Category: Efficiency

On Teleology: IV. Source?

Featured Image Credit (edited) by Juncala on Pixabay

Click here to read Part III. Purpose

On Teleology: IV. Source?

Lately – for those who haven’t been following along – I’ve been pondering teleology, using illustrations like students and missiles and acorns, and frames like Science and spirituality.

A missile, seeking its target’s latent heat across miles of airspace, flies at supersonic speed, following a process from launch to strike that takes place in seconds. Highly valued efficiency, very Sciencey: nothing wasted. If anything, that missile seems impatient, even hurried, even hot-tempered. It definitely seems persistent.

But an acorn spends all summer growing on a branch, and the only thing in its life that takes place in seconds is the fall it makes 20–30 feet into the grass below. There it rests, to spend the next… what, century? gradually rooting to the spot, eventually to become the next oak tree. That seems really patient and enduring, almost unflappable and, somehow, just as persistent as the missile.

So here is a heat-seeking missile that crosses wide-open space in split-second time, and there is an acorn that endures in one precise spot for eons of time… depending how you value things, like space or time, each in its own way might seem very efficient, not a thing is wasted. And each in its own way definitely seems ready-made for purpose.

And even though a missile is built and programmed while an acorn is an extant living thing, if I fire the missile at a suitable target, it should do as expected and destroy the enemy – what it’s designed to do – just as, if I bury it in suitable ground, an acorn should do as expected and grow on its own – what it’s designed to do? evolved to do? …it should do what it does – or at the least, by any reasonable expectation, we can presume it has a fair chance of growing.

Yet how does an acorn ‘know’ any suitable conditions if I’m the one who chooses where to bury it? Indeed, how does an acorn ‘know’ it can or cannot grow the way it’s supposed to, in any conditions whichever?

During all its time hanging from the branch of a tree, what does an acorn ‘learn’, as it were, about being an acorn and being an oak tree? By analogy, looking back to Part I, imagine a teacher who imparts lessons to students about the adults we envision them to become. From there, whichever adult role a student might come to fill, someone could reasonably suggest the broader or primary telos of students is to become adults who, likewise, take up the mantle of responsibility down the road to ‘build’ students anew… and on it goes, a cyclical telos of growing up: education and adulthood, reproduction and propagation, a kind of recycling source of teleology.

By the same turn, then, what has an acorn had impressed upon it about the right conditions for becoming a tree? In a manner of speaking, we might say every little acorn that falls from every mighty oak belongs to some larger community cycle, some wider-spread lineage, some… ? Well, I was about to say ‘master plan’ but let’s have a care: yes, I’ll grant, back in Part III I did mention ‘spirituality’, but surely ‘master plan’ can-slash-must never-slash-won’t ever designate Intelligent Design… not in the Scientific here-and-now of the 21st century.

Would folks feel better if I said ‘grand narrative’?

… or maybe I’m just barking up the wrong tree. Better not even to waste a breath on some “master plan,” some mighty Voice from Above, not when all it has to breathe is “Let slip the Dogs of War upon the innocent purity of Science.” I appreciate you, Science, being unable to prove ‘what is’ but only test ‘what isn’t’, and I’m convinced we can still be friends.

So, in closing, let’s throw Science a bone.

Remember… Science is man’s best friend!
(No kidding… “Darwin Forever” is actually a thing – check it out!) Image Credit: Mathilde

Stay tuned for Pt. V. Place and Time

On Teleology: III. Purpose

Featured Image Credit (edited) by Hans on Pixabay

Click here to read Part II. Illustration

On Teleology: III. Purpose

Inside a missile is a computer, programmed for action, but what do we find inside an acorn? Where inside its shell do we find its driving function, its purpose?

Is an acorn like the cells in our body, which seem to function toward some consequence? Is there some kind of dormant determination slumbering inside its organic innards – this, again, being neither human awareness nor living sentience per se yet, if it be anything at all, then perhaps akin to intention?

One suggestion in Part II was look to Science. After all, the forever-task of Science, as we all know – its telos, you might say – is to study and inform and science the shit out of things. Science might try an answer by lifting that acorn from whence it lies and working it over with responsible Scientific hands in pure Scientific investigation: lab coats, microscopes, dissection tools, the works: take no prisoners and cut to the core – our efficient pursuit of cold hard fact.

John C. Lennox thinks, yes, maybe science can… although maybe not exactly how you’d think

Yet the task of Science is disproof, refutation, a reliable rebuttal to hypothesis. We look to Science for what isn’t, leaving whatever remains – however outrageous or unlikely – as putative fact.

Alas, though, the remains of that poor little acorn… sliced and diced and cloven in twain, its natural telos nullified in an instant – can we even live with ourselves? The answer to that, of course, is hard core “Yes” and anyway, now denied its soil, denied its rain, denied its life, what natural purpose is left to that specimen under glass apart from subjection? That little acorn may as well be lying on the surface of Mars: this merely the price of Science… or is it the cost – I’m never sure which.

p.s. while we Scientifically shed no tears for that poor little acorn, let’s also see things just as clearly another way… upon each mighty tree, each little acorn is really just a free-loading itinerant, passively riding energy that arrives through some branch from up the trunk by roots sunk deep inside the earth, thanks to some previously far more successful acorn whose search for nourishment and stability plainly went closer to plan.

Still, someone says, that poor little acorn… a free-loader? Go ahead and don’t believe it, but one thing you don’t ever see – one thing you will never see – is an acorn refusing or resisting the energy that arrives through the branch up the trunk from roots sunk deep in the earth. Trust me, no acorn isn’t glad its attached to the branch of a tree. And as far as that goes, leeching off an oak tree, maybe what we ought to say is no acorn attached to a branch has any telos of its own, at least not until it falls to the ground below… which somehow awakens its purpose, and here we go again, ‘awakens’, yet another anthropomorphization alongside images like ‘gladness’, ‘intention’, and ‘sentience’.

For some, all these investigative attempts and theories transcend natural scope and approach something more spiritual. And fair play, I suppose, if Science can provide no satisfactory answers in that regard. Then again, fair play even if Science can – ‘Science’ being merely that latest movement of faith to grab our rapt attention.

Whichever perspective we take – be it Science, spirituality, or something else again – it’s still worth asking one question: when’s the last time you saw an acorn, lying on the ground, really striving to ripen and root and really just exert itself from that spot on the ground to “Be the tree!” Behold! in its stillness such determination, in its peace such persistence and passion.

The Fires of Passion!

Meanwhile, in clouds of thought, that same question remains, hovering above our heads: whether upon the tree or once it falls, from whence its purpose? How does an acorn ‘know’? What is its source of telos?

Click here to read Pt. IV. Source?

On Teleology: I. Efficiency

Featured Image Credit (edited) by William of Ockham – from a manuscipt of Ockham’s Summa Logicae, MS Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 464/571, fol. 69r}, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

On Teleology: I. Efficiency

Teleology is the study of final causes or, put another way, the fulfillment of inherent purpose or, even more simply, completion. As a quality or trait, we can call this τέλος, or telos.

An analogy I use in Teacher Ed to illustrate telos is shipbuilding… what kind of ‘ship’ – or maybe better in plural, what kinds of ‘ships’ – have school teachers been aiming to build? One warrant for this shipbuilding comparison, my thinking goes, is our culture’s hankering obsession with efficiency, i.e. what ocean-going vessel ever gets built except to fill some function or purpose?

By analogy, what function or purpose do teachers envisage or intend for K-12 graduates – what kind(s) of people do we want K-12 graduates to become? How closely does this resemble the kind(s) of people the Curriculum has in mind? And then, maybe more importantly, what kind(s) of people do teachers actually end up ‘building’? Alternatively, from the student perspective, what kinds of influence have teachers brought to bear upon their telos? What kinds of people finally cross that stage for their diploma?

No analogy being perfect – sort of the point with analogies – we can then make broader comparisons and contrasts between students and ships and gain a bit of insight about the intentions around which we approach the ‘building’ of each one.

Looks to be Grade 11 or 12ish
Image Credit by Manne1953 on Pixabay

But if ships don’t float your boat, try framing telos in the natural world… by analogy, imagine bacteria, forever on the hunt to feed and survive, yet to what end? Do bacteria literally just feed because they already live and will procreate, or do they need to survive in order to fulfill some further function or purpose?

Image Credits by Ali Shah Lakhani (edited) on Unsplash and
geralt on Pixabay

Likewise, consider the cells in our bodies. Controlled as they are by genes, proteins, and nuclei, each has a specific function that elicits some somatic or physiological consequence. By analogy, we might even stretch the description as far as saying cells seem to operate with some kind of ‘intention’ although that’s not to invoke ‘awareness’ or ‘sentience’… none as far as we know, anyway, not like the awareness a shipbuilder has while building ships or the intent a teacher has while teaching students.

Hmm… could telos be more inherent or instinctive than intentional, some mere effect of causes, which fall like dominos? Possibly, but for now let’s defer that question on the basis, as noted above, that our culture prefers to ply the Road of Efficiency, towards which ‘a purpose for everything’ definitely fills the bill. Of course, it’s no secret who else plies Efficiency Road – plies it like a wide-load truck – and it’s no outlander who believes that Science embraces teleology.

Along that Road, ‘a purpose for everything’ might also convey ‘nothing wasted’… think Occam’s Razor and a cut-to-the-chase sentiment that we might dare to call “relentless” although maybe let’s amend this to something kinder and gentler, like “persistent” – still sharp, just not so cutting.

Image Credit by Classroom Clipart

Hang on, though… let’s also clarify exactly which Occam’s Razor we’re using here because, you know, there’s Occam’s Razor and there’s Ockham’s Razor…

(i) Occam’s Razor

‘All things being equal,
the simplest explanation tends to be the correct explanation.’

and/or

“…permission to wrap up all epistemological loose ends
as ‘finished science’ in one fell swoop of fatal logic”

– posted on by The Ethical Skeptic

Occam’s Razor would keep matters simplistic by having us ignore or dismiss whichever details and data don’t suit some preferred belief or objective. In other words…

‘That which is easier to understand’

equals

‘That which is therefore more likely to be true’

equals

‘I’ll not be wasting my precious time with all that
thinking, testing, wondering crap’

equals

‘I don’t agree with you’
‘I don’t want to agree with you,
and, for that reason, you are wrong,
plus Occam’s Razor is Sciencey;
ipso facto, I am invincible’

(ii) Ockham’s Razor

“Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate”

equals

“Plurality should not be posited without necessity”

William of Ockham would have us avoid leaping to conclusions or posing explanations beyond what can be justified by careful reasoning, yet with exceptions for what is self-evident, what is known to experience, and what might be “… proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture.” [William of Ockham, you understand, was a devout pre-Protestant friar and scholar who, thereby, viewed God as the sole ontological necessity.] In other words…

Proffer something because reason can warrant or justify its addition

equals

Don’t let your ego write cheques that Science can’t cash

And how come? Because something straightforward is and ought to remain distinct from something simple just as something complex is and ought to remain distinct from something complicated.

The razor imagery, meanwhile, is metaphor for scraping away the ink you spilled from writing (or thinking) unnecessarily.

OK, let’s recap: Telos thus far = Ships, Cells, Bacteria, Science, and two kinds of Razors… up next – you guessed it: Acorns!

Click here to read Part II. Illustration