Teleonomy

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Teleonomy (from ancient Greek τέλος télos , German 'purpose, goal, end, striving towards a goal' and νόμος nómos , German ' law ' , see also -nomie ) describes in biophilosophy a causal-analytical way of explaining a seemingly goal-oriented process. The term was coined by Colin Pittendrigh (in: Behavior and Evolution , 1958).

As teleonomic processes are designated to be explained solely from its components and structures. You do not need any additional assumptions about possible external teleological or intentional influences. This distinguishes the concept of teleonomy from that of teleology or entelechy .

The development of the term

In the 20th century, the form of vitalism (neovitalism) founded by Hans Driesch with the "doctrine of the material effectiveness of immaterial teleological factors" contained therein, which he named entelechy with reference to Aristotle , was a "teleological form of thought" biology was introduced, which was seen as a violation of the principles of natural science, falling behind Kant's critique of judgment . This led to a fierce "vitalism-mechanism dispute", the abatement and extinction of which in the late 1940s and 50s brought "relaxation and redemption for all theoretically interested biologists", such as Otto Koehler and Konrad Lorenz , which brought the " complementary one-sidedness and errors of thought by both parties ”. It was now recognized that "the finality of the phenomena of life is based on a special form of causality (e.g. on regular processes ) and that understanding it does not cancel out the recognition of the finality, but underpins it." The coining of the new term teleonomy now matched this intellectual development.

enforcement

With this expression as an alternative term to teleology, biologists have since been able to “describe a biological fact purely descriptively as useful or goal-oriented, without at the same time expressing a hypothesis about the origin of the usefulness”; B. to place a transcendent explanation in a scientific context, which would be outside the realm of empirical research. "Some researchers, however, avoid the expression" teleonomous (isch) "and instead use other, synonymous words: They speak of the biological meaning, of the biological meaning or of the functional or functional explanation of a biological fact," where function means in the biological sense : "Contribution made to maintaining a system viewed as a whole". But in fact biology rejected the concept of teleology in its field of science in favor of teleonomy and paved the way for the conceptual difference between teleology and teleonomy to be adopted in philosophy.

Explanation

With the advent of biological cybernetics since the 1950s, the control process has established itself as a thinking model among biologists. They could now “do without immaterial, wholesome factors, after cybernetics - at least theoretically - offered materially functioning wholesome processes of any degree of differentiation”. Although cybernetics emerged in the field of technology, it has helped to rehabilitate “the concept of wholeness, which is the essence of biology” and has eliminated the contradiction between causality and finality in the field of biology.

Panteleonomy and Hemiteleonomy

The difference between teleology and teleonomy becomes particularly clear in the case of biological systems, in which we usually cannot assume any intentions or purposes: in plants and within an organism (organ functions, cells, genetic material). From a logical point of view, Bunge and Mahner therefore (gradually) differentiate between two forms of biological teleonomy: the panteleonomy just described , which means that all biosystems are teleonomic, and the hemiteleonomy , which is limited to those particular living beings that “pursue goals, plans forging and having intentions ”, which can be explained by the fact that learning and expectation“ are viewed as specific activities of certain neural systems ”without presupposing the existence of an immaterial mind or soul.

Examples of hemiteleonomy

  • For example, an animal that takes care of its young, although it weakens itself physically by giving out feed or breast milk, seems to pursue the goal of maintaining its genes and species . Teleonomically, however , this behavior is explained by innate behaviors that have developed in the course of tribal history, because individuals with this behavior had a higher probability of reproducing successfully, and the genes for these instincts thus prevailed against other genes.
  • The annual bird migration is based on behavior that has evolved through the history of the phyla and enables the migratory birds to survive the seasons. This also applies to the cuckoo, where the young birds grow up without contact with their biological parents and still move south in autumn.
  • Bees and wasps build their burrows from regular hexagonal honeycombs , which is ideal in terms of material and space requirements as well as stability.
  • In the cuckoo there are host-specific female lines. The adaptation of the coloration of the cuckoo's eggs to the respective host bird is done by replicating the pigmentation of the eggshells in their chemical composition ( biliverdin and protoporphyrin in different proportions) by the cuckoo. Adaptation is sustained by the female cuckoos' strong preference for certain host bird species. How it is possible for the female cuckoo to match the laid eggs with the clutch was clarified in the case of the bluish eggs: the females have both the preference on their W sex chromosomes (as with other birds, females have ZW chromosomes, males ZZ chromosomes) for a certain host bird species (e.g. the common redstart with a bluish clutch) as well as the color (bluish) and pattern (uniform) of the egg.

literature

  • Bernhard Hassenstein : Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, pp. 60-71 ( online ).
  • Bernward Grünewald : Teleonomy and reflective judgment. In: Truth and Validity. Festschrift for Werner Flach , ed. v. R. Hiltscher u. A. Riebel, Würzburg 1996, pp. 63-84.
  • Immanuel Kant : Critique of Judgment . Edition of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin 1900 ff., AA V.
  • Wolfgang Kullmann : The teleology in the Aristotelian biology. Aristotle as a zoologist, embryologist and geneticist. University Press C. Winter, Heidelberg 1979. Meeting reports of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Philosophical-historical class, 1979/2. Abhdl.
  • Konrad Lorenz : Wholeness and part in the animal and human community. A methodological discussion. Studium Generale 3, 455–499, 1950.
  • Konrad Lorenz: Comparative behavior research. Basics of ethology. Springer, Vienna / New York 1978.
  • Ernst Mayr : Teleological and teleonomic: a new analysis. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 14, 91-117, 1974; slightly changed, newly published under the heading Teleological and Teleonomic: a new analysis as chap. 11 of the book by the same author: Evolution and the Diversity of Life. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1979.
  • Jacques Monod : Chance and Necessity. Philosophical questions in modern biology . Translated by Friedrich Griese. Piper, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-492-22290-0 ; later dtv-TB.
  • Colin Pittendrigh: Adaptation, Natural Selection and Behavior. In: Roe, A. and Simpson, GG (eds.): Behavior and evolution. Yale University Press, New Haven 1958, p. 394.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1981, p. 60 f.
  2. ^ I. Kant: Critique of Judgment, esp. § 75, edition of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin 1900 ff., AA V, 397-401 .
  3. ↑ Otto Koehler: The holistic view in modern biology , 1933
  4. ^ Konrad Lorenz: Wholeness and Part in the Animal and Human Community , 1950
  5. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1981, p. 62.
  6. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, p. 62.
  7. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, p. 63.
  8. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1981, p. 60.
  9. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1981, p. 63.
  10. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1981, p. 63.
  11. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1981, p. 63.
  12. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1981, p. 63.
  13. ^ Bernhard Hassenstein: Biological Teleonomy. In: Rüdiger Bubner, Konrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl. (Ed.): Teleology. new booklets for philosophy. Volume 20 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen 1981, p. 64.
  14. ↑ Martin Mahner , Mario Bunge : Philosophical Basics of Biology , Springer 2000, ISBN 354067649X , p. 351
  15. ^ HL Gibbs, MD Sorenson, K. Marchetti, MD Brooke, NB Davies, H. Nakamura: Genetic evidence for female host-specific races of the common cuckoo. In: Nature. Volume 407, Number 6801, September 2000, ISSN  0028-0836 , pp. 183-186, doi: 10.1038 / 35025058 , PMID 11001055 .
  16. ↑ Branislav Igic et al .: A shared chemical basis of avian host – parasite egg color mimicry. In: Proc. R. Soc. B 279, 2012, pp. 1068-1076, doi: 10.1098 / rspb.2011.1718 .
  17. ↑ Jesus M. Aviles, Anders P. Möller: How is host egg mimicry maintained in the cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)? In: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 82, 2004, pp. 57-68, doi: 10.1111 / j.1095-8312.2004.00311.x .
  18. ↑ Frode Fossøy, Michael D. Sorenson, Wei Liang, Torbjørn Ekrem, Arne Moksnes, Anders P. Møller, Jarkko Rutila, Eivin Røskaft, Fugo Takasu, Canchao Yang, Bård G. Stokke: Ancient origin and maternal inheritance of blue cuckoo eggs . In: Nature Communications , Volume 7, Article Number 10272, January 12, 2016, doi: 10.1038 / ncomms10272 .