These verbal scruples were intended as a rejection of teleology but were based on the mistaken view that the efficiency of final causes is necessarily implied by the simple description of an end-directed mechanism.
… The biologists long-standing confusion would be removed if all end-directed systems were described by some other term, e.g., 'teleonomic', in order to emphasize that recognition and description of end-directedness does not carry a commitment to Aristotelian teleology as an efficient causal principle.
The concept of purpose, as only being the teleology final cause, requires supposedly impossible time reversal; because, the future consequent determines the present antecedent.
Whereas the concept of a teleonomic process, such as evolution, can simply refer to a system capable of producing complex products without the benefit of a guiding foresight.
[5] In 1970, Jacques Monod, in Chance and Necessity, an Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology,[6] suggested teleonomy as a key feature that defines life: Rather than reject this [goal-directedness] idea (as certain biologists have tried to do) it is indispensable to recognise that it is essential to the very definition of living beings.
[..] It will be readily seen that, in this or that species situated higher or lower on the animal scale, the achievement of the fundamental teleonomic project (i.e., invariant reproduction) calls assorted, more or less elaborate and complex structures and performances into play.
By omitting this important message the second sentence is greatly impoverished as far as information content is concerned, without gaining in causal strength.Subsequently, philosophers like Ernest Nagel further analysed[8] the concept of goal-directedness in biology and by 1982, philosopher and historian of science David Hull joked[9] about the use of teleology and teleonomy by biologists: Haldane [in the 1930s] can be found remarking, ‘Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.’ Today the mistress has become a lawfully wedded wife.
Pittendrigh's purpose was to enable biologists who had become overly cautious about goal-oriented language to have a way of discussing the goals and orientations of an organism's behaviors without inadvertently invoking teleology.
[10] Evolution largely hoards hindsight, as variations unwittingly make "predictions" about structures and functions which could successfully cope with the future, and which participate in a process of natural selection that culls the unfit, leaving the fit to the next generation.
Assuming this would be incorrect, as the phenomenon responsible for making genes more "protected" from mutations occurs completely automatically, without any teleonomic aspect.
In teleology, Kant's positions as expressed in Critique of Judgment, were neglected for many years because in the minds of many scientists they were associated with vitalist views of evolution.
Their recent rehabilitation is evident in teleonomy[citation needed], which bears a number of features, such as the description of organisms, that are reminiscent of the Aristotelian conception of final causes as essentially recursive in nature.