Category: Teleology

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: II. Illustration

Featured Image Credit (edited) by Sweetaholic on Pixabay

Click here to read Part I. Efficiency

On Teleology: II. Illustration

An acorn is the ‘fruit’ of the oak tree – and go ahead with your own favourite fruit-bearer, but as for me, I once lived next to an oak tree.

“Aristoteles” Portrait bust of Aristotle
Copy of the Imperial era (1st or 2nd century) of a lost bronze sculpture made by Lysippos
(Wikipedia: Eric Gaba, User: Sting)

Aristotle used the acorn to help illustrate his understanding of teleology. He was addressing general questions like…

  • ‘What is something really for?’
  • ‘What is something’s ultimate purpose?’
  • ‘What is the mark of its fulfillment or completion?’

In not so many words, he was asking, ‘What’s an acorn’s goal, its telos?’ as though an acorn has some objective. In response to his own query, Aristotle proposed the ultimate goal of an acorn, the completion of its purpose: to be an oak tree.

That seems like a reasonable proposal to me although whether someone else might interpret it as being either an inherent or an imbued purpose – if that’s even a distinction – is another question, as noted in Part I.

Image Credit by Burkard Meyendriesch on Pexels

Besides the acorn illustration, Aristotle also noted some other distinctions about teleology, one being sub-ordinate orders of telos, each in service of the next – for example, in warfare, as the telos of a weapon is killing the enemy, so the telos of warfare itself is victory. Aristotle asked further still, “What are the right conditions to bring telos to fruition?” …so, for the acorn to become an oak tree, how much sunlight, how much rain, what kind of soil, and so forth.

The concept of teleology may now be fairly clear, so what about that earlier question – is telos something inherent or imbued, intrinsic or intentional? And how do we even attempt to reach some answer?

Maybe Science can provide some scope there, too, some sense of history, with regard to whichever ‘right conditions’ might have set in motion the telos of the acorn… way back eons ago, when the Earth was molten lava or glacial ice, and something emerged from the primordial slime that finally and ultimately became the very first oak tree-née-acorn.

Or maybe Darwin can help explain teleology as some outcome of evolutionary processes, which even now might still be underway!

Sure maybe, but even if natural selection can help describe some broader historical development, what about more precise interior workings – for instance, how does an acorn sort of just ‘know’ that it’s destined to become a tree, I mean the way a caterpillar sort of just ‘knows’ it’s destined to become a butterfly… I mean if these things even ‘know’ anything to begin with?

Psst… you didn’t happen to ‘know’, did you?

Because if that acorn doesn’t ‘know’, then how exactly did its function or purpose arise – where has its telos come from? Is a ‘source’ for telos even the right question to be asking? Is there some kind of trigger or teleological catalyst? If so, where do we even begin to find it? Insofar as such questions pertain to Science, they also maybe don’t – maybe Science can provide no scope or sense for telos since what I’m asking is profoundly more non-corporeal than the guts of some acorn dissection.

Still, it’s fun to pretend, so maybe let’s imagine thinking like an acorn, with that foresight of ‘My Future as an Oak Tree’. We could also imagine looking back as the wise old oak tree, with that ancient insight afforded by hindsight: ‘Once upon a time…’ Maybe there’s even something to be gained from imagining both perspectives at once – either as the acorn’s ‘early on’ + later on’s ‘the tree’ or else vice-versa.

Here’s another example although quite different, with apologies in advance for shock value… earlier, I mentioned weapons and warfare, so how about a heat-seeking missile. The telos of a heat-seeking missile, we might say, is to shoot down an enemy plane. In order to function, that type of missile – by definition – relies on its target’s radiant heat. So there again is what I mean by imagining more than one perspective at a time – on one hand, the missile, on the other, the target’s heat.

CF-18 Image Credit by MarkjF31 – own work, CC BY 4.0 on Wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=180575948

But, as a missile is computerised, this is because people designed and programmed and manufactured it to be that way. That missile is a machine, a very complex contraption, given design and purpose by the people who needed heat-seeking missiles to be just so. Acorns and oak trees, however, along with caterpillars and butterflies… these are extant living creatures.

And the question remains: what intrinsic–slash–what intentional quality resides inside each one of these ‘either/or’ or ‘both at once’ pairings that drives their purpose to fulfillment?

Click here to read Part III. Purpose