RELATED TERMS: Narratology; Philosophy
“The study of design is linked, historically and conceptually, to teleology. Since Plato and Aristotle, the apparent orderliness of sensible objects has inspired reflection upon first principles. As William Paley suggested in his proof of God’s existence, whatever appears to have been designed – whether natural or artificial – provides an occasion to consider the purpose of things.”
(McCracken, 2000)
Telos and Design
“Design and teleology are two closely related notions; one may even say
that they are first cousins,” Ignacio Silva (2019: 61) notes. However, he continues, “one should not say that they are identical twins.”
The context for this relationship is that of Western (i.e. European) philosophy since the 18th century: “In the wake of Kant, Europe’s self-understanding had been framed by a profoundly teleo-messianic discourse of universal history: a movement of the history of “Man” from primitive and savage animality to rational and civilized humanity, with European humanity at the head.” (Glendinning, 2016: 278)
Telos and Narrative
Telos is a valuable but much misunderstood concept in the study and analysis of narrative, artistic practice and creativity, Victoria Alexander argues. Her insights can be extended to include design practice.
It is a mistake, Alexander continues, to assume that teleology implies an original, external cause, a prime mover or designer, that sets the whole machinery of the universe in motion. It is only when misunderstood in this way that final causality is said to be linear, consisting in direct cause and effect relationships, predictable, proportional and reductive, i.e. telos is understood in narrow functional terms.
For Alexander, telos, despite the variety of interpretations over time, has always involved the concept of chance. She argues that telos involves two distinct mechanisms, which she calls directionality (the maintenance of order) and originality (the discovery of new order).
Telic systems, Alexander contends, are formed according to mechanistic laws that arise spontaneously from disorder. In turn, law-abiding systems come to function in ways advantageous to them that are not predicted by those laws. These two aspects, emergent lawfulness and adaptability, make natural systems telic, which is to say progressive or creatively organised toward goals. In Alexander’s view only when activity involves both directionality and originality can it be called intentional, artistic or, indeed, designed.
References
Alexander, V.N. (2002). Narrative telos: the ordering tendencies of chance [Research paper]. City University of New York. Available from http://72.52.202.216/~fenderse/Narrative_Telos.htm [Accessed 4 October 2015].
Glendinning, S. (2016) Nietzsche’s Europe: An experimental anticipation of the future, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 47 (3), pp. 276–291. doi: 10.1080/00071773.2016.1180850.
McCracken, J. (2000) Review: [Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies by Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin, and other works], Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 58 (1), pp. 76–79. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/432353 (Accessed: 19 September 2021).
Silva, I. (2019) From extrinsic design to intrinsic teleology, European Journal of Science and Theology, 15 (3), pp. 61–78.
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