Confirming the Character of a Teleological System

Confirming the character of a teleological system is to assert that the system evolves for a purpose he knows and because research from the outset, it has been designed with this purpose. In this way, we can say that all the instruments designed by humans have a life or teleological teleonomic. A calculating machine was designed from the start to calculate. Computing capacity is not born of chance which would have presided over the assembly of its parts. The teleological principle takes on added meaning when applied to biological evolution or the evolution of the universe. It introduces a change in the principle of necessity, since it says it is by necessity that evolution borrows the path it takes.

Of course, the teleological principle can be formulated in various ways and the modern teleology does not resemble the teleology of the seventeenth century. The sources of the teleological argument is found in Aristotle and especially in his theory of final causes. This explains why the teleological argument was ignored in the Christian philosophy until rediscovered by Thomas Aquinas and Thomism displace Augustinist currents. It was not until the seventeenth century, promoted by the substitution of a mechanistic model to model organicist prevailing hitherto, the use of teleological arguments will multiply. Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Gassendi, Descartes and Harvey have all had recourse to teleological arguments.

The teleological argument has often been used by theologians to show that the universe obeys a grand design that may have been ordained by God according to a purpose which is the salvation of man. This is precisely what has made the teleological principle suspect in the eyes of many scientists.

From the seventeenth centur...

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...eological argument in the context of science seemed condemned by the progress of human knowledge. Much scientific progress has been achieved by the substitution of non-teleological theories to teleological theories. The suspicion of teleological theories was even greater than we could ever suspect that those who resorted to do so for reasons other than scientific and this way will reintroduce religion or metaphysics in science.

This perspective has changed with the realization that the use of teleological arguments could in some areas of physics have a higher predictive capacity for non-teleological arguments with a remarkable economy of means. However, as its results are more related to the use of strong Anthropic principle that the only use of a teleological argument, we will return it when we analyzed all the other constituents of the Anthropic principle.