Teleologies

Teleology - the notion that all things have an end in mind - and a controversial one in the practice of the disciplines of Biology and History.

The late Stephen Jay Gould was at pains to point out that in spite of the common sense interpretation of the word evolution, life forms don't get better over time, at least according to some supposed objective external scale, nor do they get more complex. (Though this latter claim is more controversial than the first.)

Evolution is driven, according to the New Scientist, by temporary mis-matches between the needs of organisms and their ability to meet them. In this model, Nature itself is supposed to have no long term needs of its own.

History too is widely believed to march forward blindly, though in their day Hegel and Marx thought there was an underlying dialectic (progressively realised masterplan).

In Einstein's universe, beginning and end are relative anyway, both a consequence of the subjective experience of being inside it.

This subjectivity makes the matter of historical teleology rather interesting, because even if human civilisations are not in fact driven along by secret algorithms, at times we collectively behave as if they were. We enact a kind of teleology through our own agency.

There are those that argue that biological evolution has an element of momentum beyond the needs of individual organisms (or genes). This is especially so when the organism is close to a local fitness peak, which might be said to pull natural forms upwards with an inverted gravitational effect. What is clear however that it is much easier in evolutionary terms to ascend a fitness peak than to cross over to a nearby one of similar altitude by descending the one you're on in order to clamber up to the alternative summit.

This latter manoeuvre does however seem to be part of the progress of History.