teleophobia

名词 n.
中文释义

英文释义

名词 n.
  1. Reluctance or refusal to ascribe purpose to natural phenomena. uncountable
    — In the period from Spinoza to the end of the 19th century, the reading of design into nature received such devastating attacks from naturalists to non-naturalists alike that there developed an epistemological neurosis which Von Baer aptly termed “teleophobia.”
    v. Baer is evidently right: the current view is afflicted with teleophobia. It seems to me that he is also right in finding the reason for it, not in nature, but in the natural scientist's fear of a false teleology. Teleophobia is the reaction against the old teleology of design, which repudiated and wished to replace a causal explanation.

词源

From German Teleophobie in the late 19th century. The OED considers the word modern Latin, but the earliest appearance is in the writing of Karl Ernst von Baer in German in the 1860s. Whatever the immediate source it can be analyzed as teleo- + -phobia, from Ancient Greek τέλος (télos, “purpose”) + -φοβία (-phobía, “-phobia”).
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