Lesson 10 –
Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

In Thomas Aquinas’s eyes, the natural world was fundamentally teleological. That is, he held that everything and every process has a telos -- a final cause, an end or goal. It seems easy to identify final causes in our own actions. The goal of buying a sandwich is that I’m hungry and want to eat it. But do we really want to attribute such final causes to all natural things? Do simple inanimate things like rocks have goals?

Course Reading

Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science, 36-38 | Edward Feser

Big Ideas: A Guide to the History of Everything, 316-319 | Cameron Gibelyou and Douglas Northrop

Excerpt from Aristotle’s Revenge by Edward Feser:

While [intrinsic] teleology might also ultimately require a divine cause – and again, the Thomist agrees that it does – that conclusion does not follow merely from the existence of teleology itself but requires further metaphysical premises. Accordingly, the question whether teleology exists in nature can, for the purposes of the philosophy of nature, be bracketed off from the dispute between atheism and theism.

Course Listening

Telos in Contemporary Biology and the Relevance of Aristotle | Dr. Spyridon Koutroufinis

Related videos from earlier in the series

What is a Law of Nature? | Prof. Edward Feser

This episode was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this project are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.