ABSTRACT
The modern synthetic theory of evolution or neo-Darwinism claims to provide an explanation for the entire living world within a totally materialistic framework. Philosopher Margorie Grene explores in some depth the concept that many phenomena in the living world seem to demand some kind of teleological or goal-centered explanation which is entirely at odds with the neo-Darwinian mechanism of undirected chance and the purely material action of natural selection. Grene's criticism of the reductionist fixation of many biologists of her day could easily apply to the conceptual thinking that prevails in the complex field of developmental biology. Michael Polanyi contends that the very powerful anti-teleological bias of modern science is largely a consequence of the intellectual belief that the world can be reduced to its atomic elements acting blindly in terms of an equilibrium of forces.
