The Telos of Darwin’s Troubling Metaphor: A Response

Biologist J. B. S. Haldane famously quipped that "Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her, but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public." In his article, David. N. Livingstone analyses some core examples, such as Darwin's analogy of natural selection with pigeon-breeding, showing how the difficulty of describing natural selection and biological nature without teleological language and agent-oriented metaphors can be traced back to Darwin himself. In addition to Darwin's pigeons, the same difficulty could also arguably be seen in many contemporary analogies of natural selection, such as evolutionary computer algorithms and simulations. These are always designed by some human agent who sets the parameters of the programme just right in order for the right sort of evolution to occur. Due to the practical importance and clear value of teleological language, naturalistic philosophers have also produced a number of different strategies for accommodating teleology.