#11 Why Science Rejects Teleology


We see purpose in everything — but science explains the world without ends in mind

Teleology is the idea that things happen for a purpose — that events or structures exist in order to fulfill some goal. It’s how we naturally explain much of life: birds build nests to protect their young, people exercise to stay healthy, and seeds sprout to become trees. These explanations are so intuitive that they can feel like common sense.

But science does not allow teleological explanations — at least not as a foundation for understanding the natural world. In science, causes must come before effects. You can’t explain something by appealing to what it will eventually accomplish. Instead, you have to explain it in terms of prior conditions, physical laws, and step-by-step processes. If sodium and chlorine atoms come together to form salt, it’s not because they intend to make salt — it’s because the nature of their charges and electron structures causes them to bond. That’s the difference: science explains behavior through mechanism, not purpose.

The fundamental reason for this has to do with time and history. Science seeks explanations that would have worked even when there were no minds, no goals, no meaning — only matter and energy unfolding through time. What was around 3 billion years ago to assign a purpose to atoms or molecules? Life didn’t arise because anything wanted life to exist. It emerged because, at some moment, a self-replicating molecule happened to form. That molecule didn’t have a goal — it just copied itself. And over billions of years, everything else followed.

What looks like purpose in nature is actually the product of blind, iterative processes — it only appears purposeful in hindsight. Our language may speak in terms of goals, but science must always trace backwards, not forwards.

In this way, science is deeply counterintuitive. It asks us to resist our natural urge to see meaning and intention everywhere. It disciplines the mind to look for causes, not stories. And that’s why, even when it comes to life itself, science insists: there is no end in sight — only unfolding.

This article resonates with themes explored in The Metropolis Organism — a video series examining cities as literal biological systems, where human beings function not as masters, but as necessary organelles in a living urban body.

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