ABSTRACT
A very interesting example of this rather airy theorizing is the belief that teleology - reasoning from purpose - has been cut out from scientific thought. One of the first lessons that biology students now learn is that they must never argue teleologically - never ask about purpose because purpose has no place in nature. Yet in explaining any piece of behaviour, human or otherwise, researchers regularly proceed by looking for its evolutionary function. The reasoning that is needed to discover this function is in fact of exactly the kind that has long been used to seek out the aims of any process. The questioner simply asks: what's it for? The only new feature is that now only one answer will be allowed. The function of anything organic must be self-perpetuation: the tendency of the behaviour to enhance the behaving individual's reproductive prospects.
