“Teleology” is a naughty word in certain circles — largely the circles that I often move in myself, namely physicists or other scientists who know what the word “teleology” means. To wit, it’s the concept of “being directed toward a goal.” In the good old days of Aristotle, our best understanding of the world was teleological from start to finish: acorns existed in order to grow into mighty oak trees; heavy objects wanted to fall and light objects to rise; human beings strove to fulfill their capacity as rational beings. Not everyone agreed, including my buddy Lucretius, but at the time it was a perfectly sensible view of the world.
These days we know better, though the knowledge has been hard-won. The early glimmerings of the notion of conservation of momentum supported the idea that things just kept happening, rather than being directed toward a cause, and this view seemed to find its ultimate embodiment in the clockwork universe of Newtonian mechanics. (In technical terms, time evolution is described by differential equations fixed by initial data, not by future goals.) Darwin showed how the splendid variety of biological life could arise without being in any sense goal-directed or guided — although this obviously remains a bone of contention among religious people, even respectable philosophers. But the dominant paradigm among scientists and philosophers is dysteleological physicalism.
However. Aristotle was a smart cookie, and dismissing him as an outdated relic is always a bad idea. Sure, maybe the underlying laws of nature are dysteleological, but surely there’s some useful sense in which macroscopic real-world systems can be usefully described using teleological language, even if it’s only approximate or limited in scope. (Here’s where I like to paraphrase Scott Derrickson: The universe has purposes. I know this because I am part of the universe, and I have purposes.) It’s okay, I think, to say things like “predators tend to have sharp teeth because it helps them kill and eat prey,” even if we understand that those causes are merely local and contingent, not transcendent. Stephen Asma defends this kind of view in an interesting recent article, although I would like to see more acknowledgement made of the effort required to connect the purposeless, mechanical underpinnings of the world to the purposeful, macroscopic biosphere. Such a connection can be made, but it requires some effort.
Of course loyal readers all know where such a connection comes from: it’s the arrow of time. The underlying laws of physics don’t work in terms of any particular “pull” toward future goals, but the specific trajectory of our actual universe looks very different in the past than in the future. In particular, the past had a low entropy: we can reconcile the directedness of macroscopic time evolution with the indifference of microscopic dynamics by positing some sort of Past Hypothesis (see also). All of the ways in which physical objects behave differently toward the future than toward the past can ultimately be traced to the thermodynamic arrow of time.
Which raises an interesting point that I don’t think is sufficiently appreciated: we now know enough about the real behavior of the physical world to understand that what looks to us like teleological behavior is actually, deep down, not determined by any goals in the future, but fixed by a boundary condition in the past. So while “teleological” might be acceptable as a rough macroscopic descriptor, a more precise characterization would say that we are being pushed from behind, not pulled from ahead.
The question is, what do we call such a way of thinking? Apparently “teleology” is a word never actually used by Aristotle, but invented in the eighteenth century based on the Greek télos, meaning “end.” So perhaps what we want is an equivalent term, with “end” replaced by “beginning.” I know exactly zero ancient Greek, but from what I can glean from the internet there is an obvious choice: arche is the Greek word for beginning or origin. Sadly, “archeology” is already taken to mean something completely different, so we can’t use it.
I therefore tentatively propose the word aphormeology to mean “originating from a condition in the past,” in contrast with teleology, “driven toward a goal in the future.” (Amazingly, a Google search for this word on 3 February 2014 returns precisely zero hits.) Remember — no knowledge of ancient Greek, but apparently aphorme means “a base of operations, a place from which a campaign is launched.” Which is not a terribly bad way of describing the cosmological Past Hypothesis when you think about it. (Better suggestions would be welcome, especially from anyone who actually knows Greek.)
We live in a world where the dynamical laws are fundamentally dysteleological, but our cosmic history is aphormeological, which through the magic of statistical mechanics gives rise to the appearance of teleology in our macroscopic environment. A shame Aristotle and Lucretius aren’t around to appreciate the progress we’ve made.
Hi Deeponics,
I think you are talking abut anticipation, which is from our ability to live with a past extending to a future at all times in forward momentum with impetus. We can foresee it and make it a reality, or not, or foresee something else, and play the game endlessly with what we might or might not do in future based on what we might or might not remember of the past in ongoing forward momentum.
That’s an interesting issue, despite its “space cadet” appearance, as human development in itself is a causal process using past-to-future with confidence in accumulation of secure deductive knowledge using induction to future possibilities. I am not a follower of David Hume, but he right that only the past is deductively secure and the future is inductive and “supposedly” based on it. Actually, the future is well built into our capacities in living with forward momentum, and placing a foot confidently in forward momentum- we do not sit in an arm chair a ruminate like Hume .
Hello Marcus Morgan. Sean says, reality is “pushed from behind”. My comment about the future child was written on the basis that reality is actually “sucked from the front”. Everything in the macrocosm has a desire to be sucked into its need. We suck food in because we need it. Dark is absorbed by light and light is absorbed by dark because they suck each other. Cold sucks heat, heat sucks cold. Energy sucks mass (gravity), mass sucks energy. Plants are sucked up from gravity by the Sun and plants suck photons in. None of these things are “pushed”. Lightning might push but the ground sucks it. Even the arrows of time are “sucked” into the deep of infinity after they have had their brief flirtation with reality. Reality sucks the arrows of time out of infinity and infinity sucks them back.
It looks like you’re looking for a single word to replace the phrase “Cause and Effect”. The original phrase still works for me.
In Quechuan languages, the future is behind you and the past is in front of you.
“There are several original adverbs. For Europeans, it is striking that the adverb qhipa means both “behind” and “future”, whereas ñawpa means “ahead, in front” and “past”.[15] This means that local and temporal concepts of adverbs in Quechua (as well as in Aymara) are associated to each other reversely compared to European languages. For the speakers of Quechua, we are moving backwards into the future (we cannot see it – i.e. it is unknown), facing the past (we can see it – i.e. we remember it).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechuan_languages
“we now know enough about the real behavior of the physical world to understand that what looks to us like teleological behavior is actually, deep down, not determined by any goals in the future, but fixed by a boundary condition in the past. ”
You don’t even know enough about the real behavior of the physical world to physically describe gravity or the observed behaviors in a double slit experiment.
Aether has mass which physically occupies three dimensional space and is physically displaced by particles of matter. Displaced aether pushes back and exerts inward pressure toward matter.
Displaced aether pushing back and exerting inward pressure toward matter is gravity.
More correctly, the state of displacement of the aether is gravity.
A moving particle has an associated aether displacement wave. In a double slit experiment the particle travels through a single slit and the associated wave in the aether passes through both.
Okay – another way of looking at it:
Question #1: What is the probability that a randomly selected Turing Machine with a randomly initialized tape of starting data will ever manifest an Artificial Sentience that correctly discovers the approximate nature of the Turing Machine that has manifested it and the initial state of the data on the tape?
Question #2: What is the probability that a randomly selected Turing Machine with a randomly initialized tape of initial data will ever manifest an Artificial Sentience that has radically incorrect ideas about the nature of its existence?
Question #3: Which probability is greater, #1, or #2?
Question #4: To what degree is this analogous to our own situation?
Thanks!
There already is an alternative term to teleology, aiming to shear away implications of personal intentionality: teleonomy. I encountered it in Jacques Monod’s Chance and Necessity (1970.)
Re Aristotle’s claim that women have fewer teeth despite having two wives: Given the mores of the time it is extremely unlikely he would find any women other than his wives to observe. Upper class women were more or less in purdah. Approaching lower class women would have been problematic for his reputation for different reasons. Also, if his wives were much younger or less well-nourished, unerupted wisdom teeth would throw off his count.
It’s true that a sample size of two is not sufficient. I guess the real argument is that living 2 300 years ago doesn’t justify generalizing from an insufficient data set. Aristotle should have used the high standards that typify science journalism!
Joe Dickinson — I clearly screwed up my post. My point was to comment on an earlier post that talked about the arrow of time “directing something.” I’d rather see it put that probability directs the arrow of time. Not the reverse. (second law, increase entropy, and all that) I did not mean to support intelligent design or anything of the sort. Trust me. If you knew me you’d know I am an atheist, big time! I understand evolution and I’m certain it’s how bio systems work. Now I see how my post could be read way-off-the-mark from my intent. Sorry. Guilty as charged.
Hi Deeponics
I understand Sean’s comment exactly, and I do agree with it entirely whether he does or not. Everything pushes into a void with momentum and draws together from pushing. It would be convenient if simple geometry drew things together in the way you describe so that a void literally sucks them together, but I doubt that is true.
The appearance of sucking from driving is something science needs to come to grips with by a mechanism not a “sucking void”. I have mechanisms in my book as speculations to achieve “sucking” by “driving”, as physics has no model at all to show how it is done either gravitationally or electromagnetically (as electrons and protons radically “suck” each other together in physics with no mechanism presented for it).
You have made a useful point again, but one that might be answered without resort to convenient geometry “sucking”.
I see my views are too radical for this forum but would anyone like to comment specifically about them apart from Deeponics?
It occurred to me my views might reflect those that have already been fundamentally refuted by science without me knowing – if that is the reason for silence please by all means let know any obvious errors of the past, which should be easy to point out. I am always updating my book, intended to be useful, and those tips would be a great help!
Giotis, Ekinisi fits the subject, but the reality is that the athlete is sucked by the finish line 🙂
I found this to be interesting and is related to the topic we are discussing. Its about MIT physicist Jermey England’s theory of the origins of more complex forms using the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/
Here is a couple of preposterous questions that might have been already asked from you! Why do you think that in a preposterous universe your website might stand outside and beyond it? Or perhaps there is another universe which is not so preposterous after all?
Hi Jerry
Thanks for the article link, it was interesting. I have a chapter (13) devoted to “entropy” in my free book on skydrive http://sdrv.ms/1a4HBbk if you are interested . The upshot of Thermodynamics is that heat is lost, whether at a Big Bang or at Supernovae where heat is lost in forming heavier atoms. After supernovae it simply continues by atoms compounding and losing heat. Every compound is bound by heat loss, there is no other way, and so inevitably a biological anatomy is the lowest energy state for atoms on a planet – binding as anatomies on a planet simply by net heat loss when atoms on its surface compound – very simple.
Of course, there is always the simple word “contingency”. Some “philosophers of religion” skip the concept of teleology altogether, and use “first cause” arguments to say that an infinite regression of contingent events is unthinkable (or ends at the Big Bang, depending on the version of the argument), so that there must be a “noncontingent” first cause, whose name is “God”.
It’s a variant God-of-the-gaps argument. First invent the gap (a noncontingent first cause), then insert God.
I was thinking about this post a little more and recognized another related objection. I forgot the originator, but someone a while back proposed a sort of biocentric universe within a cyclical universe model that was relevant. In such, the idea was that the specific constants of the succeeding universe were somehow “tailored” for life as best as was known possible by an eventually fantastically advanced life of the collapsing universe. The ever-revolving wheel of following universes then get further and further hospitable to life, which seems rather purposeful.
Sure we don’t quite think our universe is cyclical, and tailoring the physics constants of the next sounds outlandish, but as a thought experiment at least I think it’s valid. Here everything that happens is a matter of pure determinism in our universe from its initial conditions, but it would certainly seem there is a pro-life teleology to it. How could we then generalize to say that there is no teleological “meaning” to a universe just because it extends naturally from initial conditions?
Anyways, just something I thought hadn’t been addressed yet. I might respond to this by saying “Ok, but the original original original system that spawned ours didn’t have to be teleological even if our current universe is,” but that one could then still say “Yes, but our current one is!”.
Dear Professor Carroll, with all due respects, I wished to remind you in an imperative manner that don’t you be settling for anything less than the Heavens. After all, you are researching about the Heavens, aren’t you?
Mr. Banihasshemi, with all due respect, do you have the credentials nominating you representative of those Heavens? And when you remind Sean “in an imperative manner,” do you mean to threaten him with takfeer?
Sean, you kafir, beware of spreading kufr! A deadly fatwa might come next.
Josh, your comment demonstrates the importance of the falsifiability criterion for science (see previous post) and strengthens the position that it should never be retired. For serious scientists, dabbling in the kind of ideas you quote and advance is, in my view, a blemish, certainly a waste of time and intellect.
In philosophic way I might ask you what your starting point is? You may or may not like the answer.:)
I’d like to add some clarification to my Feb.3 comment on the admissibility of teleology in the framework of deterministic physics. It might appear that I surmise the universe is solving a differential system in order to “know” how to proceed. That is not my view—for many reasons I won’t list here. Omitting this argument, however, will not affect the conclusion:
If the end state of an actual system is predetermined by any previous actual state, then it is predetermined, period. And, being predetermined, it also “pre-exists,” in some sense of existence. So the question whether this pre-existing end might be guiding the evolution towards it is at best undecidable.
Removing determinism, however, removes the problem.
Hi Del, it can be simplified further if you follow my simple tracking above in my posts. A neutron has a basic potential to aggregate into every compound by gravitational attraction after a Big Bang. The universe is all preset at that level. Abundant neutrons decaying in a void only need expansion from gravitational compression at a Big Bang. The Arrow is obvious in that general sense – atoms forming and aggregating further into solar systems after supernova explosions. It’s just a matter of tracking to see that must be the case, which leaves me puzzled why the question of the Arrow is such a puzzle.
The next issueis that our mantle with our Biosphere has most of the heavier chemical elements created by supernovae in the approximate proportions they are created, with the lighter elements inevitably lost in solar system formation. A nice co-incidence if The Arrow of Time is presented simply as I explain it, as preset potentials easily tracked from 3 minutes after a Big Bang to a Periodic Table by supernovae to a Biosphere typical of supernovae chemical proportions.
My suspicion that these basic fact get overlooked when abstraction are used about “time”. It is a puzzling subject with many views, with causation tied to it in many. It is an issue of “the penny has dropped, it really is that simple” or not at the end of the day. However, “why” the same repeated neutrons should have those vast potentials to create a Periodic Table in a Biosphere is an open issue and probably metaphysical. All we can hope to do is explain whether neutron masses can be compressed before a Big Bang and expand across nucleosynthesis after it – a generalized issue of gravitation not involving neutron potentials and only dealing with them as gravitational masses – for simplification. I suspect expansion will be explained in general, but “why” there were specific potentials will remain elusive.
Del, I was tempted to say that, “I am not indeed qualified to be nominated as a representative of the Heavens, but a takfiri shot me in the back yesterday and I went to hell in a twisted turn in the way to Heavens; I suppose heaven can wait.” But, I won’t say that and instead I should mention that you are very well-informed to recognize that I am sort of a man thanks to Sayyed Hasan Nasrollah and Hamid Karzai! In any case, you should be better informed in your inquisitive kufr language that the time of Sohravardi (or Sohrawardi) and Mulla Sadra is way too past from our times; it’s all behind us. None the less, I suppose that like my student days when I filled the class forms for my freshman years I mistakenly ticked the PhD choice instead of BA, I should even now again insist that you should not in any possible way settle for anything less than the Heavens. Ask the taxi cab driver whose number is 1729 or not or the janitor or anyone else in his right mind that you like. Unlike what you might have thought, my imperative manner was due to the belief that Sean Carroll can possibly aim at the Heavens if only numerously other people have been able to do so in the past too. You say I am wrong? I do not think so! I might even qualify for a PhD at Cal Tech under Sean Carroll if it wasn’t so much for the fear of not passing the prelim and the qualifying exams!
Even my discerning comments are sucked. 🙁