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Home , Teleology

CHAPTER FIVE

TELEOLOGY AND DIALECTIC

Introduction: Teleology and Natural

We have seen how Marx addresses several issues in the of science on his way to constructing his research which, in turn, lead him to theoretical conclusions. Several issues he addresses are shared with natural science, including conceptualizing variables, looking for their interrelations, and accounting for causal dynamics. Teleological explanation is one philosophy of science category that directs attention toward the temporal relationship between variables and their causal properties. In this chapter, I inquire into the logic of teleological explanation in natural and social science and how Marx’s approach addresses this issue as well as its political implications. Teleological reasoning comes up in the works of classical philoso- phers, Christian theologians, and modern philosophers of science. As expressed by and Kant, teleological arguments depict things as existing or coming to exist because of the purpose or role they play in the world.1 It is a seductive way of thinking. Th ings are here because of what they do for us and/or for other things. Teleological , however, at its traditional rudimentary level at least, does not go beyond speculative reason as it simply rests on argument, not on test- able empirical demonstration. As these sorts of explanations are sub- ject to misleading us, we need to clarify teleology’s logic and root out

1 “Philosophers as divergent in their perspectives as Aristotle and Kant have accorded teleology a central place in their understanding of organic . Aristotle writes, ‘action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.’ And, one of his senses of cause is ‘Th e end; i.e., that for the sake of which a thing is;’ Kant, in the Critique of Judgement, argues that organized ‘can be as possible only as purposes of nature.’ Th ey are those things which, he says are ‘self-organizing’ wherein ‘parts should so combine in the unity of a whole that they are reciprocally cause and eff ect of each other’s form.’ Of course, Aristotle’s attribution of teleology is ‘realistic’ while Kant’s is a consequence of a regulative of reason, in his special sense of that expression. But there is an important point of affi nity between their views; viz., that it is a necessary feature of organisms that they have a teleological form” (Jacobs 1986: 50; see citations therein; also see: Kant 1861, 1987; Perlman 2004; Mayr 1998). 138 chapter five its reason (or unreason). We also need to consider if there is ever room for teleological explanations in any satisfactory scientifi c explanation of the world. Many early natural scientists assumed that, in reference to species variation, “God had designed them that way…. Teleology … attests to a thinking Creator…. Darwin’s great evolutionary work … changed all that” (Ruse 1986: 57–58). As Foster (2000: 14) explains, “Darwin’s … account … derived from his fundamental, uncompromising (with respect to the natural world) … represented at one and the same the ‘death of teleology’ (as Marx stressed) and the growth of an anti-anthropocentric viewpoint.” As natural science progressed, teleological-theological reasoning increasingly lost favor, challenging fundamentals of several traditional Christian doctrines. In this proc- ess, biological threw off the yoke of pseudo-science and our-fl ished, similar to how “Bacon of Verulam said that theological was a virgin dedicated to God and barren, he emancipated physics from theology and it became fertile” (Marx 1975i: 35). Darwin did not really settle the issue once and for all, however. Some continued to argue (as some still do) that and theology are compat- ible, where is a metaphysic in-line with God’s law and humanity its purpose (for discussion, see England 2001). Appeals to teleological explanation continue to arise, oft en bridging religious and scientifi c discourse. According to Woodfi eld (1976: 2), for “some Christians … God does nothing in vain. If God has created a thing, He must have had a reason, and His reason gives the thing a purpose.” Recent attempts to substitute Creationism with “intelligent design” against Darwinian principles are similar expressions of teleo- logical thinking, which even some philosophers and biologists accept (Manson 2003; for a Marxist take on this issue, see Clark, Foster, and York 2007; Foster, Clark, and York 2008a, 2008b; for a general over- view of the history of creationism versus evolution, see Bleckman 2006). According to Ruse (1986: 59), teleological thinking about nature likely “is drawn metaphorically from the human teleological experi- ence of creating artifacts with purposes.” As humans act purposefully, nature’s action, in this view, similarly implies a creator (for discussion, see Gale 1986). Rather than revisiting the commonly repeated dictum about a watch implying a watching maker, let us consider birds’ ability to fl y. In a theological-teleology, the fl ight of birds is God’s plan; in a non- theological teleology, wings evolved to facilitate fl ight. Th e former