Co-edited by: Peter A. Corning, Stuart A, Kauffman, Denis Noble, James A. Shapiro, and Richard Vane-Wright
The MIT Press, 2023
In this volume, a number of biologists and philosophers of science, greatly expand on the thesis that “teleonomy” (“internal” purposiveness and goal-directedness) is a unique and important property of living organisms and that it has exerted a major influence over the course of evolutionary history.
The origin of this term can be traced back to biologist Colin Pittendrigh in the 1950s, in connection with the landmark conference and volume on Behavior in Evolution (Roe & Simpson, eds., 1958). Pittendrigh was seeking to draw a contrast between an “external” teleology (Aristotelian or religious) and the “internal” purposiveness and goal-directedness of living systems, which are products of the evolutionary process and of natural selection.
Indeed, the evolved purposiveness of living systems has been both a major outcome and an important causal factor in the history of life on Earth. Many theorists have appreciated this over the years, going back to Lamarck and even Darwin in the nineteenth century. In the mid- twentieth century, however, our understanding of this complex, dynamic process was overshadowed by the one-way, bottom-up, gene-driven paradigm widely known as the “Modern Synthesis”.
However, there have many efforts in recent years to modify and update this simplistic approach. In this volume, some 20 theorists explore in depth the many different ways in which living systems – often called “agents”— have themselves shaped the course of evolution: from the two-way, “read-write” genome, to the cognition and decision making in plants, the niche- construction activities of many organisms, and the evolution of humankind, which the biologist Jonathan Kingdom has called the “self-made man.” As the microbiologist (and MIT volume co- editor) James A. Shapiro emphasizes, “The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable.”