"BEFORE one can raise with C. S. Lewis the question, "What is the Purpose of it all?", one has to affirm that purposive act is a reality, an act inseparable from that conscious being which is man. Such an affirmation is indispensable if one is to consider the broader meaning of that question. It relates to much more than the purpose of the entire series of purposeful actions in an individual life. It implies even more than the purpose of all such series, that is, the purpose of mankind at large. It bears on the purpose of all living and of all that non-living material reality that makes life possible and is indeed an integral part of all life, non-conscious as well as conscious life.
"To answer that question one has therefore to answer the question about the sense in which the reality of purposeful conscious action can serve as a justification for seeing some evidence of purpose in non-conscious living organisms. To see that evidence one needs eyes different from the ones used in science. There, in ultimate analysis, one can see only measurable data, their correlations and their succession. When a scientist claims to see more, he uses the eyes of philosophy whether he knows this or not, or whether he admits it or not. Further, his use of those philosophical eyes cannot be justified by his seeing, measuring, and correlating data. The predicament of the biologist, as the one who, even more than a physicist, cannot think without philosophy, is well summed up in the now more than a century-old dictum: "Teleology is a lady without whom the biologist cannot live but with whom he would not appear in public." [E. von Brücke] In spite of its close resemblance to theology, teleology, or the study of purposive or goal-directed activities, is philosophy. Whatever the possibility of exorcising theology from teleology, the philosophical nature of teleology cannot be changed by, say, Monod's tactic of replacing it with the word teleonomy."
~Stanley L. Jaki: Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth, Chap. 5.
Available at Real View Books
"To answer that question one has therefore to answer the question about the sense in which the reality of purposeful conscious action can serve as a justification for seeing some evidence of purpose in non-conscious living organisms. To see that evidence one needs eyes different from the ones used in science. There, in ultimate analysis, one can see only measurable data, their correlations and their succession. When a scientist claims to see more, he uses the eyes of philosophy whether he knows this or not, or whether he admits it or not. Further, his use of those philosophical eyes cannot be justified by his seeing, measuring, and correlating data. The predicament of the biologist, as the one who, even more than a physicist, cannot think without philosophy, is well summed up in the now more than a century-old dictum: "Teleology is a lady without whom the biologist cannot live but with whom he would not appear in public." [E. von Brücke] In spite of its close resemblance to theology, teleology, or the study of purposive or goal-directed activities, is philosophy. Whatever the possibility of exorcising theology from teleology, the philosophical nature of teleology cannot be changed by, say, Monod's tactic of replacing it with the word teleonomy."
~Stanley L. Jaki: Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth, Chap. 5.
Available at Real View Books
