ABSTRACT
One of the principal tasks of a mechanist natural philosophy in the seventeenth century was the elimination of teleology. In the case of mechanics, optics, and cosmology, there were, outside the question of the formation of the Earth, few reasons to question this approach once Aristotelianism had been abandoned. Physiology was a different matter, however, and among the phenomena that a mechanised physiology had to deal with were a number of processes that seemed clearly goal-directed. Here at least, it was not a question of Aristotle’s misguided concern to provide teleological explanations where they were not needed, but rather that of how one could possibly avoid reference to goals in explaining these processes.
