The Teleological Lexicon: Biological, Religious, and Ethical Perspectives on Purpose

This project is about the post-Darwinian science and religion dialogue with respect to one of its most central areas of contention—the existence or non-existence of teleology in nature. Teleological concepts are those that deal with purposiveness, ends, or goals in nature and in human life.

Ever since Darwin’s breakthrough, there has been a debate about what the theory of evolution entails for whether nature can somehow be seen as teleological, and what it means to say that human beings fit into natural history if nature is indeed devoid of teleology.

This debate has, however, too often been hampered by a weakly grounded understanding of the variety of teleological concepts—whether religious, naturalistic—at play.

In this study, I therefore explore the variety of teleological concepts in order to provide a new history and conceptual typology of teleological ways of thinking in philosophy, theology, and science.

Against this background, I then analyse two influential theories in contemporary biology, self-organization and evolutionary convergence, and discuss the ramifications of these theories on the contemporary science and religion dialogue.

By bringing in new empirical material, developing better theoretical tools, and revising the received historiography, I hope to shed new light on the perennially interesting question of how human beings can be said to fit in with the rest of nature in a way that has a bearing on existential questions, as well as on ethics and ecology.