Science’s superstitions

Real ecology has to be teleological

The teleological explanation of life processes is an explanation in terms of its ability to achieve its goal or purpose – Aristotle’s “final cause”, rather than its antecedent cause which alone is accepted by the scientific community. Teleology, the Swedish Nobel winning neurophysiologist Ragnar Granit [19] tells us, is required to answer the question of why things happen—without knowing which, it is very difficult to answer the question of how things happen.

Granit [20] points this out with reference to the discovery of how the eye adapts to light and darkness:

“when rods and cones were discovered in the vertebrate retina, had it not become evident that rods dominated in retinas of the night animals and cones in those of daylight animals this discovery would have remained an observation of but limited consequence. Instead, understanding of its meaning (why) made it a cornerstone in a large body of biological research dealing with the adaptation of the eye to light and darkness, rod vision and cone vision, and the rod-free central fovea of the human retina.”

The truth is that rods and cones, however brilliantly they are described, only acquire meaning once one knows what they are for. In other words it is only once one has established what is the goal of any organism or natural system that one is in a position to seek out how it sets out to achieve this goal. This is exactly how James Lovelock (left) developed his famous Gaia thesis:

“To examine the earth cybernetically, is to ask the question ‘What is the function of each gas in the air or of each component of the sea?’ Outside the context of Gaia, such a question would be taken as circular and illogical, but from within it is no more illogical than asking: “What is the function of the haemoglobin or of the insulin in the blood? We have postulated a cybernetic system; therefore, it is reasonable to question the function of the component parts.” [21]

Thus, Lovelock starts off by pointing to the extraordinary constancy of the chemical composition of the ecosphere (or Gaia) – that of the oxygen and carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, for instance, and of the salt content of the sea. He then searches for mechanisms that could assure this constancy. Ralph Gerard [22], the Chicago University holistic biologist, notes how the physiologist proceeds in precisely the same way:

“The physiologist’s whole life is concerned with problems of organic purpose, though he rarely likes to say it, particularly in public. We see purposeful behaviour all through the body; it is the only way it makes sense to us. And then we look for the mechanisms to account for it.”

In terms of the paradigm of reductionist science, this method of building up knowledge is totally illegitimate. To accuse a scientist of using a teleological argument is to accuse him of being unscientific, indeed, of being a veritable charlatan. Very few scientists would be willing to take that risk. Even James Lovelock does not admit that his argument is teleological. The Daisy World model, which he developed with Andrew Watson, of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth, to which he attaches so much importance, is primarily designed to show that a cybernetic process need not be teleological.

However, it is but a rudimentary and indeed hypothetical cybernetic process and it would prove very much more difficult to build a realistic model serving to demonstrate that the very much more sophisticated multi-stage cybernetic behaviour of complex forms of life in the real world, such as the embryological process for instance, is non-teleological.

Nevertheless, Lovelock realizes the absurdity of the scientific taboo on teleological method:

“Teleological explanations in academe are a sin against the holy spirit of scientific rationality; they deny the objectivity of nature.”

The Nobel Laureate, Sir Peter Medawar, felt the same way:

“The attitude of biologists to teleology is like that of the pious towards a source of temptation which they are unsure of their ability to resist.”

So did Van Bruck (the elder) [23]. Teleology for him was

“like the kind of woman people do not want to be seen with in the street, yet are prepared to tender their love to in secret.”

Scientists will go to the most extraordinary lengths to make it appear that the statements they make are non-teleological. One ruse is to deny the purposiveness of life processes altogether and to argue that nature only appears purposeful. Julian Huxley [24] tells us that

“at first sight the biological sector seems full of purpose. Organisms are built as if in purposeful pursuit of a conscious aim. But the truth lies in those two words ‘as if’. As the genius Darwin showed, the purpose is only an apparent one”.

He adds that

“No conscious seizing of opportunities is here meant, (by the use of the word purpose) nor even an unconscious sensing of an outcome. The word is only a convenient label for these tendencies in evolution; that what can happen usually does happen; changes occur as they may and not as would be hypothetically best; and the course of evolution follows opportunity rather than plan.”

Of course the opposite is true. ‘Opportunism’ is itself a teleological concept. An adaptive individual does not seize any opportunity to bring about a random change, but clearly the one that best suits its purposes – the one that it judges to be ‘hypothetically best’ – for itself and for the hierarchy of natural systems of which it is part.

More devious expedients are resorted to by scientists in order to mask the teleological nature of their arguments. One device – a purely linguistic one – is to formulate an obviously teleological statement in such a way that it no longer appears teleological. Merrill [25] notes how throughout modern biological literature, we find

“a great array of teleological jargon bearing witness, as it were, to the homeorhetic tendency of living systems (the tendency of a living system to keep to that path that will enable them to achieve stability or homeostasis). Biologists are always talking of one thing occurring, ‘for the purpose of something’ or, ‘in order that something might happen’ or, ‘serving the function of something’ and so on.”

However, philosophers still go to great lengths to show that these statements can be translated into a non-teleological form. This often leads them “into a morass of circumlocutions.” Thus, biologists, as Granit [26] notes, have been “prepared to say a turtle came ashore and laid its eggs”, but not that “It came ashore to lay its eggs”.

The cybernetician, Peter Calow [27] also shows how biologists will studiously avoid making the teleological statement that “the function of the vertebrate heart is to pump blood”. Instead it is translated into non-teleological language simply by saying that “the heart is a necessary condition for the circulation of blood in vertebrates”. However, whether mainstream scientists like it or not, the heart is an organ and, like all organs, it has a function or a purpose, [28] in this case to pump blood, nor did it come into being by accident (i.e. for random reasons) but in order to do just that.

Possibly the latest device used to avoid facing the essential teleological nature of life processes is to attribute their directiveness to the action of environmental “attractors”. This notion is used, for instance, by my friend Brian Goodwin in his extremely interesting book How the Leopard Changed its Spots. He suggests the idea “that natural processes follow paths that decrease energy or some similar function, suggesting that what comes naturally is a path of least effort or action”. [29] He sees this as an alternative to the neo-Darwinian view, which he has always opposed, that biological and physical change occurs as a result of struggle and effort.

This makes considerable sense to me, however I see natural systems as very dynamic and creative and perfectly capable of creating those specific conditions in which energy use will be reduced to a minimum. That is exactly what happens when a pioneer ecosystem develops into a climax ecosystem – one in which stability is maximized so that the further use of energy and resources is limited to the minimum – that required for maintenance and repair.

This obviously purposeful behaviour can only seriously be seen as part of the dynamic of the ecosystem itself. In attributing it to the action of environmental attractors Goodwin lays himself open to some of the major objections made in this article to the idea that it is determined by natural selection (see below in particular).

Another device resorted to by mainstream scientists is to provide a purely mechanistic explanation of purpose. The inspiration came from the machine with feedback of the sort with which cyberneticians are largely concerned. These machines are programmed in such a way that they seek to achieve a goal. However, such goal-seeking behaviour is not deemed teleological in the sense that it is not seen as tending towards a “final cause”, hence it does not require some sort of supernatural explanation. The principle involved is reconcilable with that of causality, reductionism, statistical method and of course, mechanomorphism. Indeed, as Henri Atlan [30] puts it,

“this new type of goal directedness is acceptable in that it is not derived from theological idealism, but from neo-mechanism.”

i.e. from a scientifically acceptable metaphysics rather than from a scientifically unacceptable metaphysics. Such purposefulness is referred to as ‘teleonomy’ a term first used by the biologist Colin Pittendrigh, and later taken up by Julian Huxley, the theoretical biologist Ernst Mayr, the French molecular biologist and Nobel Laureate, Jacques Monod, C. H. Waddington, and other leading biologists, and has thereby become quite respectable.

The acceptance of teleonomy does enable us to ask the question “why” rather than “how” but only within a limited sphere, that of the functioning of a machine. It may indeed tell us what is the immediate goal of a natural process, but it tells us nothing of the ultimate goal to which its achievement contributes. It even implies that there is no such ultimate goal.

The development of molecular biology culminating in the decoding of the genetic code by Crick and his colleague Watson has further increased the credibility of the notion of teleonomy. Living things, molecular biologists maintain, give the impression of tending towards a goal or final cause, but this is only because they have been programmed like machines to move in this direction. Instead of a computer programme, as it has been said, the deus ex-machina is now the genetic programme.

However, no life process can be understood merely in terms of the information with which it has been programmed, for it is under the control of the larger systems of which it is part and that provide it with the environment with which it is constantly interacting and from which it derives much of the information required for its development. Thus a developing embryo acquires information during the entire embryological process; first from the cytoplasm, then from the womb and later, when the child is born, from its family, and as it grows up, from the community and ecosystem of which it is part.

As already mentioned, one of the main attractions of neo-Darwinism is that it appears to be non-teleological. That this is an illusion is clear from the fact that just about all the basic concepts of neo-Darwinism are highly teleological. Take competition; it implies competition for something. One cannot compete for nothing. Since competition for Darwinists, is intimately linked with the notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ it means competition to survive.

But why should living things want to survive? We assume that they do, but this is a gratuitous assumption. Stones do not want to survive particularly. At least they make no visible effort to do so. Lamp bulbs, nylon stockings and many other consumer products are designed specifically not to survive, since it is ‘economic’ to build into them ‘planned obsolescence’.

The concept of natural selection, another key concept of neo-Darwinism is equally teleological, a point made over and over again by the eminent French zoologist P. P. Grassé. [31]

“There cannot be selection without purpose (intention) . . . by explaining the evolution of the fittest in terms of selection, they (the neo-Darwinists) are endowing all living things with an inherent goal, and goal-directedness becomes the supreme law of the individual, with the population and with the species.”

In reality, the concept of natural selection is of use to neo-Darwinists largely because it provides a means of delegating surreptitiously, and it is hoped imperceptibly, to a vague and undefined environment the teleological functions that natural systems alone are capable of fulfilling adaptively. In this way the latter’s own behaviour can be made out to be random. It is, of course, a desperately feeble subterfuge, especially as their environment is itself made up of other natural systems, the purposiveness of whose behaviour no one seems to question.

Ecology has to be teleological, for purposiveness is possibly the most essential feature of the behaviour of natural systems, including ecosystems. It is only in terms of a teleological ecology that we can understand the role of natural systems within the whole Gaian hierarchy, in particular their fundamentally homeotelic or whole-maintaining character [32], which above all makes possible the essential order, integrity and stability of the living world.

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References

1.	Jacques Monod, 1970, Chance and Necessity, London, p.121.
2.	Huxley, J. S., 1953, Evolution in Action, Harper Bros, New York.
3.	Anne Broadhurst and W. R. Ramsey, 1968, ‘The non randomness of attempts at random responses: relationships with personality variables in psychiatric disorders’, in The British Journal of Psychology Vol. 59, pp.300-304.
4.	Stafford Beer, 1969, ‘Beyond the twilight arch’, General Systems Yearbook Vol. V, p.12.
5.	Wendell Berry, Letter to Wes Jackson, 15 July 1982.
6.	Ruth Flanagan: Here comes the big one, New Scientist, 20 July 1996.
7.	Rupert Riedl, 1978, Order in Living Organisms, John Wiley, New York.
8.	C. H. Waddington, ‘The theory of evolution today’, in Koestler and Smythies eds., 1972, Beyond Reductionism, p.173.
9.	W. M. Elsasser, quoted by Krishna Chaitanya, 1975, The Biology of Freedom, Somaiya Publications, Bombay, p. 132.
10.	J. D. Bernal, 1969, The World, The Flesh and The Devil, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p. 66.
11.	Sir Charles Sherrington, 1940, Man on his Nature, The Gifford Lectures, 1937-8, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p.104.
12.	Joseph Barcroft, 1938, The Brain and its Environment, Yale University Press, New Haven, pp.73-81.
13.	Ibid.
14.	Sir Gavin de Beer, 1958, Embryos and Ancestors, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p.16.
15.	J. A. Bierens de Haan, 1966, Animal Psychology, Hutchinson’s University Library, London, p.59.
16.	Keith Oatley, 1978, Perceptions and Representations, Methuen, London, P.166.
17.	Colin Pittendrigh, 1958, ‘Adaptations, natural selection and behaviour’, in Roe and Simpson eds., Evolution and Behaviour, p.394.
18.	Ludwig von Bertalanffy, 1962, (original edition 1933), Modern Theories of Development: An Introduction to Theoretical Biology, trans. J. H. Woodger, Harper Torchbook, New York, p. 9.
19.	Ragnar Granit, 1977, The Purposive Brain, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., p.7.
20.	Ibid, pp.18-19.
21.	James E. Lovelock, ‘Gaia: A Model for Planetary and Cellular Dynamics’, in Thompson, William Irwin ed., 1987, Gaia: A Way of Knowing, Political Implications as a New Biology, p. 87.
22.	Ralph Gerard, 1940, ‘The biological basis of ethics’, Philosophy of Science, 9.92, pp.161-173.
23.	Krishna Chaitanya, 1972, The Physics and Chemistry of Freedom, Somaiya Publications, Bombay.
24.	Julian Huxley, 1953, Evolution in Action, Harper Bros,New York.
25.	David Merrell, 1985, Ecological Genetics, Longman, London, pp. 18-19.
26.	Ragnar Granit, 1977, The Purposive Brain, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
27.	Peter Calow, 1976, Biological Machines: A Cybernetic Approach to Life, Edward Arnold, London, pp. 13-14.
28.	Ibid pp. 13-14.
29.	Brian Goodwin, 1994, How the Leopard Changed its Spots, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, p.52 and pp 157-159
30.	Henri Atlan, 1979, Entre le Cristal et la Fumée, Editions du Seuil, Paris, p.21.
31.	Pierre P. Grassé, 1973, L’Evolution du Vivant, Albin Michel, Paris, P.216.
32.	On the subject of ‘homeotely’ see:- Edward Goldsmith 1996 – The Way: An ecological world view, Themis Books, Totnes, Chapter 41, pp. 258-264.

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