What is teleology?
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Teleology is the idea of something existing for a purpose, for an *end-goal* at the end of some process. The idea of what something is *for*. What are forks for? They are for eating. What are bricks for? They are for building. This is a teleological understanding of forks and bricks. It’s a way of understanding what a fork is by asking what its *purpose* is. There are other ways you could understand what a fork is, teleology is merely one of them. And sometimes teleology is unhelpful, when there is no apparent purpose to something, or when the purpose cannot be agreed on or even known at all. This is something philosophers argue about a lot. Is there a teleology to the human species, to the universe, to history, to politics, to life on Earth? Do these exist *for a purpose* or do they just exist on accident, for no reason?
It’s simply the notion that the purpose of anything is a function of its end purpose…
an acorn only exists to become a tree
Of course, teleology is complete BS like the notion of “intelligent design”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology
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