Teleology Quotes & Sayings

When all the mythologies have been set aside, we can see that, children or no children, the joke of evolution is that it is a teleology without a point, that we, like all animals, are a project that issues in nothing. — Maggie Nelson

The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it. — Richard Dawkins

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 Bozydar Wisniewski

I would say that teleology is theology, and that God is not a "because," but rather an "in order to. — Miguel De Unamuno

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

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

But really justice has no coordinates, no teleology. — Maggie Nelson

The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty ... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation ... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad ... Truth matters because of beauty. — Alfred North Whitehead

Darwin's greatest achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning, teleology (design), and intentionality in the origin and development of human and animal species was entirely an illusion. The illusion could be explained by evolutionary processes that contained no such purpose at all. But the spread of ideas through imitation required the whole apparatus of human consciousness and intentionality — John Searle

Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept. — Immanuel Kant

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

Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history. One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course. Despite all deficiencies not only is the death-blow dealt here for the first time to 'teleology' in the natural sciences, but their rational meaning is empirically explained. — Karl Marx

The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. — G.K. Chesterton

Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it. — Alfred Adler

There are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no third way available. — Ludwig Von Mises

Evolution works by selection, not by instruction. There is no final cause, no teleology, no purpose guiding the overall process — Gerald Edelman

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

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 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

The unbiblical idea of "spirituality" is that the truly "spiritual" man is the person who is sort of "non-physical," who doesn't get involved in "earthly" things, who doesn't work very much or think very hard, and who spends most of his time meditating about how he'd rather be in heaven. As long as he's on earth, though, he has one main duty in life: Get stepped on for Jesus. The "spiritual" man, in this view, is a wimp. A Loser. But at least he's a Good Loser. — David H. Chilton

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

I claim that the fact that we are strongly encouraged to identify with characters for whom death is not a significant creative possibly has real costs. We the audience, and individual you over there and me right here, lose any sense of eschatology, thus of teleology, and live in a moment that is, paradoxically, both emptied of intrinsic meaning or end and quite literally ETERNAL. If we're the only animals who know in advance we're going to die, we're also probably the only animals who would submit so cheerfully to the sustained denial of this undeniable and very important truth. The danger is that, as entertainment's denials of the truth get even more effective and pervasive and seductive, we will eventually forget what they're denials OF. This is scary. Because it seems transparent to me that, if we forget how to die, we're going to forget how to live. — David Foster Wallace

Life is teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfill themselves. — Carl Jung

According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark; according to Darwin, organisms are like grapeshot of which one hits something and the rest fall wide.
For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made for the conditions in which it is found; for the Darwinian an organism exists because, out of many of its kind, it is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in which it is found.
Teleology implies that the organs of every organism are perfect and cannot be improved; the Darwinian theory simply affirms that they work well enough to enable the organism to hold its own against such competitors as it has met with, but admits the possibility of indefinite improvement. — Thomas Henry Huxley

A teleology directed to material ends has been substituted for the lust for adventure, variety, and play. — John Carroll

Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public. — John B. S. Haldane

In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all. — Daniel Dennett

That which struck the present writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the 'Origin of Species' was the conviction that Teleology, as commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr. Darwin's hands. For the teleological argument runs thus: an organ or organism (A) is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose (B); therefore it was specially constructed to perform that function. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Teleology is a lady without whom no biologist can live. Yet he is ashamed to show himself with her in public. — Ernst Wilhelm Von Brucke

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

This is a throwback to the Aristotelian conception of nature, banished from the scene at the birth of modern science. But I have been persuaded that the idea of teleological laws is coherent, and quite different from the idea of explanation of the intentions of a purposive being who produces the means to his ends by choice. In spite of the exclusion of teleology from contemporary science, it certainly shouldn't be ruled out a priori. Formally, the possibility of principles of change over time tending toward certain types of outcome is coherent, in a world in which the nonteleological laws are not fully deterministic. — Thomas Nagel