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The Thomist 62 (1998): 355-72 NEO-DARWINIANS, ARISTOTELIANS, AND OPTIMAL DESIGN MICHAEL W. TKACZ Gonzaga University Spokane, Washington SIR KARL POPPER once pronounced that every science, "as long as it used the Aristotelian method of definition, has remained arrested in a state of empty verbiage and barren scholasticism."1 Standing as a verdict on the many generations of natural philosophers working under the influence of Aristotle, these words summarize the modern assessment of premodern science. Many historians of biology, having arrived at essentially the same conclusion, discount the contributions of ancient and medieval researchers.2 One of the primary instances of such "empty verbiage and barren scholasticism," as it relates to biology, concerns teleological explanation. Indeed, if there is any one characteristic that is typical of Aristotelian biology, it is the prevalence of attempts to explain plant and animal morphology in terms of final causes. This was one of the reasons why Francis Bacon was so concerned to produce a new organon to replace what he, and so many since him, have taken to be, at best, a 1 Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1952), 2:9. 2 See, for example, T. Dobzhansky, Genetics of the Evolutionary Process (New York, 1970), 351; D. Hull, "The Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy-Two Thousand Years of Stasis," BritishJournal for the Philosophy ofScience 40 (1965): 314-66, and41(1966):1-18. M. Caullery contrasts Aristotle, representing a mystical tendency in ancient science, to Democritus and Epicurus, representing a more modern outlook, in A History of Biology (New York, 1966), 4-6. Cf. E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 87-94, who provides a more sympathetic assessment of Aristotle's biology, though he still considers Aristotle's medieval followers to have introduced non-naturalistic forms of explanation into the discipline. 355 356 MICHAEL W. TKACZ superseded scientific methodology or, at worst, an activity hardly worthy of the appellation "scientific".at all. Fortunately, historians and philosophers of science are beginning to reappraise Aristotelian biology and its teleological explanations. Where such explanations were once variously misunderstood as anthropomorphic and even mystical,3 many recent Aristotle scholars have rightly stressed their naturalism.4 More sympathetic readings of Aristotelian biology have noted that its founder attempted to steer the middle course between Platonic cosmic functionalism and Democritean reductive materialism,5 and in so doing demonstrated a care in the application of teleological explanation which can be appreciated by the modern philosopher of science. While this cannot be said for all of Aristotle's ancient and medieval followers, it certainly can be said for the best and most influential biologists of the tradition.6 Chief among these must be counted Albert the Great, whose thirteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle, as well as his own original zoological research, display a methodological con3 For example, Aristotle's teleology is essentially anthropomorphic, according to G. Simpson, This View ofLife (New York, 1964), 100£. M. Ruse notes that Aristotle and his Christianized followers held biological teleology to be the result of a cosmic order by which causes somehow work backward out of the future in Philosophy ofBiology Today (Albany, 1988), 44. E. Mayr speaks of the "conscious directedness" ofAristotelian teleology in "Cause and Effect in Biology," in Cause and Effect, ed. D. Lerner (Glencoe, 1965), 39; cf. Mayr's more recent treatment in The Growth ofBiological Thought, 87-91. 4 See D. Balme, Aristotle's De partibus animalium I and De generatione animalium I, Clarendon Aristotle Series (Oxford, 1972); A. Gotthelf, "Aristotle's Conception of Final Causality," Review of Metaphysics 30 (1976): 226-54; W. Wieland, "The Problem of Teleology," in Articles on Aristotle, vol. 1: Science, ed. J. Barnes, et al. (London, 1977), 141-60; M. Nussbaum, Aristotle's De motu animalium (Princeton, 1978), esp. 59-106; R. Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame (London, 1980); and D. Balme, "Teleology and Necessity," in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology, ed. A. Gotthelf and J. Lennox (Cambridge, 1987), 275-85. 5 On this contrast see A. Preus, Science and Philosophy in Aristotle's Biological Works, Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Kleine Reihe I (Hildesheim, 1975), 183f. 6 For example...

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