Category: (Un)Certainty

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. Setting

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

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