Teleonomia

Il termine teleonomia (dal greco antico τέλος, télos, fine, scopo e il suffisso nomia, governo, amministrazione ordinata^[1]) in biologia è un concetto usato per la prima volta, nel 1970, da Jacques Monod, nella sua teoria che vedeva all'interno delle strutture degli esseri viventi un'azione finalistica, causata dalla selezione naturale, diretta a favorire le funzioni vitali eliminando quelle che le ostacolavano.^[2]

Secondo altre fonti il lemma "teleonomia" fu inventato da Colin S. Pittendrigh nel 1958.^[3]

^ [1] [2] Voci in Vocabolario Treccani
^ Voce in Enciclopedia Treccani.
^ «Biologists for a while were prepared to say a turtle came ashore and laid its eggs. These verbal scruples were intended as a rejection of teleology but were based on the mistaken view that the efficiency of final causes is necessarily implied by the simple description of an end-directed mechanism. … The biologists long-standing confusion would be removed if all end-directed systems were described by some other term, e.g., ‘teleonomic,' in order to emphasize that recognition and description of end-directedness does not carry a commitment to Aristotelian teleology as an efficient causal principle.» (In Colin S. Pittendrigh, Adaptation, natural selection, and behavior in Behavior and Evolution, ed. A. Roe and George Gaylord Simpson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958, 390-416; p. 394)

[1] [1] [2] Voci in Vocabolario Treccani

[2] Voce in Enciclopedia Treccani.

[3] «Biologists for a while were prepared to say a turtle came ashore and laid its eggs. These verbal scruples were intended as a rejection of teleology but were based on the mistaken view that the efficiency of final causes is necessarily implied by the simple description of an end-directed mechanism. … The biologists long-standing confusion would be removed if all end-directed systems were described by some other term, e.g., ‘teleonomic,' in order to emphasize that recognition and description of end-directedness does not carry a commitment to Aristotelian teleology as an efficient causal principle.» (In Colin S. Pittendrigh, Adaptation, natural selection, and behavior in Behavior and Evolution, ed. A. Roe and George Gaylord Simpson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958, 390-416; p. 394)

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