Hegel\u27s assimilation of Aristotelian teleology: Hegel after Darwin

Philosophical theories seldom get conclusively refuted. The notion that nature is goal directed, however, seems a likely candidate for polite dismissal. In the dissertation I examine what Aristotle does, and does not, mean by teleology. I then carefully demonstrate that Hegel specifically and self-consciously incorporates Aristotle\u27s model of teleology by invoking purposive structures that yield beings of ever greater unity and complexity that are irreducible to their lower conditional levels. At this point, I examine the rejection of teleological explanations by Darwin and some Neo-Darwinians. In particular, I examine the mechanistic model often employed by biologists that reduces the living organism to a mere vehicle for the gene to make more copies of itself. Such models, I argue, are not philosophically innocent, and they buy their scientific respectability only with a metaphysical purchase. The upshot of this is that a metaphysics of some sort is unavoidable. Our choice then, is not between a respectable empiricism and an indecent metaphysics, but rather it is between good and bad metaphysics, each with different commitments and explanatory power. At this juncture, I canvass the biologists and philosophers of biology who accept some form of ineliminable teleological and holistic structures in biological organisms. In the final section I attempt to show that a hierarchical scale of forms in nature is still a viable idea and that analysis must proceed in terms of overlapping wholes and not reductive parts. I argue here that Hegel has given us the best idea of what such a system would look like. In other words, with some modifications, especially concerning the origin of Geist, we can be respectable Hegelians today, despite the apparent wholesale scientific rejection of teleology