Noun

(teleologies)

(philosophy) The study of the purpose or design of natural occurrences.

(by extension) An instance of such a design or purpose, usually in natural phenomena.

* 2011 , Paul A. Rahe, Truths You Cannot Utter :

In short, what every student of biology knows – that within nature there is a teleology having to do with the survival of the species which underpins the distinction between the two sexes and produces between them a natural affinity for one another – no surgeon who knows what is good for him may now say.

The use of a non-natural purpose or design to explain an occurrence.

Noun

(head)

(cybernetics) Autonomous setting of goals

(dated, rare) A regime of controlled, intentional reproduction

* {{quote-book, 1955, Paul Stewart Henshaw, Adaptive Human Fertility, page=257 citation

, passage=

(biology, dated, rare) The preferential evolution of features and organs in certain ways

* {{quote-journal, 1930, , The Discovery of Tertiary Man, Science, volume=71, page=1827 citation

, passage=Third, to this hundred per cent. structural equipment of our remote ancestors phylogeny adds a hitherto unperceived germinal potentiality of specialization along certain pre-determined directions rather than others in adaptive reactions to changes of environment; this teleogenesis rests upon thousands of observations among primates, horses, titanotheres and elephants which prove that parallel anatomical and psychical progress is traceable to germinal community of origin.}}