Teleology
51Evolution — Evolution (History and Scientific Foundation) † Catholic Encyclopedia ► Evolution (History and Scientific Foundation) The world of organisms comprises a great system of individual forms generally classified according to structural… …
52Determinism — This article is about the general notion of determinism in philosophy. For other uses, see Determinism (disambiguation). Not to be confused with Fatalism, Predeterminism, or Predictability. Certainty series …
53Vitalism — This article is about the non mechanist philosophy. For other uses, see vital (disambiguation). Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary,[1] is a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct …
54Purpose — is the cognitive awareness in cause and effect linking for achieving a goal in a given system, whether human or machine. Its most general sense is the anticipated result which guides decision making in choosing appropriate actions within a range… …
55Constructivist epistemology — is an epistemological perspective in philosophy about the nature of scientific knowledge[1]. Constructivists maintain that scientific knowledge is constructed by scientists and not discovered from the world. Constructivists claim that the… …
56Orthogenesis — Orthogenesis, orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution or autogenesis, is the hypothesis that life has an innate tendency to evolve in a unilinear fashion due to some internal or external driving force . The hypothesis is based on… …
57Telos (philosophy) — A telos (from the Greek word for end , purpose , or goal ) is an end or purpose, in a fairly constrained sense used by philosophers such as Aristotle. It is the root of the term teleology, roughly the study of purposiveness, or the study of… …
58Philosophy of biology — The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long… …
59Pure sociology — is a controversial but revolutionary fact|date=July 2008 approach developed by Donald Black as an alternative to the individualistic focus of virtually all previous theories and paradigms in the discipline. Initially developed to explain… …
60Intrinsic finality — is the idea that there is a natural good for all beings, and that all beings have a natural tendency to pursue their own good. It is an underlying principle of both teleology and moral objectivism. The concept of intrinsic finality was summarized …
