teleology

noun

1. (uncountable)The study of the design or final purpose of natural occurrences, that is, of such occurrences being the result of intention instead of prior causes.

   “The received intellectual tradition has it that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, revolutionary philosophers began to curtail and reject the teleology of the medieval and scholastic Aristotelians, abandoning final causes in favor of a purely mechanistic model of the Universe.”

2. (broadly, uncountable)The study of the design or final purpose of natural occurrences, that is, of such occurrences being the result of intention instead of prior causes.

   “Their proposed explanation at the time was riddled with teleology.”

   “In short, what every student of biology knows – that within nature there is a teleology having to do with the survival of the species which underpins the distinction between the two sexes and produces between them a natural affinity for one another – no surgeon who knows what is good for him may now say.”

3. (uncountable)The belief or theory that a natural occurrence is the result of divine design or intention rather than the laws of nature or science; theoteleology; (countable) a particular belief or theory of this sort.