Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 06 – 30
In Aristotle’s philosophy, the final cause (causa finalis) referred to the end, purpose, or goal for which a thing existed. Together with the material, formal, and efficient causes, it formed one of the four fundamental modes of explanation in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Francis Bacon rejected the intrusion of final causes into the investigation of nature, arguing that they reflected the human tendency to project intention and purpose onto natural phenomena rather than genuine features of the natural world. In his view, the search for purposes belonged more properly to theology or moral philosophy than to empirical science.
Modern science likewise rejects final causation in the Aristotelian sense, explaining natural phenomena through efficient causes and historical processes rather than intrinsic purposes. Nevertheless, teleological language remains common. Biological structures are frequently described as existing “in order to” perform particular functions—for example, that wings exist “in order to” enable flight or that the heart exists “in order to” pump blood. Although such expressions serve as convenient linguistic shorthand, they are philosophically misleading if interpreted literally, for they may suggest intentional design where only causal and evolutionary processes are involved. The persistence of such language illustrates how easily anthropomorphic habits of thought survive even within scientific discourse.
Evolutionary biology resolves this difficulty by distinguishing between proximate and ultimate explanations, a distinction formalized by Niko Tinbergen in his four questions. Proximate explanations describe the immediate physiological, developmental, or mechanistic causes of a trait, whereas ultimate explanations account for the evolutionary processes by which that trait arose through natural selection. Neither level of explanation invokes final causes or conscious purpose. Biological functions are understood as the products of causal history rather than of intention. In this respect, modern evolutionary biology agrees with Bacon’s rejection of teleology while preserving a precise vocabulary for explaining adaptation without appealing to Aristotelian final causation.
Hossein Jorjani 