Teleogenesis
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Autonomous setting of goals uncountable
- 2 A regime of controlled, intentional reproduction dated, rare, uncountable
"[…] 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."
- 3 The preferential evolution of features and organs in certain ways dated, rare, uncountable
"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."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"[…] 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."
Etymology
From teleo- + genesis.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.