Teleological Science?

Somewhere buried in the Dover thread (see post 90) randman posted an interesting aside concerning teleology and science: Although I don’t think anything would be served by directly addressing the contentions in this quote, it did serve to generate an interesting question in my mind: If teleology were in fact a valid, overlooked concept in the physical and life sciences, what would it look like? I’d like to explore the possibilities in this thread, mostly in the form of thought experiments. Note: I personally do not believe there is any positive evidence in favor of teleology writ large, but if there were, how would we know?To stimulate further thoughts, here is one possibility I came up with: If it could be shown that the overall gene pool of any population of organisms changed in advance of a change in selection pressures on that population, even if (or especially if) the change temporarily reduced the population’s net fitness locally (i.e., moved the population “down” from a local fitness peak), this would be an indicator that something was going on that had nothing to do with the current understanding of evolution by natural selection. I don’t refer here to one or a collection of neutral alleles that might have arisen through mutation, etc, that are activated or selected for by a change in environment, but rather a change in genotype - or possibly even just phenotype - that anticipated the change in selection pressures. A case then might be built that this showed the possibility of teleology (or “purpose”) in nature.Any other thoughts, ideas, possibilities?ABE: Biological Evolution, please.{Adminnemooseus adds: For the vocabulary impaired (like me):

quote:

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teleology (noun)

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1. the doctrine that final causes exist.
2. the study of the evidences of design or purpose in nature.
3. such design or purpose.
4. the belief that purpose and design are a part of or are apparent in nature.
5. (in vitalist philosophy) the doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also move toward certain goals of self-realization.

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Teleological Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com}Edited by Quetzal, : preferenceEdited by Adminnemooseus, : See above.

Possibly. However, most of the "Intelligent Design" discussions seem to devolve rapidly into philosophical discussions or arguments over definitions of things like complexity and information. Could have gone either way, I suppose. Percy seems to have hit on a good compromise: "Is It Science" would allow both proponents and detractors of "Intelligent Design" to indulge in speculation on what and how ID could be considered legitimate science. IOW, I'd like to see a discussion of what would be the evidence for teleology if it in fact existed. Since biology is my area, I went with that as a preference, but this forum probably is even better.

Thanks for your reply randman. However, I didn't open this thread for you to simply continue to repeat your nonsense brought out in other threads. Unless you have some actual ideas as to what specific evidence we could use to actually adduce the existence of teleology in nature, I'd appreciate if you would confine your drivel to your own sandbox.Thanks.

Alright rand, we'll try it your way. However, after all the years of our interaction on this board, I don't hold out much hope for anything resembling a productive dialogue.Three "requests":1. You don't bring up any scientific papers in which you seize on a particular word or phrase that you believe supports some kind of anti-evolution or pro-ID position or conclusion that is clearly contradictory to what the authors intended or believe. An example is your as-yet-unpromoted topic. This has been one of your favorite tactics in the past, and I simply refuse to go around that mulberry bush again.2. There is to be no reference to phyla, the Cambrian so-called "explosion", or Haeckel - or for that matter evolutionist conspiracies.3. QM is explicitly off-topic.On the other hand, if you would like to propose a potential research methodology or observation that could indicate teleology, as per the example I gave in the OP - and which I gave you due credit for - then that would be outstanding.Ball's in your court.

Exactly. It would have to be an unambiguous change before we could rule out known processes. I was thinking about how I would design an experiment that might show this. It would obviously have to be really fine-grained to show subtle change, and deal with an organism or group of organisms that were very sensitive to subtle shifts in selection pressures.I realized I have a ready-made possibility. During the rather abortive conversation with Elmer on your diversity thread, I brought up the use of subfamily Scarabaeinae as bioindicators precisely because the guild can be so clearly mapped to an ecological gradient. Now, since I plan to use them to track changes in study plots where I am deliberately modifying a microsite, thus changing the microsite characteristics in a known direction. IF the guild composition, functional structure, and species distribution changed BEFORE we start the restoration project in the direction of the expected end state, this would be a super example of teleology, IMO.I wonder if I can get the DI to spot me a couple million $$$ for this experiment that would "prove" ID?

Sounds like an interesting read, subbie. I'll have to wait until I get back to the US for a visit next summer, however. Not a whole lot of libraries out here. The idea of a complete lack of a nested hierarchy certainly sounds reasonable.I'd be interested to hear more, if you wanted to put together a book nook topic like Moose suggests.

As WK noted on another thread, it must be getting extraordinarily chilly down in hell, because I agree with you here when you say: That, in fact, is almost precisely what I was after in this thread. Come up with a way of determining - operationally - teleology as a conceptual tool. The subject could be approached from a "fact" starting point, or do what I tried to do and develop a scenario along the lines of, "If A is true (teleology), we should see B, C, D, E, and F."Unfortunately, based on past history, that is not what rand tends to do. On the contrary, he doesn't reinterprete data published by anyone. He seizes on a single word or phrase (not the data) in the published paper, then argues for 200 posts that what the writer really meant was something completely different than what they wrote. I simply refuse to go down that rabbit hole again.As to the other two areas I requested he avoid: the Cambrian/no-new-phyla schtick has a) already been demolished on another thread, and b) is an obscure anti-darwinian screed NOT positive evidence for ID (might be okay on another thread - just not this one). QM, rand's other pet stalking horse, is also not appropriate here. Besides, that issue has already been argued ad nauseum on this forum. Again, I simply chose NOT to go down that particular rabbit hole once more.I'm really hoping someone - IDist or evo - can brainstorm some other way of demonstrating teleology. I started the ball rolling. I'd like to see someone else's actual ideas.

You may be right. This is a very common complaint from the anti-evolution/pro-ID crowd. I admit I personally find it difficult to conceptualize in relation to what I observe around me. On the other hand, this thread is in some ways an attempt to at least think about the idea. I started by trying to envision what teleology - if true - would look like in relation to my work. So we can at least talk about the idea, even if we never agree on whether or not it actually exists in the "real world". Ya know, I hadn't. Thanks for bringing it up. From my limited perspective, I see teleology as referring to either "purpose" or "direction". The Scarab experiment I mentioned above would be a purposeful change in a population (actually a guild) directed at a specific end state.I'm not much of a philosopher, unfortunately, so I may be somewhat off-base on my understanding of the concept. Indeed. Likewise. So far it's been quite pleasant, actually. Thanks, Ray.

Agreed. What my experiment would show would be more on the lines of possible "fingerprints" - whether of something supernatural (which, by definition I guess, it would not be since we would see actual physical evidence - iow it couldn't be supernatural), or of some unknown natural "purposeful" or "directed" process. In short, it would potentially provide a clue that something was happening which couldn't be explained under the current ToE. Scientists could then take this evidence and conduct more fine-grained experiments to rule out one thing or the other (unknown internal process or externally imposed process). Interesting. I think the first thing we'd need to do (after the head-scratching phase), would be to determine whether or not there was some unanticipated constraint(s) we imposed inadvertently on the two populations that limited the resulting variation. Beyond that, as far as presenting evidence of "purpose" (which is what I understand is meant by teleology), in what way would the experiment show this? Not disagreeing, just not exactly seeing what the experiment showed. I kind of like this. However, doesn't it beg the question a bit by overlooking all the millions of species that have gone extinct? Maybe there's some generalized, sort-of-Spinozan "purpose" in life writ large - to perpetuate itself, regardless of how may "survival vessels" go extinct along the way. Here I think we may be moving too deeply into metaphysics, 'tho.

Hmm, I'm not sure you could (or at least I have no idea how you would). Wouldn't the results - the physical evidence - be identical in both cases? There'd have to be some way of differentiating between internal and external "direction". Maybe AzPaul's bacterial studies could be controlled somehow to account for it. Doesn't the DI already employ a bunch of real scientists like lawyers, PR specialists and...oh, wait.

Actually, I realized all I'd have to do was conduct one more sampling series after establishing the baseline. IOW, right after randomly selecting which plot (like, by flipping a coin) would be the experimental plot, but before starting the actual intervention. That way if there was any "anticipation" going on, the guild would start to change before I started thinning cacao, smothering grass, or planting trees. I wonder what the lag on something like this would be? I'd bet it would correlate to the lag in the change due to NS, but in advance. Sound reasonable? Great idea! Hey MBG: get us some funding and I'll hire you as a consultant (we'll split the loot). Okay, now I get it. Thanks.

I think you're on the money with the bolded section. Now all the IDists need to do is identify an anomolous trait in a living population that makes no sense in either the evolutionary history (IOW not a formerly "useful" adaptation), or current ecology of the population, and voila. After all, the traits possessed by modern, living organisms are not geared to their current environments, but rather evolved to adapt to the environments of their ancestors...

Interesting. Taking what you said here a bit further, I would say that if it could be shown that a population moves off a local fitness peak by evolving a trait that is a net negative in its local environment, but would be useful in a future context, this would also show teleology. It is one of the central tenets of evolutionary theory that a natural population cannot do this - it can never get "less fit" in the absence of some countervailing selection pressure.

Hi GDR,In my view, which could very easily be substantially wrong, teleology is a prerequisite for any scientific "theory" of intelligent design. It would, if it existed, represent the fingerprints as it were of the designer. I would say that only the philosophical view of ID-as-Christian-God would rule out evolution. In fact, the vast majority of IDists agree substantively with most of the ToE, including common descent, etc. They feel, however, that the Designer "tinkers" with the evolution of organisms - and hence there should be physical evidence of Its activities. Thus, this thread attempting to brainstorm possible physical evidence that would indicate on-going activity of this nature. Evidently, the IDist organizations haven't done this - just trying to do my part.

Ahh, but therein lies the rub, my friend. If we are to take the ID proponents word for things, the putative Designer is NOT necessarily the Christian God. It could very well be the aliens, Illuminati, or whatever. So, let's hoist them by their own petard. Clearly, with over 350,000 described species of beetles, plus more to be discovered, God...erm I mean the Designer...clearly created the world - and possibly the entire universe - for them. In fact, by extension, humans are quite the least of the Designer's creation. So using non-human organisms to test for design seems fairly reasonable. And as I said, one of the things that would point to design - or at least something non-evolutionary - would be evidence of "biological anticipation" (i.e., teleology).