teleology

• As for the question "why should [the universe] have been such an orderly and hospitable one?", it should be obvious that the use of "why" presupposes teleology, and therefore a Creator. —  Check Your Premises
• In posts below -- heart-rending stories of murdered civilians in India; reasoned and sensitive responses to unhinged violence and hatred; highly analytical thoughts on the gnostic Grand Narrative vision of teleology, [my paraphrase, of course]; and yet even more painful explorations of inhumanness -- in those posts below we see intelligent minds at work, sensitive people thinking, careful critics writing. —  Covenant Zone
• Kelemen has shown, for example, that Alzheimer's patients resort to teleological explanations for phenomena as their memory fades, which suggests that teleology is a part of the way our brains are wired. —  Yale Daily News: Latest Issue
• They seem to have forgotten that an internal teleology is as much teleology as an external one; hence, unfortunately, though their whole theory of development is intensely purposive, it is the fact rather than the name of teleology which has hitherto been insisted upon, even by the greatest writers on evolution--the name having been denied even by those who were most insisting on the thing itself It is easy to understand the difficulty felt by the fathers of evolution when we remember how much had to be seen before the facts could lie well before them. —  Evolution, Old ; New Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, as compared with that of Charles Darwin
• One of the most remarkable philosophic testimonies for the right of teleology is the philosophic system of Eduard von Hartmann who, although he calls his absolute the unconscious, ascribes to it an unconscious intelligence and an unconscious will, and makes the observation and acknowledgment of designs and ends, which he sees in the whole realm of the world of phenomena, an essential part of his entire system. —  The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the Same Context