Saturday October 12th

Teleology and Information in Biology
by Phillip L. Engle

Teleology requires a "bracket out the object" methodology, as opposed to the "bracket out the subject" methodology of hard science. Information theory is ultimately a branch of epistemology, which brackets out neither the object nor the subject, but instead studies the interface between them. The same subject-matter (e.g. biological systems) can be studied from the radically diverse points of view of teleology, science, and information theory. Nevertheless these radically diverse viewpoints can be related to one another by means of analogs.

For example, the following are analogs: a "decision between two possible choices" in teleology, a "nonlinear bifurcation" in science, and a "bit" in information theory.

The following are also analogs: in teleology, a "conscious, decision-making being"; in science, a "nonlinear, hierarchical, complex physical system characterized at all levels by both external and internal conditional equifinality"; in information theory, a "creator and knower of information".

Because neo-Darwinism is essentially a linear, stochastic/ deterministic theory which locates all biological randomness at the microscopic level (e.g., "random mutations") and all biological determinism at the macroscopic level (i.e., "natural selection", resulting in differential rates of reproduction and mortality), its teleological analog is empty and featureless (i.e., "meaningless"), and moreover it can give no coherent non-tautological account of how biological information originates.

By contrast, Robert F. DeHaan's nonlinear theory of evolution, called "macrodevelopment", is rich in hierarchical teleological analogs and, via self-organization theory, is capable of immanently accounting for both the creation and storage of information by the biosphere. (The transcendent creation of this same information by a God having no complete analog within the physical universe is a valid, complementary teleological point-of-view.)

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