The idea that Nature always acts for a purpose goes back to Aristotle (the final cause, the “that-for-the-sake-of-which”) and for centuries guided the way we interpret the world: for Aristotle, to know something also meant knowing its end.
When we ask ourselves how it is possible to know things, we realize that every theory of knowledge —every epistemology—inevitably rests on the very nature of reality, that is, on ontology. We cannot establish how we know without first presupposing what there is to know and what its objective structure is. In this respect, Aristotle remains relevant today.
However, modern science and philosophy marked an epochal turning point precisely by overcoming Aristotelian teleology and any form of cosmic finalism. They showed that explaining order and efficiency does not require an intentional design or an intrinsic goal, but merely the rigorous repetition of physical laws and, in the case of living organisms, evolutionary processes of adaptation. This shift demonstrates just how tight the link between being and knowing is: by changing our image of reality, the criteria by which we know it have also changed.
For anyone investigating natural phenomena today, the intellectual challenge remains the same as in the past, yet with its assumptions inverted: to comprehend the immanent regularities of physical processes by stripping them of any teleological projection. Investigating Nature no longer means deciphering a design or tracing an ultimate purpose, but questioning the causal web that sustains reality, accepting that the coherence of phenomena requires no intention to realize itself and be understood.
After all, even the rejection of a purpose is an ontological choice, and from it flows our way of knowing. The same applies to those who, in the name of science, reintroduce a purpose into Nature: this is not an empirical result, but an assumption that ought to be declared as such.
