Teleology n. The doctrine of the final causes of things; specif. (Biol.), The doctrine of design, which assumes that the phenomena of organic life, particularly those of evolution, are explicable only by purposive causes, and that they in no way admit of a mechanical explanation or one based entirely on biological science; the doctrine of adaptation to purpose.
... principle, enabling the naturalist to trace out in detail the interdependence of functions and their organs. When you have discovered how one organ is adapted to another and to the whole, you have gone a certain way towards understanding it. That is using teleology as a regulative principle, in Kant's sense of the word. Cuvier was indeed a teleologist after the fashion of Kant, and there can be no doubt that he was influenced, at least in the exposition of his ideas, by Kant's Kritik der Urtheilskraft, which appeared ... — Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
...
