ABSTRACT
Biological objects are active, meaning that they possess internal mechanisms which allow them to shape the environment as well change their own performance, depending on the signals received from the environment. Under ideological monism instituted by those in power, the conflict between the active and the passive approaches to the behavior of biological systems may assume rather violent form. The course of development of any system is defined by such categories as survival, viability, growth, and development. Survival connotes the preservation of a given organism per se. Viability is the preservation of a given organism via reproduction. The terms directedness and goal are not identical. If all were concerned with was the course of the system’s dynamics, it would be sufficient, by definition, that there exist states sufficiently remote from the initial state. In Greek tele means ‘remote’. Thus, an exclusive emphasis upon the direction of development could be termed a teleological approach.
