What Is Teleology?

Teleology is a word composed of two Greek roots: telos  which means ‘end’ and logos  which means ‘treatise or explanation’. So, broadly speaking, teleology is an area of ​​philosophy that studies the ends or purposes of a being or an object. The approach that seeks to explain the ultimate causes of a reality is also called this way.

Although teleology as a term appeared when it was coined by Wolff in 1728, this field of analysis emerged with the first Greek philosophers. Plato was the first to speak on the subject and then Aristotle took it up again from a critical perspective.

Teleology as such has been linked to metaphysics and that is why we find it in some reasonings with a religious background, such as those that identify God as the ultimate cause of everything. In today’s world, it also appears linked to the hypotheses of the supernatural origin of reality.

The big picture of teleology

In philosophy  there are basically two great theories to explain the changes that occur in nature. The first of them is the finalist, associated with teleology, and the second is the mechanistic. The teleological position indicates that a change can only be understood if it is possible to establish its link with the ultimate cause that produces it. The mechanistic approach, for its part, indicates that the cause of the changes is the immediate or mediate physical influence of the elements that make up the material world.

The teleological explanation prevailed throughout the Middle Ages. The idea prevailed that the final cause of all phenomena  was found in the divine mysteries. This was one of the axes of the doctrine that prevailed at that time, which is known as scholasticism.

This scholasticism was both a theology and a philosophy. The medieval period being a critical point in it, it highlights Saint Thomas Aquinas and his reinterpretation of Aristotelian philosophy in an attempt to reconcile the new translations of Averroes. A paradigm in which logical or physical truths were only an instrument to support the truths of faith. The ultimate cause of everything was God and in him explanations for different phenomena had to be sought.

Aristotle and teleology

As we have already noted, Plato was perhaps the first renowned thinker to pass through the bar of teleology . However, it was Aristotle who delved into the subject and articulated it in a logical way. This great Greek philosopher pointed out that changes can occur by three factors: nature, art or technique, and chance.

From his approach, changes caused by nature, art or technique require that a purpose be established. In other words, there is a purpose in all beings and objects and in the changes they experience. Everything happens for something or for something. In this way, Aristotle raises the existence of four possible causes:

• Material cause. It refers to what something is made of.
• Formal cause. What characterizes or gives an object being differentiated.
• Efficient cause. It is properly the cause, that is, that which has given rise to an object.
• Final cause. This is the concept most related to teleology and refers to that for which an object exists.

From this rationalization, Aristotle concludes that every form of natural existence has a purpose. This purpose is determined by its form or its essence, as well as by what it aspires to be, which is called “potency.” Even inorganic beings are sheltered by this principle, since if a stone falls, it does so because its purpose is to be on the ground, which is its natural place.

Mechanism and scientific explanation

When the Modern Age began, teleology was called into question. Explained in a simple way, it was argued that the final causes were constructions of the human mind, but this did not mean that the universe worked based on what we human beings designated.

The mechanism then emerged, a position in which it is intended to explain what happens in nature on the basis of efficient causes, that is, the factors associated with the phenomenon itself and not with what is in the mind of the person who them. watch. This made possible the birth of experimental science.

From these premises, what would later become the scientific method and epistemology, which is the branch of philosophy that analyzes and validates it, was developed. From that perspective, all explanations must have the same logical form and obey precise laws to be valid. This was the paradigm that prevailed over teleology in the field of knowledge.