Volume 2, Issue 2 Metaphor and Meaning in the Teleological Language of Biology Annie Crawford DOI: 10.33014/issn.2640-5652.2.2.crawford.1 Abstract In the early twentieth century, neo-Darwinian evolution- ary theory replaced traditional teleological causality as the accepted explanatory basis for biology. Yet, despite this rejection of teleology, biologists continue to resort to the language of purpose and design in order to define function, explain physiological processes, and describe behavior. The legitimacy of such teleological language is currently debated among biologists and philosophers of science. Many biol- ogists and educators argue that teleological language can function as a type of convenient short-hand for describing function while some argue that such language contradicts the fundamentally ateleological nature of evolutionary the- ory. Others, such as Ernst Mayr, have attempted to rede- fine teleology in such a way as to evade any metaphysical implications. However, most discussions regarding the le- gitimacy of teleological language in biology fail to consider the nature of language itself. Since conceptual language is intrinsically metaphorical, teleological language can be dismissed as decorative if and only if it can be replaced with alternative metaphors without loss of essential mean- ing. I conclude that, since teleological concepts cannot be abstracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power, life is inherently teleo- logical. It is the teleological character of life which makes it a unique phenomenon requiring a unique discipline of study distinct from physics or chemistry. “Teleology is like a mistress to the biologist; he dare not be seen with her in public but cannot live without her.” —J. B. S. Haldane 1 Introduction In the early twentieth century, neo-Darwinian theory re- placed traditional teleological causality as the accepted ex- planatory basis for biology. However, despite a public re- jection of teleology, biologists continue to resort to the lan- guage of purpose and design in order to identify function, explain physiological processes, and describe behavior. Bi- ology textbooks, articles, and papers are indeed filled such explanations as “A flower produces perfume in order to at- tract pollinizers,” “The function of the heart is to pump blood,” or “Felines have developed sharp protractile claws in order to hunt down prey” (Galli and Meinardi, 2011). To be meaningful, each of these claims depends upon ref- erence to some kind of purpose. Even on the cellular and molecular level, biologists rely liberally on the services of their intentional handmaiden, describing “insights into the ‘thought’ processes of a cell” and the “perceptual compo- nents of a cell” which are “making decisions about the ap- propriate use of resources” (Hyduke and Palsson, 2010). Words that imply purpose, design, intention, and desire provide the standard language of biology, and yet both the legitimacy and the meaning of such teleological language is the subject of extended debate among both biologists and philosophers of science. Some scientists and educators argue that teleological language can function as a type of convenient short-hand or heuristic device for describing bi- ological forms while others argue that the employment of any such language contradicts the fundamentally ateleolog- ical nature of modern evolutionary theory. Others, such as Ernst Mayr, have attempted to redefine teleology in such a way as to evade any metaphysical implications. In Section 2 of this article, I will briefly consider the histori- cal context of this debate and outline the sustained modern attempt to remove teleological concepts from biology. In Section 3, I will then examine the claim that the teleological language of biology can be dismissed as superfluous heuris- tic metaphor and argue in response that this is true if and only if teleological metaphors can be replaced by alternative metaphors without loss of essential meaning. In Section 4, I will consider whether teleological metaphors can be elimi- https://dx.doi.org/10.33014/issn.2640-5652.2.2.crawford.1 6 Metaphor and Meaning nated from biological discourse and demonstrate that every time teleological language is removed from biological expla- nations, it either jettisons important explanatory elements or still depends upon unstated teleological concepts that have been reintroduced through the backdoor. I conclude in Section 5 that, since teleological concepts cannot be ab- stracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power, life is inherently teleolog- ical. Therefore, it is disingenuous to continue pretending that teleology is or can be divorced from biology. Indeed, it is the teleological character of life which makes it a unique phenomenon requiring a unique discipline of study distinct from physics or chemistry. 2 The History of Teleology in the Biological Sciences Before directly entering into the contemporary debate over the role of teleological language in modern biology, it will prove helpful to understand the historical relationship be- tween teleology and the study of life. The term ‘teleology’ derives from the Greek word telos which Aristotle defined as “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done” (Aristo- tle, Physics, II.3.). This end purpose for which something exists is also called its final cause and is one of the four fundamental causes included in Aristotelian physics. Tele- ological concepts include everything involved in the pursuit of an intrinsic, purposeful end: intentionality, purpose, de- sign, motivation, direction, strategy, aims, goals, problems, solutions, invention, and agency. While e!cient causality, which Aristotle defined as “the primary source of the change or rest,” (Aristotle, Physics, II.3.) explains the source of movement, final causality explains the purpose for which the e!cient cause acted. Thus, unlike e!cient causality, teleological causality implies the ability to imagine and plan for a future state of a"airs, an ability that can only exist within a mind or some other kind of non-physical or tran- scendent reality. While Aristotelian science included the study of all four causes—material, e!cient, formal, and final—the founders of modern science began to exclude final and formal causes from their methodology. Inquiries into the meaningful pur- pose of rocks and stars and basic elements seemed to ob- scure knowledge more than they aided it, for it is di!cult to ascertain with certitude the purposes for which a Cos- mic Mind made the moon or the mountains. Neither Bacon nor Descartes nor Newton denied the existence of God or his causal activity in creating the world. However, in order to advance scientific knowledge, the founders of modern sci- ence endeavored to make a clear distinction between God as the first cause of the world and the secondary causes he set to govern the material world. In the Cartesian separation of res extensa and res cogitans, e!cient causality—proper to the physical realm—was separated from the intention and purpose of mind which seemed proper only to the metaphys- ical realm. Scientists gained reliable knowledge of the ma- terial world by isolating and determining the natural laws which function at all times and in all contexts regardless of intent or purpose. In order for empirical tests to yield such knowledge, the objects of scientific study must be reduced to the level of regular and therefore predictable laws and mechanisms. Teleological causality, however, implying the personal agency and intentionality characteristic of psychic realities, is not predictable according to set and inviolable laws. This exclusive focus on e!cient causality proved in- credibly successful, allowing technology to develop rapidly as scientists gained the knowledge necessary to manipulate the e!cient causes present in material entities toward our own practical ends. While the disciplines of physics and chemistry advanced through the elimination of teleological considerations, bi- ological realities seemed inseparable from the concepts of design and purpose. Even contemporary neo-Darwinian materialists acknowledge that the appearance of design is what distinguishes the objects of biological study. Richard Dawkins famously defined biology as “the study of compli- cated things that give the appearance of having been de- signed for a purpose” (Dawkins, 1996, pg. 1). Jerry Coyne opens his book, Why Evolution is True, with the observa- tion that “if anything is true about nature, it is that plants and animals seem intricately and almost perfectly designed” (Coyne, 2009, pg. 1). Philosopher of science Michael Ruse also a!rms that “the key fact about organisms is that they are design-like, they exhibit final causes” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 35). Until the nineteenth century, biolo- gists generally accepted the teleological character of life at face value. Life seemed designed because it was designed; life appeared purposeful because it was purposeful. Immanuel Kant also argued that teleology is the defining characteristic of biology which di"erentiates it from physics or chemistry. Renowned twentieth century biologist Ernst Mayr describes Kant as “a strict mechanist with respect to inanimate nature but a teleologist in the treatment of the world of life” (Mayr, 1988, pg 59). According to Kant, design, purpose, and intentionality are the features which distinguish life from non-life. Moreover, Kant did not be- lieve that physical laws alone could ever account for the existence of these teleological qualities. In his Critique of Judgement Kant boldly contends, It is quite certain that we can never get a su!cient knowledge of organized beings and their inner pos- Volume 2, Issue 2 2. THE HISTORY OF TELEOLOGY IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 7 sibility, much less explain them, according to mere mechanical principles of nature. So certain is it, that we may confidently assert that it is absurd for men to make any such attempt, or to hope that maybe another Newton will some day arrive to make intelligible to us even the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered. Such insight we must ab- solutely deny to mankind. (Kant, Critique of Judgement, translated by James Creed Meredith) Philosopher of science Robert J. Richards explains that Kant believed life was irreducible to mechanical causes be- cause for Kant, “the design features of an organism cannot be explained mechanically, but must be assumed to have been the product of a plan, an idea” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pgs. 160–161). Since the many features of an organ- ism function together in an intricately coordinated manner to create a purposeful whole, Kant believed that life re- quired intelligent foresight. According to Kant, the idea for an integrated, purposeful whole must have existed prior to the coordinated arrangement of its parts. Yet such an idea, a plan for the purposeful coordination of integrated parts, “could only be produced by an intellect. So the naturalist, in giving an account of the teleological features of organ- isms, must ultimately assume they have arisen because of a plan formulated by a powerful intelligence” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 161). Since Kant believed that organisms could not be fully explained by material and e!cient causal- ity alone, he concluded that biology could not be a science in the same sense as physics. However, biologists have su"ered from what Ernst Mayr famously called “physics envy.” By the mid-eighteenth cen- tury, the modern scientific method had gained such philo- sophical, cultural, and technological power that many biol- ogists endeavored to conform the study of life to the same methods of inquiry that served physics and chemistry so well. Yet life continued to stare at her interrogators with a stubborn, purposeful intentionality and design that seemed irreducible to mere mechanism. Thus, as Mayr describes, “the history of the biological sciences from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries [was] characterized by a con- stant battle between extreme mechanists, who explained everything purely in terms of movements and forces, and their opponents, who often went to the opposite extreme of vitalism” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 91). Although Kant had condemned biology to a sub-scientific status, Michael Ruse notes that “Darwin was determined to show him wrong” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 34) and to raise biology to the status of a law-based science like physics and chemistry. When Darwin published The Origin of Species, evolutionary theory was not new; his unique achievement was not to convince the world of univer- sal common descent but to propose a plausible law-based, mechanistic explanation for the transmutation of species which then made an ateleological explanation of life possi- ble. Darwin’s theory of natural selection acting on random variations appeared to answer “the problem of final causes” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 37). Ruse maintains that “for Darwin natural selection is not just a cause, but a force in a kind of Newtonian sense” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 44). In the “mechanism” of natural selection acting on random mutations, the teleological character of life finally appeared to be demystified and brought under the rule of physical laws and mechanical processes. While some schol- ars such as Robert J. Richards and J. Scott Turner argue that Darwin never intended to strip biology of its vital, tele- ological character, his endeavor to discover the explanatory law ultimately led to the mechanistic, reductionist theory of life we know today. In retrospect, prominent biologist Francisco Ayala calls Darwin’s “idea that the design of liv- ing organisms can be accounted for as the result of natural processes governed by natural laws” a “conceptual revo- lution” that “has forever changed how mankind perceives itself and its place in the universe” (Ayala, 2007). Although evolution itself was widely accepted, Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection acting on random muta- tions did not become the prevailing explanatory principle in evolutionary biology until the Modern Synthesis of the mid-twentieth century. Although biologists were not yet generally convinced that natural selection alone could fully account for the transmutation of species from a common origin, Darwin had made a mechanistic explanation of life seem truly possible. The holy grail of biology, a completely mechanistic and materialistic explanation for the nature of life, now seemed inevitable. Thus, according to science writer Jonathan Bartlett, as various theories contended for dominance, those biologists who continued to su"er acutely from physics-envy “were careful not to ascribe any purpose- fulness to organisms out of fear of being labelled as teleol- ogists” (Bartlett, 2017, pg. 3). In 1958, Colin Pittendrigh famously quipped that “biologists for a while were prepared to say a turtle came ashore and laid its eggs, but they re- fused to say it came ashore to lay its eggs” (Pittendrigh, 1958, pg. 394). The Scientific Revolution had redefined science as the study of e!cient causality alone and biolo- gists wanted to be ‘real’ scientists, so “despite the fact that it is obvious that turtles do indeed come to shore for the purpose of laying their eggs, biologists were uncomfortable with stating that plainly” (Bartlett, 2017, pg. 3, emphasis mine). However, the development of a viable model for genetic in- 8 Metaphor and Meaning heritance appeared to vindicate Darwin’s theory of natural selection. R. A. Fisher, S. G. Wright, and J. B. S. Haldane devised statistical methods of analysis that reconciled the mutationism of Mendelian genetics with the gradualism of Darwinian evolutionism. As J. Scott Turner describes in his book, Purpose and Desire, adaptation or “fitness could now be dispassionately and precisely expressed as the tendency of an allele to replicate” (Turner, 2017, pg. 150). Natural selection acting on gene variation seemed able to explain the “appearance” of designed organisms apart from any real teleological, that is metaphysical, cause. This mod- ern synthesis of Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection with modern genetic theory seemed—for the moment—to solve the problem of final causes by providing a predictable, measurable, and testable mechanistic explanation for the development and functionality of life. After the triumph of neo-Darwinism, teleological phraseol- ogy seemed either eliminable or able to be explained away, and biologists became freer with their language. It became safe for a biologist to say that “a turtle came ashore to lay her eggs," without worrying about implied metaphysi- cal content. The purposiveness of organisms was reduced to a kind of epiphenomenon or secondary characteristic that could be fully explained by the law-based mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations. According Bartlett, “evolution itself cut any teleological connection between the organism and any higher organizing principle. Because evolution proceeded by random or happenstance changes. . . there was no linkage between the results of evolution and any purposes within nature” (Bartlett, 2017, pg. 3). Random variations could account for the arrival of a new trait while natural selection accounted for the sur- vival of the trait. This seemed to separate the creation of functionality from any kind of intentional design. Since most teleological terms and phrases appeared drained of metaphysical implications, biologists felt increasingly free to indulge them. Teleology seemed merely “a leftover relic that would soon go the way of alchemy” (Bartlett, 2017, pg. 3). However, teleology has not died. As the discipline of biology has advanced, the mysteries of life have kept pace with our increase in knowledge, and what had for a moment seemed like a settled debate is far from over. Although teleologi- cal causality has been excluded by definition from modern science, biologists continue to not only indulge but actually depend on teleological language. Satisfying mechanistic ex- planations continue to evade biologists as life proves to be far more complex than Bacon or Descartes or Darwin ever imagined. Advances in biology have compelled scientists to increasingly reach for the language of purpose and design to explain the intricately ordered structures and dynamic sys- tems found within even the simplest organisms. Mechanis- tic, ateleological models have failed to provide the linguistic resources necessary to explain life. At the same time, stri- dent materialists such as Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and many others have become more insistent on the purposeless, undesignedness of nature. Thus, as biologists need teleo- logical language more than ever to explain their new obser- vations, the ideological pressure to reject such language is also intensifying. The debate over the role of teleology in biology has been revived. 3 Teleological language is Essential to Biology Ironically, the fact that scientists earnestly debate the legiti- macy of teleological language in biology lends support to the claim that teleological language is essential to a meaningful and coherent explanation of biological phenomena. Most modern biologists are so strongly committed to method- ological naturalism that the use of teleological language, with all its messy metaphysical implications, would have indeed “gone the way of alchemy” and disappeared from bi- ological discourse if it were inessential. That the language of purpose and design persists to annoy so many committed naturalists is itself evidence that the language of teleology is important to the study of life. In this section, I will first consider the common claim that teleological language functions merely as a decorative or heuristic metaphor that need not carry meaning into our theoretical understanding of life. In response to this objec- tion, I draw from the linguistic philosophy of Owen Barfield, George Lako", and Mark Johnson to argue against the possibility of “mere metaphors” in any kind of discourse. Second, I will outline the arguments of those who claim that teleological language can and must be eliminated from biological discourse. Using the work of Ernst Mayr and Michael Ruse, I will then demonstrate that it is impossi- ble to remove teleological language or concepts from the discipline of biology. 3.1 Teleological Language as Mere Metaphor Beginning with Darwin, modern biologists commonly argue that teleological language is merely metaphor; it is a matter of words and not of concepts. Many science writers and ed- ucators (especially those who work at a popular or introduc- tory level) claim that our common sense, everyday language of intention and design has nothing to do with the real Volume 2, Issue 2 3. TELEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE IS ESSENTIAL TO BIOLOGY 9 truths of biology. Teleological metaphors can be brushed aside as a “harmless figure of speech” (Regenmortel, 2007, pg. 967) derived from our subjective experience as purpose- ful agents and thus are inessential to the objective nature of life. From this perspective, teleological language is em- ployed decoratively for heuristic, educational, or rhetori- cal purposes; biologists simply use metaphors to translate between a true scientific understanding of the world and our colloquial ways of speaking about life. Most who con- sider the language of purpose and design to be a “mere metaphor” in biology usually believe that such language could theoretically be removed from biological descriptions and explanations without altering their essential meaning. Charles Darwin himself dismissed his teleological language in the Origin as mere metaphor. In his essay “Charles Darwin: Rhetorician of Science,” John Angus Campbell argues that Darwin believed that his own metaphors func- tioned simply as non-essential rhetorical devices. According to Campbell, “Darwin’s public account of his metaphors creates the impression that his images could be replaced by literal statements if time were not a factor” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 11). Although Darwin employed anthropomor- phic images and intentional narratives when describing key aspects of his theory, he nonetheless “explained away his originality by insisting that his ideas were the result of ‘facts’ and his metaphors mere expressions of convenience” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 6, emphasis mine). Campbell claims that Darwin’s concern for persuasiveness accounts for the “heavily metaphorical character of his thought” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 10). Darwin understood that in order to make a compelling case for the theory of natural selection, he would need to “appeal to common sense” and persuade “his peers and the wider community by using plain En- glish words and plain English thoughts” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 3). Thus, Darwin turned to the same rhetorical tech- niques of metaphor, personification, and poetic description which all persuasive writers employ. Indeed, Darwin’s use of metaphor in the Origin enabled him to skillfully accom- modate “his message to [both] the professional and lay au- diences whose support was necessary for its acceptance” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 3). However, Darwin’s imagistic language caused confusion and was, according to Campbell, “a center of controversy from the very first” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 10). The “conventions of Baconian induction and quasi-positivistic standards of proof,” which profoundly influenced nineteenth century un- derstanding of science, created a tension between Darwin’s imaginative language and the scientific idea he wished to de- fend. As Campbell explains, his metaphorical images “lent his ideas popular appeal, but since they drew attention to themselves as images, explaining them away posed a dis- tinct rhetorical challenge” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 10). Dar- win clearly wanted to demonstrate that his theory was ob- jectively true according to the quasi-positivist standards of modern scientific discourse, yet the progression of his argu- ment frequently depended on imaginative speculation and metaphorical descriptions. In protest of these imaginative lines of argument, Darwin’s staunch critic, the anatomist Richard Owen, complained that “we do not want to know what Darwin believes & is convinced of, but what he can prove” (Dear, 2006, pg. 102). Darwin’s descriptions of the term ‘natural selection’ were especially problematic. Many of the images Darwin used to explain natural selection were teleological and therefore im- plied a goal-directed agency, yet his theory was purported to be an explanation based on the accepted scientific prin- ciples of material and e!cient causality, not old, discarded notions of final causality. In a later edition of the Ori- gin, Darwin expressed surprise that “several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term Natural Selec- tion.” He complained that some readers “have objected that the term selection implies conscious choice in the an- imals which become modified; and it has even been urged that as plants have no volition, natural selection is not ap- plicable to them!” (Darwin, 1860, pg. 81) Darwin’s readers were confused, at least in part, because the term selection itself implies intentional agency, a mind that can choose one thing rather than another. If the biological realm were indeed driven by purely e!cient causes, then the language of choice—the idea that some natural force ‘chooses’ be- tween the reproductive advantage of either organism A or organism B—should not be required. Object X would sim- ply cause Y according to set, automatic laws. For exam- ple, the moon causes the Earth’s oceans to move via tidal forces; there is no choice involved nor is the language of selection required to explain the phenomenon. Peter Dear maintains that because Darwin’s “term retained the word ‘selection’. . . the old natural-theological sense of intelligent designfulness still lurked in the background” (Dear, 2006, pg. 97). The term ‘natural selection’ gave Darwin so much trouble that “he soon expressed the wish that he had used some other phrase that avoided the impression of conscious intent given by the word ‘selection’ ” (Dear, 2006, pg. 111). However, Darwin defended his metaphorical language by insisting that the meaning of a concept can be indepen- dent of the metaphors used to explain it. When criticized for his use of metaphors, Darwin enigmatically responded “by pointing out that certain of his metaphors were in fact metaphors” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 10). In the second edi- tion of the Origin, Darwin concedes that, “in the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a mis- nomer” (Darwin, 1860, pg. 81). However, he protests that such metaphorical language is tolerated in chemistry and physics: “who ever objected to chemists speaking of the 10 Metaphor and Meaning elective a!nities of the various elements?—and yet an acid cannot strictly be said to elect the base with which it will in preference combine.” Darwin implies the possibility of detaching a concept from its descriptive metaphor by com- plaining that “every one knows what is meant and is im- plied by such metaphorical expressions.” Darwin justifies the use of metaphors whose meaning must be disregarded by claiming that they are “almost necessary for brevity.” While admitting that “it is di!cult to avoid personifying the word Nature,” Darwin suggests that given enough ef- fort it is always possible to translate teleological language into metaphysically neutral statements. For example, he explains that by “Nature” he means “only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us.” Darwin trusts that “with a little familiarity such superficial objections” about the implied meaning of his metaphors “will be forgotten” (Darwin, 1860, pg. 81). Despite Darwin’s protests, there remains a fundamental dis- connect between what Darwin claims to say about natural selection and what he actually said. Campbell contends that it is “worth considering” why “the very connotations we are warned not to take seriously were instrumental in his ability to persuade both his professional peers and the general public” (Campbell, 1997, pg. 10). Darwin’s images and metaphors made his theory meaningful and persuasive, but they also carried implications he wanted his readers to ignore. Darwin frequently personified natural selection— describing it as a power that can act, reject, economize, overmaster, disregard, succeed, seize upon, overcome, and govern—yet apparently assumed that his readers would dis- regard the implication of purpose and intention inherent to his verbs. The most famous passage of the Origin is laden with teleological meaning; Darwin imagines that “natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever op- portunity o"ers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life” (Darwin, 1859, pg. 27). It is the sense of intelligent, pur- poseful activity that gives this passage a compelling and coherent meaning, yet that is the very meaning we are sup- posed to ignore. Thus, Campbell concedes that “a certain disingenuousness was necessary for Darwin to be persua- sive” (Campbell, 1997, pgs. 8–9). What Campbell describes as “the distance between Dar- win’s public quasi-positivistic account of his metaphors and the actual use he made of figurative language”(Campbell, 1997, pg. 11) is so great that modern scholars continue to vigorously debate as to whether or not Darwin really in- tended to remove teleology from his theory of life. Michael Ruse and Robert J. Richards co-authored a book debating this very point. While Ruse contends that “it was the whole purpose of his mechanism to eliminate or at least to render redundant” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 38) the world of teleology, Richards argues that “we have mistakenly as- sumed that Darwin banished final causes and notions of progress from biology” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 84). Ruse seems to believe that Darwin’s scientific ideas could be detached from his metaphorical language, for he weakly asserts that Darwin’s anthropomorphisms were “no more essential than if we say something like ‘the eye is incredibly well designed’ ” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 46). While then acknowledging that “the eye is design-like in a way that the moon, for example is not,” Ruse still maintains that such phraseology does not entail “an Aristotelian vi- tal force objectively out there in nature making for final causes” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 47). Ruse dismisses the language of design as simply “our way of thinking about a mechanistic system.” However, Richards objects to Ruse’s suggestion that Darwin’s language “was ‘merely’ metaphor- ical” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 155). Richards states, “What I believe to be defective about Ruse’s analysis of Darwin’s theory is the assumption that metaphors are only decorative and can be safely ignored in the construction of a scientific theory. I believe they do real work” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 158). This continued confusion over the meaning of natural selec- tion and the metaphysical implications of Darwin’s theory demonstrate the problem with simply dismissing teleolog- ical language as “mere metaphor.” Those scientists who follow Darwin’s lead in considering their metaphors to be merely decorative additions that can be abstracted away from the meaning of the concept seem not to have thought very deeply about the nature of language. As the follow- ing discussion of linguistics will explain, Robert J. Richards rightly perceives that metaphors do real conceptual work, for the meaning of a concept is actually contained in the metaphor itself. 3.2 The Meaning is in the Metaphor Rhetorical metaphors in biology cannot be ignored as inessential decoration because our conceptual language draws its meaning from metaphor. Unless a term refers to a concrete object or activity, its meaning will be cre- ated and sustained through some kind of metaphorical ref- erence. In Poetic Diction, philosopher and philologist Owen Barfield argues that “if we trace the meanings of a great many words. . . as far back as etymology can take us, we are at once made to realize that an overwhelming propor- tion, if not all of them, referred in earlier days to one of Volume 2, Issue 2 3. TELEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE IS ESSENTIAL TO BIOLOGY 11 these two things—a solid sensible object, or some animal (probably human) activity” (Barfield, 1973, pgs. 63–64). All our words either directly refer to a concrete reality, such as a table or a falling leaf, or else draw their mean- ing from a metaphorical connection to some physical re- ality. As an example Barfield o"ers the terms ‘abstract’ and ‘elasticity’ which “are both traceable to verbs mean- ing ‘draw’ or ‘drag’ ” (Barfield, 1973, pg. 64).1 When we endeavor to think of what these conceptual terms mean, we may imagine something stretching like a form drawn in outline or a well-kneaded dough. Admittedly, as we think or read a text, we are not normally conscious of our con- ceptual metaphors, yet our ability to use abstract language in meaningful ways is not a freedom from metaphor as such but rather the “power of changing the metaphors in rapid succession” (Lewis, 2013, pg. 262). The metaphorical nature of human thought is why Barfield’s Oxford colleague C.S. Lewis calls reason the or- gan of truth and the imagination the organ of meaning (Lewis, 2013, pg. 154). While reason gives order and truth value to our thoughts, it is the imagination that gives con- tent to our thought by mediating between our embodied experience and our thinking. Abstract terms depend upon metaphors in order to have meaning, and these metaphor- ical meanings are not arbitrarily invented; they are rooted in our experience of the objective physical reality. The concepts to which our terms refer not only draw their meaning from metaphor, they are also metaphorically structured. In other words, we not only use metaphori- cal language to create meaning, we actually organize our thoughts through physically-based metaphorical models of the world. In their book Metaphors We Live By, George Lako" and Mark Johnson argue that “the only reason our linguistic metaphors make sense is because our concepts are themselves metaphorically structured” (Lako" and John- son, 2003, pg. 6). As embodied creatures, both our lan- guage and our ideas develop through our physical experi- ence in the world.2 For example, we think of such ideas as 1Of course, by connecting a word to our own lived experience, it is possible to correctly understand a term even when we do not know the original metaphorical meaning. For example, I may not know the an- cient etymological connection between spirit and breath, yet my own observation of the same reality may lead me to independently con- nect breath with the word ‘spirit’. Although ignorant of the original metaphor, I have not attained a meaning that is independent from all metaphor; I have given the term meaning through my own concrete experiences of the same reality. 2In the updated afterward to Metaphors We Live By, Lako! and Johnson maintain, “After twenty years of research by hundreds of in- vestigators, vast bodies of empirical evidence for conceptual metaphor have been gathered from studies in a wide range of fields within the cognitive sciences. We initially had two primary sources of evidence— polysemy generalizations and inference generalizations. We now have at least seven other types of evidence derived from various empirical methods: (1) extensions to poetic and novel cases (Lako! and Turner happiness and health and power as being ‘up’ because our bodies literally droop and fall when they are tired, sick, or dead. Thus, we speak of being “in top shape” or “feeling up today” or “being on top of the situation” (Lako" and Johnson, 2003, pg. 15). According to Lako" and Johnson, we are always conceptualizing “the nonphysical in terms of the physical” (Lako" and Johnson, 2003, pg. 59). As exam- ples, consider the way we think of theories and arguments as buildings that can have a shaky foundation or a strong framework (Lako" and Johnson, 2003, pg. 46), or how we conceptualize love as a physical force that can have momen- tum or cause sparks (Lako" and Johnson, 2003, pg. 49). Lako" and Johnson o"er dozens of other examples as they contend that our “conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in na- ture” (Lako" and Johnson, 2003, pg. 3). Scientific concepts and terminology are not exempt from this dependence on metaphor. Biological language can be literal when describing concrete, sensible objects, which is why no one is confused over the meaning of terms such as ‘feather’ or ‘bullfrog’. However, abstract scientific con- cepts will depend on metaphor for meaning.3 Barfield ex- plicitly contends that all “linguistic symbols have a figu- rative origin; a rule from which high-sounding ‘scientific’ terms like cause, reference, organism, stimulus, etc., are not miraculously exempt!” (Barfield, 1973, pg. 134, empha- sis in original) Lako" and Johnson agree that the “so-called purely intellectual concepts, e.g. concepts in a scientific the- ory, are often—perhaps always—based on metaphors that have a physical and/or cultural basis” (Lako" and Johnson, 2003, pgs. 18–19). In his essay, “The Language of Nature,” Stephen Talbott quotes the mid-twentieth century philoso- pher Kurt Riezler as “chiding physicists with these words: “You use the word ‘force’ and, when queried, you define it by law, field, and vector; but what you really have in mind is the force you feel in commanding your muscles” (Tal- bott, 2007, pg. 63, emphasis mine). Riezler reminds scien- tists that they too must use metaphors in order to under- 1989); (2) psychological research, for example, priming studies (Gibbs 1994; Boroditzky 2000); (3) gesture studies (McNeill 1992); (4) histor- ical semantic change research (Sweetser 1990); (5) discourse analysis (Narayanan 1997); (6) sign language analysis (Taub 1997); and (7) language acquisition (C. Johnson 1999). The importance of this evidence is that it comes from many di!erent methodologies and no longer rests exclusively on data from linguistic forms and inferences. These new sources have produced converging re- sults concerning the way metaphor lies at the heart of abstract thought and symbolic expression.” (Lako! and Johnson, 2003, pgs. 248–249, adapted slightly for spacing). 3Lako! and Johnson argue that “our most fundamental ideas— not just time, but events, causation, morality, the self, and so on— were almost entirely structured by elaborate systems of conceptual metaphor. Even the basic concepts of causation used in the physical and social sciences are primarily constituted by a system of nearly two dozen distinct metaphors, each with its own causal logic” (Lako! and Johnson, 2003, pg. 250). 12 Metaphor and Meaning stand what their mathematical models mean. The concept of force becomes what Barfield calls “those verbal ghosts of the physical sciences” (Barfield, 1973, pg. 140) unless we give it meaning by connecting the term metaphorically to our lived experience of the world. If both our language and our concepts are metaphorically structured, then there is no such thing as a ‘pure concept’. Drawing from Barfield’s argument, Lewis concludes that we can have “either literalness, or else metaphor understood: one or other of these we must have; the third alternative is nonsense” (Lewis, 2013, pg. 262). According to Lewis, we never “really pass from symbol to symbolized, but only from one set of symbols to another” (Lewis, 2013, pg. 261). Therefore, contrary to the naïve protests of some scien- tists, we cannot simply disregard teleological metaphors as “nothing but linguistic expressions” or “a mere matter of words” (Lewis, 2013, pg. 245). Our linguistic options are to either talk about a literal entity (frog) or a metaphorically rooted concept (force). But if we attempt to make a clean break between a concept and its metaphor, we are not talk- ing about anything. As Richards argued in his debate with Ruse, the meaning of a concept is in the metaphor. Thus, biologists are fooling themselves when they try to construct an ateleological concept of life that is consistently expressed in terms of teleological metaphor. They are speaking non- sense. Of course, the meaning of a certain metaphor may indeed be inessential to a particular concept if the concept can be ad- equately communicated through an alternative metaphor. According to Lewis, a concept can possess meaning apart from a particular metaphor but only “in so far as these metaphors are optional: that is in so far as we are able to have the same idea without them” (Lewis, 2013, pg. 258). For example, Lako" and Johnson discuss the metaphor “ar- gument is war.” The metaphor of war is inessential to our concept of argument insofar as we can conceptualize an ar- gument without reference to war. Indeed, we can conceptu- alize an argument as more like a building or even a dance. Argument does not have to be characterized by destruc- tive conflict; it can be constructive or playful. However, if we could not fully conceptualize argument without con- stant recourse to the language of war, we must conclude that destructive conflict was essential to the nature of ar- gument. Lewis contends, “In so far as we cannot express the same idea apart from a given metaphor, so far it will be the unique expression, and therefore the iron limit of our thinking” (Lewis, 2013, pg. 255). If we cannot talk about or conceptualize a particular idea without recourse to a specific metaphor, it is because the meaning gained by the metaphor is essential to the reality being explained. Accordingly, certain metaphors can be helpful to scientists heuristically without being essential to the concepts being explained if the same concept can be conceptualized an- other way without the given metaphor. Heuristic devices are important tools, and teleological metaphors need not always have teleological implications. As Darwin rightly perceived, chemists can talk about “molecules wanting to have eight electrons in their outer shell” without students thinking electrons have actual desires. However, this is be- cause the teleological metaphors of chemistry can be re- placed by ateleological descriptions without losing any ex- planatory power. Students can have an accurate idea of atomic structure without depending on the metaphor of desire. Chemical bonding patterns are ultimately derived from mathematical equations that can be conceptualized without teleological language. We can say, for example, that “the forces present in an atom are equalized when it has eight electrons in the outer shell.” Therefore, living organisms can be understood ateleolog- ically if and only if it is possible for biological explana- tions to be conceptualized and communicated without tele- ological language. Darwin could have justified his artifi- cial selection metaphor, just as chemists can justify their heuristic “desire” metaphor, if he could have provide an adequate conception of natural selection without it. But he couldn’t. Darwin depended upon the intentional model of artificial selection in order to explain how natural selec- tion could provide an exogenic and therefore mechanistic cause of evolution that avoided the vitalism haunting en- dogenic explanations. In What Darwin Got Wrong, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini agree that “Darwin was inadequately impressed by the fact that breeders have minds. . . whereas, of course, nothing of that sort [sic] is true in the case of natural selection. It would be startling, in light of this di"erence, if theories of the one could be re- liable models for theories of the other” (Fodor and Piatelli- Palmarini, 2011, pg. xxi). Since the meaning is in the metaphor, Darwin could not make the teleological analogy of artificial selection work ateleologically just “by abstract- ing away the minds away” (Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini, 2011, pg. 116). While adaptationists continue to see arti- ficial selection as a “harmless exegetical metaphor,” Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini maintain that it is “the putative analogy to artificial selection that bears the whole weight of adoptionism” (Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini, 2011, pg. 99). Take away the mental causality and the whole ability to explain anything collapses. Without teleology there is no way to construct a notion of natural selection “that isn’t just empty” (Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini, 2011, pg. 138), which is why What Darwin Got Wrong opens with Noam Chomsky’s assessment that “It is perfectly safe to attribute [evolutionary] development to ‘natural selection’ so long as we realize that there is no substance to this assertion; it amounts to no more than a belief that there is some natural- Volume 2, Issue 2 3. TELEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE IS ESSENTIAL TO BIOLOGY 13 istic explanation for these phenomena” (Fodor and Piatelli- Palmarini, 2011, opening page, emphasis mine). If neo-Darwinists are to defend a truly ateleological theory of life, they will need to show that the language of purpose and design can be removed and replaced with ateleological metaphors that give coherent meaning to their explanatory model. If it proves impossible to eliminate teleological lan- guage from biological discourse, then we have good reasons to conclude that teleology—the realm of purpose, intention, desire, and design—is indeed essential to the nature of life. 3.3 Teleology Expelled: Sacking Biology’s Mistress Many scientists have intuited that metaphors do not func- tion as harmless figures of speech and therefore actively contend for the removal of teleological metaphors from bi- ology. Uneasy with the language of purpose and design within a discipline that endeavors to explain the natural world through material causality alone, several prominent scientists argue that such language is misleading, incorrect, and the primary cause of the public’s failure to accept evo- lutionary theory. In his influential essay, “Evolution and Tinkering,” François Jacob demonstrates the way biologists expect their readers to ignore the very meaning on which their argument seems to depend. Jacob describes the causal e!cacy of natu- ral selection through language littered with intentionality and goal-directed agency. He describes natural selection as a force that “integrates mutations” and “orders them into adaptively coherent patterns” (Jacob, 1977, pg. 1163). He explains that natural selection “gives direction” and “progressively produces” (Jacob, 1977, pg. 1163, empha- sis mine), doing “what it could with the materials at its disposal” (Jacob, 1977, pg. 1164, emphasis mine). Jacob explains how natural selection “adjusts” and “alters” and “arranges” an organism as it “tinkers” to create new life forms. All these verbs imply intentional, purpose-driven agency, the very qualities that neo-Darwinianism is sup- posed to explain away. Jacob’s presiding metaphor also implies teleology, although the analogy of the tinkerer was ironically conjured for the very purpose of denying purpose. Jacob rejects the com- parison of “the action of natural selection. . . to that of an engineer” because the latter, “in contrast to what oc- curs in evolution,. . . works according to a pre-conceived plan” (Jacob, 1977, pg. 1163, emphasis mine). In other words, the metaphor of an engineer implies the real exis- tence of a designing intelligence. Instead, he explains the action of natural selection by comparing it to the action of a junk yard tinkerer who works with whatever random items he might find around him. Although his tinkerer has “no special project in mind,” Jacob’s analogy still obviously implies a process driven by intentionality and intelligence. In conclusion, after liberally employing anthropomorphic language and teleological metaphor to explain natural se- lection, Jacob contradicts himself by claiming that “natural selection has no analogy with any aspect of human behav- ior” (Jacob, 1977, pg. 1163, emphasis mine). Jacob would have his readers ignore what his language means in their attempt to understand what he says. Such passages are endemic in biological literature, which makes it no wonder that recent studies show that biology students as well as the public in general continue to in- terpret evolutionary processes as inherently goal-oriented. According to philosopher of science and science educators L.M. González Galli and E.N. Meinardi, “Comprehensive research in many di"erent countries has shown that stu- dents’ misconceptions are as diverse as they are abundant” (Galli and Meinardi, 2011, pg. 145). For example, Galli and Meinardi report that “many biology students believe that: acquired traits are inherited / the onset of the human species was predetermined / evolution implies progress / living organisms can change according to their needs” (Galli and Meinardi, 2011, pg. 146). These ideas imply a goal- directed view of the world which modern neo-Darwinian theory flatly denies. In response to the public misunderstanding, Dr. Marc Van Regenmortel contends for the rejection of all “design phraseology,” which he sees as detrimental to progress in bi- ological research. Specifically, in his paper, “The Rational Design of Biological Complexity: A Deceptive Metaphor,” Van Regenmortel argues that “the design metaphor is shown to originate in human intentionality and in the an- thropomorphic fallacy of interpreting objects, events, and the behavior of all living organisms in terms of goals and purposes” (Regenmortel, 2007, pg. 965). While it is natural for humans to use teleological language, since purposeful action is intrinsic to our way of experiencing the world, Van Regenmortel maintains that the language of design wrongly projects the human experience of intentionality and foresight onto what we otherwise know—through neo- Darwinian theory—to be mindless physical entities. Ac- cording to Van Regenmortel, “a biological function does not entail design for that function and functional descriptions need not be based on psychological notions of design, inten- tion, and purpose” because functionality develops “blindly through the increased survival and reproduction of adaptive random variations” (Regenmortel, 2007, pg. 967). Accord- ingly, he argues that the language of design ought to be eliminated from biology because it can perpetuate “the un- 14 Metaphor and Meaning scientific mental habit of supposing that objects or events have a purpose” (Regenmortel, 2007, pg. 967). Evolutionary biologist W. J. Bock of Columbia University also agrees that “the concept of design is inappropriate in biology and should be eliminated from all biological ex- planations” (Bock, 2009, pg. 7). Like Van Regenmortel, Bock contends that all biological processes are fundamen- tally random and therefore ateleological and un-designed. While conceding that natural selection cannot be defined as strictly accidental, since selection is indeed aimed at sur- vival and reproduction, Bock maintains that natural selec- tion acts subsequent to the random changes making evolu- tionary mechanisms ultimately driven by accidental, atele- ological causes. Like Van Regenmortel, Bock contends that design terminology “carries with it too many undesirable connotations, such as the existence of a creator, and should not be used in evolutionary theory” (Bock, 2009, pg. 8). Furthermore, he acknowledges that even when teleological language is carefully nuanced and contextualized so as to specify an ateleological source for the appearance of design, “future workers frequently overlook this restriction and use the words in a broad, general way” (Bock, 2009, pg. 8). Precise, technical meanings are easily lost in the more nat- ural and enticing language of intention, purpose, and de- sign. For this reason, biologists themselves are tempted to use teleological language because the technical language is dull, unrelated to normal human experience, and does “not readily capture the reader’s attention” (Bock, 2009, pg. 8). Although Bock humbly admits that his proposed substitute terms, “non-accidental and non-stochastic. . . are awkward and not really informative” (Bock, 2009, pgs. 8–9, emphasis mine), still he contends that it is time to “drop all usages of design from evolutionary biology” (Bock, 2009, pg. 9). In an editorial from the BioEssays journal, editor-in-chief Andrew Moore echoes these concern and argues that using teleological language is “one of the worst things we can do” as biologists. He claims that the use of intentional, pur- poseful language in biology is “far from being ‘excusable short-hand’ ” but is rather “an important contributor to a false impression of evolution among many non-scientists” and thus “a major reason for the lack of public acceptance of evolution” (Moore, 2011, pg. 237). When biologists speak of “strategies” or biological “problems” and “solutions,” it implies some kind of aim or target which ought to be met or which the processes of evolution are striving to meet. Moore claims that any goal-oriented language which im- plies a movement “towards” something or “in order to” is misleading. Such concepts imply intentionality, purpose, and desire—the very things which neo-Darwinian theory purportedly explained away. Therefore, Moore insists that the anthropomorphic language of purpose must be removed from the discipline of biology in order to promote an ac- curate understanding of the evolutionary processes which ground our modern theory of life. Arguing that biologists “must find alternatives to anthropo- morphic terminology,” Moore suggests new ways to describe biological phenomena without recourse to “motivation, de- sign, or strategy” (Moore, 2011, pg. 237). Instead of de- scribing how “nature solved this problem,” a verb which implies intention, purpose, and forethought, Moore sug- gests explaining “how evolution resulted in x” (Moore, 2011, pg. 237, emphasis mine). Rather than “Organism X evolved to exploit niche Y,” ecologists should state that “Organism X evolved and occupied niche Y.” Through careful attention to meaning, Moore maintains that biologists can cultivate a metaphysically neutral language that will help resolve com- mon misunderstandings of evolutionary theory as well as help the discipline of biology progress. 3.4 The Mistress Vindicated Van Regenmortel, Bock, Moore, and others who call for a purge of teleological phraseology are right to take the lan- guage of biological discourse very seriously. However, they fail to take language seriously enough. These scientists have only begun to wrestle with the degree to which their lan- guage carries teleological implications. Upon closer exami- nation, it becomes clear that even those who stridently op- pose teleological language still cannot help but to continue employing it themselves. As the work of Mayr and Ruse will show, it is impossible to eliminate teleological terms and concepts from biological discourse. Despite Moore’s careful attempt to articulate his ideas in metaphysically neutral verbiage—that is, using language which in no way relies on an intelligence or a vital essence as a cause of material realities—most of his suggestions are still riddled with teleological implications. Moore rightly observes that the “innocent little word ‘to’ ” implies an op- erative will which seeks “to” work “in order to” or “with the purpose of” (Moore, 2011, pg. 237). To remove the purpose- ful agency implied by the devilish word “to” in the claim, “to accomplish metabolic process X, enzyme Y evolved a specificity for Z,” Moore suggests that biochemists should instead state that “in accomplishing X, Y concomitantly evolved a specificity for Z” (Moore, 2011, pg. 237). Moore has rid himself of the pesky “to” but the word “accomplish” still implies some goal which an agent desired to work to- ward. Accomplishment is an empty, meaningless term with- out the implication of a goal that can be attained. Again, rather than describe Structure X as “perfectly adapted to perform function Y,” Moore suggests that biologists should say “Structure X very e!ciently performs Y” (Moore, 2011, Volume 2, Issue 2 3. TELEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE IS ESSENTIAL TO BIOLOGY 15 pg. 237). Yet terms like “e!ciently” and “performs” still imply a particular goal. How could we di"erentiate e!- ciently from ine!ciently unless some targeted process were used as the standard for our evaluation? And per-forms means to accomplish through the means of form. Let us go further than Moore: perhaps “e!cient” could mean “maximizing power utilization on this e"ect.” This will not work either, for maximization still implies a target functionality. Perhaps “accomplish” could be changed to “enzyme Y eventually transformed to a sustainable equi- librium under di"erent physiological constraints.” While “sustainable equilibrium” sounds less purposeful, the “in- nocent little word ‘to” ” has returned, and in the context of biology equilibriums are always purposeful. A living organ- ism is di"erent from a rock because a rock passively yields to entropy and the other forces of physics and chemistry while an organism’s activity is directed toward fighting en- tropy and sustaining its own unique form of equilibrium. Living things are defined by their active, systematic striv- ing toward the goal of being themselves. Life is fundamen- tally formal. This is why, as Turner argues in Purpose and Desire, the concept of homeostasis is necessary for any co- herent definition of life and any language that accurately describes the function of a living organism will carry with it teleological implications. Like Moore, Paul Kramer of Duke University also uses tele- ological language to argue against using teleological lan- guage. In his editorial in the journal BioScience, Kramer decries terms such as ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ as “philosoph- ically objectionable,” for such language “misleads readers not trained in science who often mistake the metaphor for the truth” (Kramer, 1984, pg. 405). However, when at- tempting to describe the ateleological evolution and nature of plant life, Kramer still uses such terms as “compromises” and “regulating,” both of which imply some target toward which the organism strives. He credits natural selection with the ability of “screening” random variations in a way that “minimizes deleterious e"ects and maximizes advanta- geous e"ects” (Kramer, 1984, pg. 405). Screening for what? Yet again, none of these terms make any sense unless they refer to a particular goal or purpose which can provide a normative foundation for why one variation would be ad- vantageous while another is deleterious. Unless there is a goal to achieve, a final cause, one cannot meaningfully distinguish between a success or a failure. And life is in- trinsically a matter of success or failure, of life or death. Teleological language has proved so di!cult to eliminate that even some neo-Darwinists have come to its defense.4 In the second half of the twentieth century, Ernst Mayr ar- gued extensively for the necessity of purposive language in 4See, for instance, Galli and Meinardi (2011, pg. 140). evolutionary biology. He observed that “we find in all or- ganisms a fitting together of inborn actions or structures so perfect that one can hardly avoid such terms as ‘design’ or ‘purposefulness’” (Mayr, 1976, pg. 31). Frogs and daisies demonstrate a purposeful functionality that is absent from water molecules and limestone rocks. Accordingly, Ruse insists that “the metaphor of design continues to be ap- propriate in Darwinian biology in a way that is not true of physics” (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 47). Mayr also agrees that design metaphors “express something impor- tant which is lost when teleological language is eliminated from such statements” (Mayr, 1988, pg. 38). Teleological explanations are necessary to the science of bi- ology not only because organisms are themselves purpose- ful but also because organisms are historically contingent beings. Mayr explains that biological “phenomena have a history and cannot be explained directly through a strictly causal mechanical explanation, as is possible for processes in inanimate nature” (Mayr, 1988, pg. 59). There is no his- torical component to the rules which govern hydrogen and oxygen bonding; the chemicals simply have the properties they have in all times and places. The way organisms work, however, is historically developed. Thus, biological expla- nations cannot be reduced to merely material and e!cient causes. When biologists endeavor to explain the laws of life, they are not only looking for how an organism functions now, they are also seeking explanations for why an organ- ism came to function in a particular way. For a chemist or a physicist, how and why have the same answers. A chemist can explain why sodium nitrate bonds in a partic- ular way by referring to the set laws of chemistry which determine how sodium nitrate bonds. While inanimate ob- jects act according to set laws that do not vary according to time or place, animate beings demonstrate contingencies and variability. Accordingly, Mayr asserts that “it is no ex- aggeration to claim that most of the greatest advances in biology were made possible by asking ‘Why?’ questions” (Mayr, 1988, pg. 55). Since organisms are historically contingent phenomena, bi- ological explanations involve a kind of contingency with which physicists and chemists need not contend.5 At every level of life, we observe behaviors and processes that are not fully reducible to set, mathematically definable laws. How 5There is some controversy over the role of contingency in biolog- ical history. While some biologists such as Stephen Jay Gould main- tain that life could have evolved in many di!erent ways, or not at all, others like Simon Conway Morris contend that evolutionary mecha- nisms are more deterministic and thus certain outcomes are largely inevitable. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini assume determinism a pri- ori but believe biological causality is so complex and multilayered that a unified predictive theory will be epistemically unavailable and that biologists will therefore still depend upon apparently contingent, historical explanations. 16 Metaphor and Meaning an organism functions does not answer why it functions in that particular way because—as the diverse abundance of organisms demonstrates—there is no physical law that dic- tates how life must work in all places at all times. This is why evolutionary theory provides the theoretical basis for all modern biology. Unless species were in fact created by a direct act of God, why explanations must be answered by an evolutionary history. If biologists are not to answer the question “why do fish swim?” with the unscientific an- swer “because God wanted fish to swim,” they must seek some evolutionary explanation for why fish developed into swimmers. Since historically conditioned, biological functions cannot be exclusively understood in terms of lawful necessity, tele- ological concepts must drive biological inquiry if theoretical questions are to be answered at all.6 As biologists cannot ask why a fish must swim, they ask why a fish can swim. In his essay “Teleology: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” Michael Ruse explains that “whether or not God stands be- hind the design-like nature of organisms, inasmuch as one is doing biology one is simply treating organisms as if they were designed” (Ruse, 2000, pg. 226). Biologists must use the concept of functionality to frame their inquiries, for the functional benefit of a certain adaptation is an essential part of explaining why that particular feature of the organism exists. As Stephen Talbott at The New Atlantis explains, without a telos, a purposeful end in view, biologists can- not o"er any kind of meaningful explanation “because no one state of a"airs would be preferable to another or mean anything di"erent from another” (Talbott, 2017, pg. 65). Evolutionary explanations depend upon final causes in or- der to describe how a particular feature contributes to the benefit of the whole organism. According to Ruse it is “be- cause, and only because, evolutionary biologists think of organisms as if they were humanly-made artifacts can they produce answers to questions about the ways in which these organisms survive and reproduce; that is to say, can they produce answers about the ways in which natural selection functions in the organic world” (Ruse, 2000, pg. 230). Ge- ologists do not ask for what purpose Mt. Fuji towers above the Japanese skyline, but in order to study any organ or plant feature, a biologist must always ask for what pur- pose the feature exists. Ruse goes so far as to insist that 6Some evolutionary biologists, such as W. J. Bock, disagree with Mayr and Ruse, arguing instead that the contingent nature of organ- isms can be explained through random or stochastic processes. How- ever, as illustrated by the inability to purge biology of teleological language and concepts, recourse to randomness is really no explana- tion at all. To explain something by chance is the equivalent of arguing that it simply happened because it happened. As Barfield remarked, it is the task of science to explain natural phenomena through its hy- potheses, but “the concept of chance is precisely what a hypothesis is devised to save us from. Chance, in fact, = no hypothesis” (Barfield, 1988, pg. 64). “you cannot do biology without the metaphor” of design (Richards and Ruse, 2016, pg. 47, emphasis mine). Therefore, the removal of teleological language from biology excludes information and concepts that are essential to ac- curate descriptions and meaningful explanations. Mayr in- sists that “a crucial portion of the message of a teleological sentence is invariably lost in the translation” (Mayr, 1988, pg. 55). For instance, Mayr considers the following sen- tence: “The Wood Thrush migrates in the fall into warmer countries in order to escape the inclemency of the weather and the food shortages of the northern climates” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 106). If biologists replace the words “in order to” with “and thereby,” they jettison perhaps the most impor- tant and interesting question of why the Wood Thrush mi- grates. Mayr claims that “the majority of modern philoso- phers are fully aware of this and agree that ‘cleaned-up’ sentences are not equivalent to the teleological sentences from which they were derived” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 107). The original statement implies a “goal-directed migratory ac- tivity” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 106) but the purified sentence “is greatly impoverished” in “information content” and “casual strength” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 107). By removing any sense of purpose or intention, the ateleological sentence excludes the possibility of a meaningful relationship between the organ- ism, its behaviors, and its environment. The action of the Wood Thrush and the resulting state of a"airs appear to be happenstance, and the appearance of disconnection is not likely to stimulate fruitful investigation. While many bi- ologists have “maligned” teleological language “as stultify- ing and obscurantist,” Mayr maintains that “this is simply not true” since “the nonteleological translation is invari- ably a meaningless platitude, while it is the [teleological] statement which leads to biologically interesting inquiries” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 107). Ruse also analyzes “nonteleological translations” and claims that, not only are these statements lacking in important content, they still depend indirectly upon teleological con- cepts. The concept of purposeful design is used to con- struct all biological explanations even when scientists man- age to cleanse their explanations of explicitly teleological language post hoc. Scientists might be able to construct a non-teleological description of an organism’s features but only because one already knows the function. Consider the Wood Thrush example given by Mayr above: A biologist can only join the clause about southern migration and the clause about escaping food shortages because he first as- sumed that the change in habitat had a purpose. Only by assuming a purpose could a biologist make inquiries into the function of the bird’s behavior. Without this teleolog- ical assumption, no biological hypothesis could be formed. Therefore, Ruse asserts that even if “one’s finished formal theory makes no direct reference to the metaphor of design, Volume 2, Issue 2 3. TELEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE IS ESSENTIAL TO BIOLOGY 17 and thus eliminates the teleology. . . in order to achieve the end results one has had to use the metaphor with all of the teleological implications that it carries” (Ruse, 2000, pg. 230). To illustrate his point, Ruse considers a typical evolution- ary explanation for the development of fins on Stegosauri dinosaurs. To construct a nonteleological explanation, One would say that those Stegosauri with more and more diamond-like-shaped fins were those that survived and reproduced, and those which did not have such fins did not. One could even go on to say precisely why it was that the success- ful Stegosauri survived and reproduced: the more diamond-like fins acted as e!cient heat transfers, whereas those less diamond shaped acted as less e!cient heat transfers. There was a consequent di"erential reproduction of the respective posses- sors. (Ruse, 2000, pg. 228) However, Ruse asks “how did one know in the first place that the fins would or would not be e!cient for heat trans- ference? The answer of course is because one has been rely- ing on the metaphor of design!” (Ruse, 2000, pgs.228–229) Only by understanding the fin’s function in the organism can one then in retrospect “ferret out in which ways they work” (Ruse, 2000, pg. 229) and construct an explanation that employs the past-tense language of e!cient causality. After using the metaphor of design to understand the func- tional features of an organism, a scientist might find a way to then “drop the metaphor-like talk,” but Ruse maintains that really “one is not doing without it: one is simply not acknowledging it” (Ruse, 2000, pg. 229). Thus, according to Ruse, this attempt to eliminate teleological language from biology “is all a little bit bogus. One is using a sleight of hand. First, one uses the metaphor with all of its teleologi- cal implications. Then second, when once one has achieved the ends one desires, one drops the metaphor like an un- wanted spouse and one pretends that one never had any- thing to do with it at all” (Ruse, 2000, pg. 229). If teleo- logical metaphors are necessary to the process of answering biological questions, then teleology is an essential part of the answer itself. It is deceptive to re-word our answers so as to deny the role teleology played in providing them. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini take a di"erent approach to the problem of teleological concepts in biology (what they call the “selection-for” problem) but make the same essen- tial point as Mayr and Ruse: a coherent, unified theory of life requires teleological causality. Based on the problem of “free-riders” developed by Gould and Lewontin, Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini argue that without recourse to men- tally based final causes, natural selection cannot distinguish between coextensive traits when selecting for fitness and, therefore, natural selection cannot function as the explana- tory basis for evolutionary theory. Because organisms are complex functional wholes, pheno- typic traits are never presented to natural selection in iso- lation. Long necks are coextensive with long esophagi and the ability to vocalize is usually coextensive with the ability to swallow. As Gould and Lewontin demonstrate, some of these traits are “free-riders” that were selected along with the adaptive trait. Sometimes traits increase and persist in a population not because they are advantageous but just because they were there. How can natural selection explain the di"erence between a free-rider and an adaptive trait? Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini argue at length that free- riders pose an insurmountable problem for neo-Darwinism; natural selection cannot distinguish free-riders from traits that are “selected-for” because natural selection cannot pro- vide grounds for distinguishing between counterfactuals. Since organisms are historically contingent beings, an ex- planatory theory of evolution must be able to decide be- tween the statements “if X hadn’t been selected, then Y would not have been selected either” and “if Y hadn’t been selected, then X would not have been selected either.” But natural selection, like all mechanistic causes, cannot take past or future events into account, which means it cannot provide grounds for deciding among these kinds of counter- factuals. As Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini explain, “coun- terfactual events cannot exert selection pressures: merely possible predators do not a"ect the evolution of a popu- lation (although, actual predators are quite likely to do so)” (Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini, 2011, pg. 113, emphasis mine). Only a mind can imagine future scenarios and thus distinguish between counterfactuals. Appeal to the mental causes in the breeder can distinguish between the selection- for thicker wool and the free-rider of curly wool that may accompany it, but if natural selection is to provide an atele- ological theory of life, it cannot likewise appeal to a mind in order to solve the “selection-for” problem presented by the coextensive traits of organisms. Because it cannot ac- count for counterfactuals, “the theory of natural selection cannot predict/explain what traits the creatures in a popu- lation are selected for” (Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini, 2011, pg. 110). According to Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, the inability to distinguish counterfactuals is why attempts to remove teleology result in tautological explanations while purpose, desire, and intentionality are brought in the back door to provide narrative accounts of evolutionary changes. For ex- ample, hearts pump blood but they also make noise. Which 18 Metaphor and Meaning trait is selected for fitness and which trait is a free-rider? We instinctively choose the ability to pump blood as the trait “selected-for,” but that is because, as Ruse argued, we assume a purpose in order to explain “selection-for.” How- ever, if we remove the assumption of intentionality, adap- tationist explanations become question begging. If we ask why the heart pumps blood, the explanation cannot be that natural selection selected this trait for its fitness. The fit- ness of the heart was already at work before natural selec- tion could select it. Thus, it is the teleological concepts, the clear purpose of the heart and it’s functional design, that actually provide the explanation for the trait’s fitness; biologists only clandestinely credit the fitness to natural selection post hoc. Remove the teleology, and all that re- mains is the same tautology that dogs all adaptationism (Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini, 2011, pgs 131 and 145). Be- ing “selected-for” an adaptation cannot be the cause of the adaptation that is being selected just as being a bachelor cannot be the cause of being unmarried. Theoretical expla- nations are empty if they prove merely definitional. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini conclude that a theory which cannot explain the phenomena studied is a dead, empty theory. Darwinism has not dissolved traditional teleol- ogy; it is “intentionality that is the universal acid dis- solving the neo-Darwinian modern synthesis” (Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini, 2011, pg. 132). However, because they are a priori unwilling to return to a teleological explana- tion, Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini opt to conclude that there “can be no general theory of evolution” (Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini, 2011, pg. xxii). Haldane was correct; biologists cannot live without their ill-reputed mistress. The language of purpose and design cannot be simply dismissed as harmless figures of speech nor can it be eliminated without a significant loss of ex- planatory power. Teleological language is essential to a meaningful and coherent explanation of biological phenom- ena and it is impossible to conduct meaningful biological inquiry and discourse without it. To describe purposeful agents, a language of purpose will be required. Despite over a century of e"ort, Talbott contends that “it is no more possible than it was two hundred years ago to construct a single paragraph of proper biological descrip- tion that does not draw on meaningful language of living agency considered improper in chemistry or physics” (Tal- bott, 2010b, pg. 47). And because language is rooted ei- ther directly or metaphorically in our concrete experience of the world, language itself leads us toward truthful insight into nature.7 Remarking on Ruse’s argument in “Teleology: 7The view of language argued in Section 3 of the present essay supports a moderate form of scientific realism, that is the idea that science can give us real knowledge of the objective world. Even if, as Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” Galli and Meinardi con- cede that “as long as it is not possible to explain adaptation phenomena without resorting to the metaphor of design (evidently teleological), then both the phenomenon to be explained and the explanations themselves are, in a relevant sense, teleological” (Galli and Meinardi, 2011, pg. 150). It now remains to determine the full meaning of this tele- ological language. Can ‘teleological’ be conceptualized in such a way as to remove the metaphysical implications which seem so antithetical to modern biological theory? Or does re-admitting the language of purpose and design pose an insurmountable problem to naturalistic explanations of life? 4 If teleological language is essential to biology, then life must be teleological In this section, I will argue that since teleological language is essential to a meaningful and coherent explanation of biological phenomena, life must be inherently teleological. Biologists and philosophers of science who accept the need for teleological language object to this conclusion in two primary ways, either by attempting to redefine teleology in such a way as to remove its metaphysical implications or by arguing that the cumulative evidence in support of universal common descent is su!cient to prove that life is reducible to material and e!cient causality alone. First, I will consider how attempts to redefine teleology inevitably fail to shake the implication of an originating mind. Sec- ondly, I will briefly consider the arguments for common descent and show how the claim that life cannot be teleo- logical since it originated from a common ancestor simply assumes the conclusion it presumes to prove. These mod- ern attempts to deny the teleological nature of life in the classical, metaphysical sense are not based on the study of life itself but from a priori commitments to materialist philosophy. While a growing number of biologists and philosophers of science agree that the language of design is essential for a coherent explanation of life, many still argue that such lan- guage can be redefined or “naturalized” in order to elim- anti-realists argue, our scientific explanations are based on metaphor- ical models vulnerable to underdetermination, yet those metaphorical models are not arbitrary but grounded in reality because language is itself metaphorically grounded in our embodied experience of the real world. While science may not give us perfectly objective knowledge of the mind-independent world, yet neither is scientific knowledge purely subjective. Volume 2, Issue 2 4. IF TELEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE IS ESSENTIAL TO BIOLOGY, THEN LIFE MUST BE TELEOLOGICAL 19 inate the metaphysical implications of traditional teleol- ogy. Since our conceptual language is metaphorical in na- ture, biologists need some ateleological metaphor that can ground and structure the meaning of an inanimate, un- intelligent creative power in order to reject the metaphysi- cal intelligence and intentionality integral to the traditional concept of teleology. If the anthropomorphic metaphor of mind-based design can be replaced by a di"erent metaphor- ical understanding of purposeful function, then perhaps we can coherently conceive of a mindless teleology that need not threaten methodological naturalism. This is precisely the proposal which Ernst Mayr made in the mid-twentieth century. Mayr argued that teleology can be cleansed of its metaphysical implications by uprooting the anthropo- morphic metaphor of mind and replanting teleology in the metaphor of the cybernetic program. In 1958, Colin Pittendrigh introduced the term ‘teleon- omy’ as a metaphysically neutral replacement for teleol- ogy. By changing the su!x from –ology to –onomy, Pit- tendrigh endeavored to distinguish between goal-oriented processes that imply a metaphysical causality and goal- oriented processes that emerge as a secondary characteristic of e!ciently caused material organisms. At a time when biologists were afraid to say “a turtle came ashore to lay its eggs” (Pittendrigh, 1958, pg. 394), Pittendrigh believed that “the biologists’ long-standing confusion would be more fully removed if all end-directed systems were described by some other term; like ‘teleonomic’ ” (Pittendrigh, 1958, pg. 394). A di"erent term would “emphasize that the recog- nition and description of end-directedness does not carry a commitment to Aristotelian teleology as an e!cient causal principle” (Pittendrigh, 1958, pg. 394). Perhaps by using a di"erent term, biologists would remember that purpose and intention are not ontological qualities inherent in the turtle’s nature but only observed functional attributes that emerge from the complex material laws that truly govern biological phenomena. Mayr adopted Pittendrigh’s term and used concepts from the new field of cybernetics to explain how teleonomic ex- planations could be distinguished from teleological explana- tions and thereby freed from any metaphysical implications. Mayr conceived of DNA as the biological code that formed the program of life. According to Mayr, “a program is (1) something material, and (2) it exists prior to the initiation of the teleonomic process” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 101). First, a program must be materialized somehow if it is to be any kind of physical cause, which a program for life certainly must be. Abstractions, such as the number 5, cannot exert a causal force in the material world, but embodied data such as a braille pattern or an encoded microchip can. Second, the program must exist prior to its function. We can’t read a book that hasn’t been written and we can’t use software that hasn’t first been coded. The existence of a program prior to its function, or what Mayr terms its “teleonomic process,” is essential to the defi- nition of teleonomy. Mayr thus defines ‘purpose’ and ‘func- tion’ as processes which physically result after the code ex- ists and exerts its e"ect on the material world. If a par- ticular code originates from purely materialistic processes, then no metaphysical reality need be implied by the sec- ondary ‘emergent’ function. For Mayr, the functional e"ect which a program produces is totally independent from the way the program was formed. This crucial gap between life’s creation and life’s purpose is how Mayr proposes to prevent any metaphysical realities from intruding into the realm of biology. Because the randomly created program of life, DNA, always exists prior to its emergent function—that is, the genotype is created before any kind of phenotype is then tested by natural selection—the final causality attached to traditional teleology is removed from the concept of teleonomy. Ac- cording to twentieth century genetics, meaningless, chance mutations in the DNA create the program code independent of any purposeful functioning. Sometimes these di"erent se- quences have an emergent e"ect that is beneficial to the or- ganism. When this randomly occurs, natural selection then preserves the trait within the species because of its func- tional advantage. As Mayr explains, the action of “natural selection is strictly an a posteriori process which rewards current success but never sets up future goals” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 96). The functional features of organisms are preserved teleonomically but not created teleologically. In this way, mechanical processes appear to create functionality with- out any intentionality. There is no teleological purpose in the creation of life’s program—which is made by random, purposeless variations—but there is a teleonomic purpose in the program’s preservation. Purpose in this teleonomic sense does not refer to an onto- logical purpose but only to an emergent functionality. Mayr insists that “teleonomic explanations are strictly causal and mechanistic,” and thus, “the acceptance of a teleonomic ex- planation. . . is in no way in conflict with the laws of physics and chemistry. It is neither in opposition to a causal inter- pretation, nor does it imply an acceptance of supernatural forces in any way whatsoever” (Mayr, 1974, pg. 92). The di"erence between a teleonomic and teleological purpose is the di"erence between an apparent telos—a function which emerged as the consequence of unrelated e!cient causes— and a causally active, ontological purpose rooted in the es- sential nature of the being. As Bartlett phrases it, Mayr’s principal claim is that “organisms do have purposes, but they didn’t arrive at their purposes through a purpose” (Bartlett, 2017, pg. 4). 20 Metaphor and Meaning Mayr’s teleonomic model appeared to have resolved the ten- sion between the teleological nature of life and its assumed material origins by explaining how “natural selection itself turns accident into design” (Mayr, 1976, pg. 43). François Jacob claimed that “the concept of program has made an honest woman of teleology” (Jacob, 1973, pg. 9). The pro- gram metaphor seemed to give meaning and coherence to the new concept of teleonomy as it reduced life to a mech- anistic reality ultimately explainable through material and e!cient causality alone. J. Scott Turner describes this al- luring model succinctly: “Organism as algorithm. Life is code. Evolution is modification of code. We are all beta ver- sions of something, with infinite updates coming” (Turner, 2017, pg. 211). However, Mayr’s tidy and clever solution has two fatal prob- lems: first, the program metaphor still carries metaphysical implications, and second, advances in the last two decades of biology have shown that life does not actually function like a computer program after all. The program metaphor fails to naturalize teleonomic ex- planations because programs still imply a mind as the orig- inating cause. As philosopher of science Stephen Meyer explains: A computer user who traces the information on a screen back to its source invariably comes to a mind—that of a software engineer or program- mer. The information in a book or inscriptions ultimately derives from a writer or scribe—from a mental, rather than a strictly material, cause. Our experience-based knowledge of information- flow confirms that systems with large amounts of specified complexity (especially codes and lan- guages) invariably originate from an intelligent source from a mind or personal agent. (Meyer, 2004) When attempting to distinguish the new meaning of teleon- omy from traditional teleology, Mayr still exclusively de- pends on design metaphors. He refers to blueprints, in- structions, loaded dice, ‘fixed’ number wheels, computer programs, and a clock—all of which are intentionally cre- ated by intelligent agents. While many biologists hoped that the new mechanical and information metaphors de- rived from computer technology would help set the study of life on firmly materialistic ground, in truth it has done just the opposite. All known sources of coded information to which we may meaningfully compare DNA have been created by minds. Furthermore, programs do not actually exist prior to func- tion as Mayr argued; in truth, a program’s function always first exists in the mind of the programmer. As Turner points out, “Anyone who has done any coding appreciates that an algorithm must do something, and that something usu- ally begins as a desire somewhere in the mind of a coder” (Turner, 2017, pg. 211). This is why teleological language always carries metaphysical implications; the functional co- herence of a purposeful object requires foresight. Those fu- ture outcomes can only operate in the present through the imaginative activity of an intelligent mind. A computer programmer has an idea for a design, a future outcome, which he uses to guide the process of programming. If bi- ological phenomena display evidence of design, this implies the existence of some kind of transcendent mind or intelli- gent world soul capable of foresight on a cosmic scale. Only through the existence of a metaphysical reality—something that can transcend the temporal march of the e!cient causes that govern physical reality—can teleological causal- ity actually exist. In their paper, “Why Machine-Information Metaphors are Bad for Science and Science Education,” Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry recognize that program metaphors, which they term “machine-information metaphors” (Pigli- ucci and Boudry, 2011, pg. 460), are inherently teleo- logical and consequently imply an intelligent cause. As committed materialists, Pigliucci and Boudry therefore ar- gue stridently for the elimination of these misleading pro- gram metaphors. They claim that machine-information metaphors have not only “been grist to the mill of ID cre- ationism” (Pigliucci and Boudry, 2011, pg. 469) but have also been “deleterious for science education” and hindered biological research by misdirecting “what sort of research programs biologists ought to carry out and how” (Pigliucci and Boudry, 2011, pg. 466). Accordingly, these authors argue that it is “time to dispense with them altogether” (Pigliucci and Boudry, 2011, pg. 469). Ironically citing the work of Lako" and Johnson, Pigliucci and Boudry admit that “metaphorical thinking seems to be a biologically entrenched functional mode of our brains” (Pigliucci and Boudry, 2011, pg. 469). Accordingly, they reason, as I have done, that biologists will need to use al- ternative metaphors to counter the metaphysical implica- tions of machine-information metaphors. However, Pigli- ucci and Boudry confess that “we certainly have not found one that we would recommend as a replacement” (Pigli- ucci and Boudry, 2011, pg. 468). They tentatively o"er only a single alternative conceptual metaphor: that DNA sequences can be likened to a recipe for a cake. This bizarre analogy (which has actually been used in a high school bi- ology textbook, Mader and Windelspecht (2015, pg. 258)) still implies both a set of informative instructions for a par- ticularly designed cake as well as an intelligent source for Volume 2, Issue 2 4. IF TELEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE IS ESSENTIAL TO BIOLOGY, THEN LIFE MUST BE TELEOLOGICAL 21 both the recipe and the ‘cook’ who is able to interpret and act upon the instructions for the purpose of making something to eat. While avoiding the limits of mechanistic thinking, this metaphor actually increases the teleological implications for life as it requires more intelligent involve- ment than a machine, which can, once created, function mindlessly. As with all e"orts to eliminate teleological language, the pressure to find an ateleological model for biology has been great, yet still there are no feasible alternatives available. All the metaphors that help to frame our understanding of the way organisms actually work carry teleological implica- tions. Analogies to watches, machines, factories, languages, computer code, blueprints, cake recipes, and mousetraps— all of these examples depend on an intelligent source as a cause. We have no direct, concrete experience with a pur- poseful entity arising through an unintelligent process. Ev- ery known cause of functional design is an intelligent cause. The world simply a"ords no ateleological design from which biologists can draw to give meaning to a metaphysically neutral concept of teleonomy. Furthermore, not only do program metaphors fail to inoc- ulate biology from design arguments, but recent develop- ments have shown that life does not actually function like a program. While the cybernetic models on which Mayr based his teleonomic argument have o"ered important in- sight into the physiological dynamics of an organism, they do not accurately predict all organism behavior. Although the genetic revolution appeared to promise the tidy reduc- tion of life to a single DNA code, the subsequent epigenetic revolution has quickly dispelled the myth of life as mere program. Cellular development also depends on epigenetic processes unrelated to DNA transcription and translation. These include glycosylation, the transfer of spatial infor- mation stored in the cellular membranes, bioelectric codes, three-dimensional folding of proteins, and others which bi- ologists are only beginning to discover. None of these cel- lular processes can be directly coded for by DNA sequences which themselves only code for proteins. Rather than the DNA serving as the dictating, cybernetic ‘master controller’ of the cell, it has become clear that DNA simply serves as the stored blueprints for protein construction which the cell references as needed according to the discernment of the or- ganism as a whole.8 There may be one other objection that can be raised against my second claim that if teleological language is essential to a coherent explanation of biological phenomena, then life 8It is beyond the scope of the present article to discuss the inad- equacies of the program metaphor factors in detail. For more infor- mation, see part one of Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini (2011), Talbott (2010a), or Wells (2017). must be inherently teleological. Although I have not ex- plicitly encountered such an argument, one might claim that, based on the strength of evidence for common an- cestry, we can simply assert that teleology can and ought to be redefined as teleonomic even in the absence of any ateleological metaphor that can conceptually structure this new understanding. Based on the standard cumulative ar- gument for common ancestry which draws from multiple non-Darwinian lines of evidence such as biogeography, fos- sils, homology, embryology, and dysteleology9 one might ar- gue that an alternative metaphor is not necessary because life itself gives us a direct experience of design originating from a mindless, purposeless source. Although Darwinian mechanisms may no longer be adequate to explain exactly how design can emerge from ateleological causes, based on evidence for common descent we know that they did. However, this objection only begs the real question at hand: are living processes teleological? Evidence that organisms evolved from a common ancestor does not itself prove that such a process was ateleological. As discussed above, some philosophers and scientists such as Robert J. Richards ac- cept common ancestry yet still argue that Darwin conceived of natural selection and evolution as teleological processes. Some biologists such as J. Scott Turner argue that evolu- tionary processes are better accounted for by teleological explanations. Arguments for common ancestry do not ad- judicate between a teleological or ateleological explanations of those evolutionary processes. Furthermore, any direct observation we have of evolution at work is not an observa- tion of de novo design creation, but simply the adaptation of pre-existing design, which can be interpreted in and of itself as a feature of an organism’s functional design, i.e. 9A recent paper in Evolution: Education and Outreach, “Tele- ology’s Long Shadow” by A. Werth and D. Allchin, comes close to making this argument. Like Pigliucci and Boudry, Werth and Allchin acknowledge that teleology is endemic to biological discourse and that “teleology is deeply rooted in human cognition,” but still Werth and Allchin argue that “historical contingency (or “chance” or “accident”) natural selection as stepwise and local, changing environments, evolu- tionary “reversals,” vestigial structures, pleiotropy, genetic drift, evo- lutionary branching, and the role of teleonomic explanations” all show that teleological causality is imposed on biological phenomenon by hu- man understanding rather than a reality observed in organisms (Werth and Allchin, 2020, pg. 2). Most of these points have been addressed elsewhere in this paper, but I will here add a word regarding dystele- ology. Dysteleological arguments use examples of supposed ‘poor design’, such as the Pandas stumpy thumb or the indirect route of the recur- rent laryngeal nerve in humans, to argue that organisms could not be purposefully designed because any good cosmic designer would have created only perfect designs. Such arguments at most rule out the existence of a mind that only allows the creation or evolution of opti- mal design, but most importantly, such arguments can actually only be made within the context of a teleological world. The idea of sub- optimal design is only meaningful with a world of real design. Dys- teleolgical concepts are parasitical on design concepts and do nothing to actually explain away the reality of design. 22 Metaphor and Meaning the organism was designed to be adaptable. As teleological language has proven essential to a coherent explanation of biological phenomena, there seems no way to deny that life must be inherently teleological. Arguments against this conclusion are based not on scientific evidence but on materialist assumptions that are brought to, not derived from, the study of life. The endeavor to remove teleological causality from biology began and remains an a priori philosophical commitment. 5 Conclusion: Life All the Way Down Teleological language and concepts are essential to the study of life, and biologists compromise the integrity of their science when they deny the meaning of the very lan- guage on which their discipline depends. Life appears pur- posefully designed because it is purposefully designed. The endeavor to redefine or remove teleology from the study of life is an attempt to deny what an organism essentially is: an animated, integrated being full of will and intention and purpose. Stephen Talbott in The New Atlantis contends that “the misrepresentation of this organic coherence in fa- vor of supposed controlling mechanisms is not an innocent inattention to language; it is a fundamental misrepresen- tation of reality at the central point where we are chal- lenged to understand the character of living things” (Tal- bott, 2010b, pg. 29). Whether it is the DNA that ‘regulates’ or ‘controls’ the functions of the cell or whether epigenetic factors ‘inform’ and ‘regulate’ the DNA, what all these cel- lular descriptions imply is not merely the ‘appearance’ but the reality of design and purpose and intent. Something be- yond mere physical mechanisms, something metaphysical is at work at every level in the origin, development, and func- tioning of living organisms. This ‘something’ is what di"er- entiates a living organism from a dead one. Both a living and a dead organism have the same component parts, but the dead organism is the one fully yielded to the inanimate processes of physics and chemistry, not the living one.10 What makes a creature alive is its teleological process: a 10Considering the di!erence between a living dog and a dead one, Talbott writes, “Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying sig- nals, which is just as well because there will be no structures rec- ognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary” (Talbott, 2010b, pg. 25, emphasis in original). material form animated by the striving of a unique being to become and remain itself. Biology resists transformation into a “hard” law-based mechanistic science because it studies the realm of life wherein the laws of physics and chemistry mingle with the psychic realities of will and mind. It is the purposeful de- sires of the organism as a whole that guide and direct its interaction with the material world of e!cient causality. We observe physics and chemistry together with cognitive intention in living organisms. Where living beings exist, no physical law can ever adequately predict and account for their real ability to exercise willful activity in the world. The more our biological understanding grows, the more we are confronted with the teleological nature of life. 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In: Evolution: Education and Outreach 13.4. doi: 10. 1186/s12052-020-00118-8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-010-0272-7 https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2750 https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2750 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.860134 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.860134 https://doi.org/10.2307/1309624 https://philpapers.org/rec/MAYTAT https://philpapers.org/rec/MAYTAT https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201190011 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-010-9267-6 https://doi.org/10.1002/pmic.200600407 https://doi.org/10.1002/pmic.200600407 https://doi.org/10.1016/s1369-8486(99)00046-1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12052-020-00118-8 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12052-020-00118-8 About This Journal The Purpose of the Journal Paper Submission Policies Other Journal Content From the Editors Annie CrawfordAnnie CrawfordMetaphor and Meaning in the Teleological Language of Biology Introduction The History of Teleology in the Biological Sciences Teleological language is Essential to Biology If teleological language is essential to biology, then life must be teleological Conclusion: Life All the Way Down Salvador CordovaSalvador CordovaFisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection Isn't Fundamental After All Introduction: The Problem of Defining Fitness Absolute ``Darwinian'' Fitness vs. Relative Fitness Mean and Variance of Relative Fitnesses Numerical Examples to Illustrate Fisher's Theorem Discussion Conclusion Eric HollowayEric HollowayTutorial: Bioinformatics Basics Introduction Genetic Code and Sequence Translation Sequencing and Assembly Accessing Data Finding Things With BLAST Summary Letters and Notes Eric HollowayYou Cannot Get Meaning From Randomness Jonathan BartlettActive Information is a Specified Complexity Model Eric HollowayEvolution in the Valley of Illusions Jonathan BartlettIs Active Information Applicable to Biology? Eric HollowayEmpirical Active Information News