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Updated: June 17, 2025
So far from being a "Teleologist in the fullest sense of the word," we would deny that he is a Teleologist in the ordinary sense at all; and we should say that, apart from his merits as a naturalist, he has rendered a most remarkable service to philosophical thought by enabling the student of Nature to recognise, to their fullest extent, those adaptations to purpose which are so striking in the organic world, and which Teleology has done good service in keeping before our minds, without being false to the fundamental principles of a scientific conception of the universe.
For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made for the conditions in which it is found; for the Darwinian an organism exists because, out of many of its kind, it is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in which it is found.
The apparently diverging teachings of the Teleologist and of the Morphologist are reconciled by the Darwinian hypothesis. But leaving our own impressions of the "Origin of Species," and turning to those passages especially cited by Professor Koelliker, we cannot admit that they bear the interpretation he puts upon them.
The apparently diverging teachings of the Teleologist and of the Morphologist are reconciled by the Darwinian hypothesis. But leaving our own impressions of the "Origin of Species," and turning to those passages specially cited by Professor Kölliker, we cannot admit that they bear the interpretation he puts upon them.
What is the secret of the vitality of these Galenic biological conceptions? The answer can be given in four words. Galen is a teleologist; and a teleologist of a kind whose views happened to fit in with the prevailing theological attitude of the Middle Ages, whether Christian, Moslem, or Jewish.
So far from being a "Teleologist in the fullest sense of the word," we should deny that he is a Teleologist in the ordinary sense at all; and we should say that, apart from his merits as a naturalist, he has rendered a most remarkable service to philosophical thought by enabling the student of Nature to recognise, to their fullest extent, those adaptations to purpose which are so striking in the organic world, and which Teleology has done good service in keeping before our minds, without being false to the fundamental principles of a scientific conception of the universe.
I saw also that his denial of design was only, so to speak, skin deep, and that his system was in reality teleological, inasmuch as, to use Isidore Geoffroy's words, it makes the organism design itself. True, he did not know he was a teleologist, but he was none the less a teleologist for this.
He was an unconscious teleologist, and as such perhaps more absolutely an upholder of teleology than Paley himself; but this is neither here nor there; our concern is not with what people think about themselves, but with what their reasoning makes it evident that they really hold. How strange the irony that hides us from ourselves!
So far from being a "Teleologist in the fullest sense of the word," we should deny that he is a Teleologist in the ordinary sense at all; and we should say that, apart from his merits as a naturalist, he has rendered a most remarkable service to philosophical thought by enabling the student of Nature to recognise, to their fullest extent, those adaptations to purpose which are so striking in the organic world, and which Teleology has done good service in keeping before our minds, without being false to the fundamental principles of a scientific conception of the universe.
The apparently diverging teachings of the Teleologist and of the Morphologist are reconciled by the Darwinian hypothesis. But leaving our own impressions of the 'Origin of Species, and turning to those passages especially cited by Professor Kolliker, we cannot admit that they bear the interpretation he puts upon them.
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