Rethinking the Validity and Significance of Final Causation: From the Aristotelian to the Peircean Teleology

Henry Wang Rethinking the Validity and Significance of Final Causation: From the Aristotelian to the Peircean Teleology The critical role of final causation in Peirce's pragmatism has not received appropriate attention of most contemporary scholars. This is for the most part a result of the cultural dominance of mechanical explanation on the basis of efficient causation and a general antipathy toward the concept of final causation or Ï„Î-λοξς in modern thought. As we will see, this antipathy toward final causation stems from a different understanding of causation since the beginning of the modern age. It reflects different world systems envisaged by the ancient and modern thinkers. Despite all modern antipathies and prejudices against it, however, final causation demonstrates increasingly its importance in contemporary scientific and philosophical discourse. It shows itself as something that cannot be completely dropped. As Ernst Mayr acknowledges, a growing number of scientists, especially biologists, continue to insist not only that "ideological statements are objective... but also that they express something important which is lost when teleological language is eliminated from such statements."1 At the same time, the insufficiency of mechanical explanation on the basis of efficient causation has instigated a number of modern philosophers to reclaim the efficacy of final causation. Peirce is among the few modern philosophers who argue strongly against the neglect of final causation. "The nonrecognition of final causation," Peirce asserts, "has been and still is productive of more philosophical error and nonsense than any or every other source of error or nonsense. If there is any goddess of nonsense, this must be her haunt" (MS 478, 1903).2 This paper intends to rethink the validity and significance of final causation in the context of Peirce's pragmatism. In what follows, I shall first address some modern prejudices against final causation so as to show the plausibility and coherence of Aristotle's teleology. I will then try to bring to light the essential difference between the Aristotelian and the modern concepts of causation. The recognition of this difference will throw a new light on the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Summer, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 3 604 Henry Wang meanings of Peirce's pragmatism and developmental teleology and will provide a starting point to reevaluate the validity and significance of final causation. I. Modern Prejudices Against Final Causation As T.L. Short points out, "the classical conception of teleology, found in Plato's dialogues and perhaps earlier still, was most clearly formulated by Aristotle."3 For Aristotle, final cause is the "end or that for the sake of which a thing is done, e.g., health is the final cause of walking about."4 Final cause is the kind of cause that, together with three other kinds of cause, namely, material, formal and efficient cause, answers the "why" question of a thing. It must be noticed that these four kinds of cause are not four causes isolated from each other such that all belong to the explanation of a thing like pieces belonging to something composite, one of which might sometimes be missing. Rather, they express different "ways in which the term 'cause [α/'Ï„/α]' is used"5 and are always woven together for any causal explanation of things. Thus, efficient cause and final cause are not isolated from each other but belong together in all causal explanations. They are not mutually exclusive, but only speak of different aspects of the "why" of a thing; jointly, they make the full explanation of something possible. The separation of efficient cause and final cause, along with the distinction between mechanical explanation and teleological explanation in modern thought, stems from a breakup of the inherent unity of the four kinds of cause. The breakup of this unity of causal relations occurs in medieval thought. The four kinds of cause are first reduced to formal and material cause, and these two are again reduced to efficient cause alone.6 The breakup of this unity, as a result of which final causation is dropped out and forgotten, anticipates an utterly different understanding of causation in modern thought. The rethinking of the validity and significance of final causation entails a careful examination of its meaning in Aristotle's...