Thomistic Reflections on Teleology and Contemporary Biological Research

Modern biologists often claim to be committed to a strong reductionist conception of scientific explanation, in contrast to the teleological explanations of medieval natural philosophers. Attention to the actual explanatory strategies used in contemporary biological research, however, reveals a dependence on final cause explanations. A good example can be found in adaptation studies where explanation is typically in terms of optimal design models. Such optimality models are teleological precisely in the way Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus insisted explanation of natural forms must be. Consequently, the non‐reductionist conception of final cause defended by Neo‐Aristotelian philosophers of science is entirely consistent with common modes of explanation used by contemporary biological researchers.