teleogenesis
English
Etymology
teleo- + genesis
Noun
teleogenesis (uncountable)
- (cybernetics) Autonomous setting of goals
- (dated, rare) A regime of controlled, intentional reproduction
- 1955, Paul Stewart Henshaw, Adaptive Human Fertility, page 257:
- […] in the same way that appetite has ensured the intake of food, sexual compulsion has ensured the placement of sperm. Under teleogenesis this would no longer be the case.
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- (biology, dated, rare) The preferential evolution of features and organs in certain ways
- 1930, Henry Fairfield Osborn, “The Discovery of Tertiary Man”, in Science, volume 71, page 1827:
- 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.
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Coordinate terms
- teleonomy
Related terms
- teleogenetic
- teleology
See also
- telegenesis
- telogenesis