Talk:Teleonomy

The links attached to this stub are questionable. Would others please take a look???? NickThompson@earthlink.net


 * Yes they are bad. I've written a full entry. Foggg 22:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Talcott Parsons
The reference (in the introduction to the article) to Parsons's use of teleonomy needs a citation. Perhaps he does this in "Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives"? Regardless, its location in his work is non-obvious and needs citing.

Following this: There is a reference called Talcott Parsons Today: His Theory and Legacy in Sociology Today by A. Javier Trevino. In it the author says that late in Parsons' career he introduces the "construct teleonomy" "introduced in 1970 by the Harvard Biologist Ernest Mayr" and this new formulation allows Parsons to  reconcile "the levels of action and system, through his focus of symbolization in structures" (pp 182-183).

In Action Theory and the Human Condition by Talcott Parsons (Free Press, New York, 1978): "In seeking the focus of a definition of health, I should like to rely on the work on an eminent contemporary biologist, Ernst Mayr, who has introduced, at least for the American biological world, the concept of teleonymy. Teleonymy, a term that Mayr uses to avoid the metaphysical connotations of the old teleology, may be defined as the capacity of an organism, or its propensity, to undertake successful goal-oriented courses of behavior." (p.68).Cshillibeer (talk) 00:25, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Problems with the present article: Nagel versus Mayr
I agreed those links were inappropriate, and I do appreciate the work that has been done (predominantly by Foggg) to include material on evolution, and the discussions about the agency of biological organisms. However, I note there has been significant shift towards a (seeming exclusive) biological character, some lack of accuracy and coherency arising from copying/pasting, and a lot of potential for confusion. While evolutionary biologists have discussed the issue a lot, it is not exclusive, or specific to "structures and functions in living organisms that derive from their evolutionary history and adaptation for reproductive success." Furthermore, it is critical to distinguish discussions about presumed agency (e.g., did the Wood Thrush do something "so as to escape", or "thereby escaping") and the end purpose of a process itself (e.g., humans were the unavoidable and ultimate result of evolution). This latter statement on human evolution, is teleonomic, though it is also, of course, incorrect because evolution in not teleonomic.

Furthermore, I am not confident in the texts cited because, after re-reviewing Wiener's "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" (available in JStor), I see no mention of the word teleonomy. Which page does it appear on? (Googling the word I see some people mentioning that perhaps it was first used in cybernetics, and now people are linking to this article to say Wiener coined it! Perhaps he did, but I don't see a verifiable source to that end.) The material that I'm familiar with respect to its provenance is "Programmed behavior is not teleological but teleonomic, a term introduced by the biologists Colin Pittendrigh (1958), Julian Huxley (1960), and Ernst Mayr (1961, 1974b), among others, in an effort to rid their discipline of both teleological explanation and a long-standing contradiction: insistence that all natural processes have mechanistic interpretations." (Beninger 1986:41) It also appears that many of the quotes are cobbled from sources on Google like this.

Aside from the scholarly issues, or perhaps as a result of them, we seem to have a serious problem here. Is teleonomy:
 * as originally suggested in the article, like teleology, the presumption of end purpose, but through means other than a deity, or
 * as the current article sometimes suggests, the opposite of teleology: no prior purpose. This seems supported by Oxford's A Dictionary of Zoology: "teleonomy: The hypothesis that adaptations arise without the existence of a prior purpose, but by chance may change the fitness of an organism. Compare TELEOLOGY."

And the difficulty between these two options is what if something has a tendency (or, a *very* strong tendency) towards some end, without this being purposeful? On this point, Mayr (1988) in Toward a New Philosophy of Biology has a great chapter (3) entitled "The Multiple Meanings of Teleological", where he distinguishes between:
 * teleomatic: processes have an end point, but never a goal; the automatic application of natural laws to phsyical actions (e.g. gravity and a falling rock) (Mayr 1988:44)
 * teleonomic: a program and end-point/goal produced by a natural cause (e.g., ontogeny, or a beaver building a dam) (Mayr 1988:45)

Because I find Mayr to provide the greatest clarity on this point, I also object to evolution being characterized as teleonomic in the present article: "A teleonomic process, such as evolution, produces complex products without the benefit of such a guiding foresight." (He disagrees with Nagel who is quoted in the present article). While the beaver's behavior might be described as teleonomic, because its DNA is a control program influencing it towards the goal of building a dam, the evolution of the beaver and that behavior itself is not teleonomic, but what Mayr calls teleomatic (like the pull of gravity on a falling rock). Consider the following:

Is Biology an Autonomous Science?


 * There is nothing in the physical sciences that corresponds to the biology of ultimate causations. The claims that the evolution of galaxies or radioactive decay correspond to biological processes are quite erroneous. Evolution in galaxies is transformational, not variational, evolution (Lewontin 1983), and radioactive decay, controlled by physical laws, is a teleomatic process, not a teleonomic one, as claimed by Nagel (1977). (Mayr 1988iba:17)


 * Since adaptedness is a result of the past and not an anticipation of the future, it does not qualify for the epithet "teleological." (Mayr 1988iba:20)

-Reagle 16:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Here is an excerpt from Evan Thompson's Mind in Life, Harvard University Press, 2007,p. 130, which might be useful in context of the above discussion, viewing teleonomic as "functionalist" and contrasting it with specific outmoded form of teleology: "biologists and philosophers have outlined ‘teleonomic’ or functionalist forms of explanation that do not involve any of the traditional Platonic or Aristotelian components of teleology, namely, backward causation (from a future goal-state to the events leading up to it), anthropomorphism (referring to a conscious purpose), and vitalism (appealing to immaterial forces)." I don't feel comfortable changing the page, but I hope this excerpt is useful in the discussion. Jeremylent (talk) 00:59, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Other problems:
It may just be me, but this article has some loaded words and/or phrases:
 * 'The funny thing about this is that ...'
 * 'Evolution largely hoards hindsight, as variations unwittingly ...'
 * 'A simple perusal of Christopher Shields' Aristotle would serve to dispel such confusions...'

Also, the introduction (some some of the previous quotes) don't refer to the words' nascent existence and state of flux. Words, especially words with both philosophical and technical meanings, are not set in stone just because it has such-and-such greek or latin origins, it seems to me. Perhaps the article should have two sections, one describing the philosophical meaning, and one that describes its relation to the physical sciences? my 2 cents. Rhetth (talk) 16:17, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm finding it hard to be constructive here. The introductionm (all I care to read) of this article is dreadful. There are grammatical errors, the tone is not only conversational but lecturing, and worst of all, there are everywhere word choices that are imprecise and insufficient to convey any objective meaning. A number of sentences require repeated readings and scrutiny to understand. For example:

"Evolution largely hoards hindsight, as variations unwittingly make "predictions" about structures and functions which could successfully cope with the future, and which participate in an audition which culls the also-rans, leaving winners for the next generation."

Evolution hoards hindsight? It seems to me that personifying sentences like this are to be entirely avoided in an article about subtle distinctions between notions of biological purpose. Categorically, this sentence can only confuse. A smaller, compounding issue is the subsequent use of the words "participate," "audition," "also-rans," and "winners". If this article describes a legitimate topic of discussion, it is entirely unacceptable that it is written in a style that logically contradicts, and therefore obscures, the central idea of that topic. The response here would be that I should rewrite it, but I frankly cannot understand it. Here's to hoping the original author will speak more precisely for the rest of the world. -2601:D:5F80:20E7:C96E:1BB7:FF5:62F2 (talk) 21:10, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 04:53, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Reducing lede
So what's the plan on trimming down the lede paragraph and exporting some of that content to the body of the article?

I'm inclined to take a stab at it, if no one else is going to. Be bold, eh?

CircularReason (talk) 05:39, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, I took a major stab at things. Trimmed the lead. Didn't delete any content, just re-organized it. (There are a couple of paragraphs that seem to me original research, and might need axing)

Please take a look and see what you think.

CircularReason (talk) 19:46, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I removed the "Lead Too Long" note until further notice.

CircularReason (talk) 06:22, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Synonym of teleology: proposed merger
The main problem with this article seems to me to be that the concept is identical to teleology, at least in so far as it applies in biology. The article's content is redundant with those articles, except perhaps insofar as it discusses the term teleonomy, which falls foul of WP:NOTDICT, i.e. we don't have articles just on use of words and etymology. The substantive discussion is just a WP:FORK. If nobody objects, I suggest we simply merge this to teleology in biology. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:22, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Teleonomy is really a fairly different concept than teleology, or at least a significant subcategory of it. It was developed precisely because the word teleology when mixed with biology produces some very problematic jumps. Teleology in biology is still an active point of discussion, but it is largely a different discussion than that of teleonomy, which focuses on more objective features, such as identifiable programs. johnnyb (talk) 03:55, 7 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, thanks. I do think your additions have converted something more or less intellible into something rather different, but hey, it's only an article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:01, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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Reverted lede definition
Hello. I have reverted the definition of teleonomy in the lede back to what it was prior to 9 March 2018. Someone redefined teleonomy into something obviously in contradiction with the rest of the article. It appears that the change was made to push some kind of creationist or ID-esque viewpoint. I am in awe that nobody has noticed this for almost two years. It's almost unbelievable that nobody has noticed this. BirdValiant (talk) 23:12, 6 February 2020 (UTC)