TELEOLOGICAL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Teleological

"Teleological" Quotes from Famous Books

... security of person and property; in widening freedom of action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress consists in those changes of structure in the social organism which have entailed these consequences. The current conception is a teleological one. The phenomena are contemplated solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those changes are held to constitute progress which directly or indirectly tend to heighten human happiness; and they are thought to constitute progress simply because ...

— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... constructing what may be termed a metaphysical teleology. I use these terms advisedly, because I think they will serve to bring out with great clearness the condition to which our analysis of the teleological argument has ...

— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... retrograde in development—that is, they do not pass through those earlier stages, through which the fertilised germ of the same animal has to pass; and an explanation of this fact was attempted as far as the final or teleological cause is concerned. We can likewise understand the proximate cause, if we assume, and the assumption is far from improbable, that buds, like chopped-up fragments of a hydra, are formed of tissue which has ...

— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

Words linked to "Teleological" : teleology