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Thomistic Reflections on Teleology and Contemporary Biological Research
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Modern biologists often claim to be committed to a strong reductionist conception of scientific explanation, in contrast to the teleological explanations of medieval natural philosophers. Attention to the actual explanatory strategies used in contemporary biological research, however, reveals a dependence on final cause explanations. A good example can be found in adaptation studies where explanation is typically in terms of optimal design models. Such optimality models are teleological precisely in the way Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus insisted explanation of natural forms must be. Consequently, the non-reductionist conception of final cause defended by Neo-Aristotelian philosophers of science is entirely consistent with common modes of explanation used by contemporary biological researchers.
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1 “Cum autem dicimus cum causam cognoscimus, non causas in plurali: ideo quia una est principalis causa, quae est causa causarum, quae est finis, per quam potissime scitur; quia unumquodque maxime fine suo et optimo essentiali determinatur et scitur. Dicitur etiam causa ut subjecto intelligatur una: quia tres quae principium sunt sciendi, in unam coincidunt, efficiens et forma et finis, ut dicit Aristoteles in secundo Physicorum. Ad huc autem quamvis multae sint causae alicujus, una autem semper est completiva quae potissime est causa, et ad illam respiciendo dicitur, quod scire est cum causam cognoscimus.” Posteriora analytica I, tr. 2, c. 1 (Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet [Paris, 1890] 2:23a).
2 “. . . et quia natura operantur propter aliquid, ut infra probabitur, necesse est quod ad naturalem pertineat considerare formam non solum inquantum est forma, sed etiam inquantum est finis.” Expositio in libros Physicorum Aristotelis II, lect. 11 [246] (ed. Marietti, pp. 118–19).
3 “Et dicit quod etiam naturalis demonstrat aliquando aliquid esse, quia dignius est quod sic sit; sicut si demonstret quod dentes anteriores sunt acuti, quia melius est sic esse ad dividendum cibum, et natura facit quod melius est.” Expositio in Physicorum II, lect. 11 [249] (ed. Marietti, p. 119).
4 Parts of Animals III, ch. 1 (661a34f); Albert, De animalibus XII, tr. 3, c. 6 (tr. Kitchell and Resnick, p. 975).
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18 The three requirements given here are based on a series of five questions put to optimality theory by Richard Lewontin, ‘The Shape of Optimality’, p. 152.
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31 Mayr, Ernst, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 234–36Google Scholar; see also his ‘The Idea of Teleology’, Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992), pp. 117–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 118–19 and pp. 133–35.
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34 Aristotle uses the terms ex anangke and to hou heneka at Physics II, 5 (196b21) to distinguish natural regularities from what happens in order that a certain form come to exist.
35 Physics II, 5 (196b18); Thomas, Commentaria in Physicorum Aristotelis II, lect. 8 [212] (ed. Marietti, p. 105).
36 “Dicendum quod omnia agentia necesse est agere propter finem. Causarum enim ad invicem ordinatarum, si prima subtrahatur, necesse est alias subtrahi. Prima autem inter omnes causas est causa finalis. Cuius ratio est, quia materia non consequitur formam nisi secundum quod movetur ab agente: nihil enim reducit se de potentia in actum. Agens autem non movet nisi ex intentione finis. Si enim agens non esset determinatum ad aliquem effectum, non magis ageret hoc quam illud: ad hoc ergo quod determinatum effectum producat, necesse est quod determinetur ad aliquid certum, quod habet rationem finis.” Summa theologica I-II, q. 1, a. 2, co.