Telos

Telos is a term used by the philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of human art. The Greek word telos is the root of the modern term "teleology", the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions. Teleology is central in Aristotle's work on plant and animal biology, and in his analysis of human ethics, through his theory of the four causes. Aristotle's notion that everything has a telos also gave rise to epistemology.

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