On telos and genetic engineering

Abstract

Aristotle’s concept of telos ^l lies at the heart of what is very likely the greatest conceptual synthesis ever accomplished, unifying common sense, science, and philosophy. By using this notion as the basis for his analysis of the nature of things, Aristotle was able to reconcile the patent fact of a changing world with the possibility of its systematic knowability. Unlike Plato, whose austere mathematical model of knowledge led inexorably to a denigration of the experienced world, Aristotle saw that world as does a biologist, and found unproblematic the possibility of structural permanence underlying the constant flow of change. Though individual robins come and go, ‘robin-ness’ endures, making possible the knowledge that humans, in virtue of their own telos as knowers, abstract from their encounters with the world. Common sense tells us that only individual existent things are real; reflective deliberation, on the other hand, tells us that only what is repeatable and universal in these things is knowable.

Article Footnote

Major discussions of telos in Aristotle occur in: Physics, Book II, Chapters 2,3,5,7,8; Politics, Book I, Chapter 2; Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 3; De Anima, Book H, Chapter 4; On the Heavens, Book I, Chapter 4; Posterior Analytics, Book II, Chapter 11.