordinary, forward causation).”
Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works“Leibniz combines Aristotelian teleology in the notion that the nature of a thing provides for its unfolding in a certain fashion with the modern idea that the nature of a thing is within it. Because the forms are internal in the way that they are not with Aristotle, the harmony of the world has to be pre-established by God.”
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity“Among the things most characteristic of organisms--most distinctive of living as opposed to inorganic systems--is a sort of directedness. Their structures and activities have an adaptedness, an evident and vital usefulness to the organism. Darwin's answer and ours is to accept the common sense view...[that] the end ("telos") [is] that the individual and the species may survive. But this end is (usually) unconscious and impersonal. Naive teleology is controverted not by ignoring the obvious existence of such ends but by providing a naturalistic, materialistic explanation of the adaptive characteristics serving them. [Book review in "Science," 1959, p. 673.]”
George Gaylord Simpson“Like physical events with their causal and teleological interpretations, every linguistic event had two possible interpretations: as a transmission of information and as the realization of a plan.”
Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others“The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century. Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity.We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology.”
Gerald Holton, Physics, the Human Adventure: From Copernicus to Einstein and Beyond“Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.”
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design“The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.”
Thomas Nagel“The ultimate foundation of spirituality is the recognition that there can't be such a thing as a purposeful life in a purposeless universe.”
Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski“Only by intertwining these two perspectives, the biological and the phenomenological, can we gain a fuller understanding of the immanent purposiveness of the organism and the deep continuity of life and mind.”
Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of MindAll in One Creative & Marketing Platform to tell stories at scale
