Teleologic Evolution (TE) is a process of alternating replication and selection through which the universe “creates itself” along with the life it contains. This process, called telic recursion, is neither random nor deterministic in the usual senses, but self-directed. Telic recursion occurs on global and local levels respectively associated with the evolution of nature and the evolution of life; the evolution of life thus mirrors that of the universe in which it occurs. TE improves on traditional approaches to teleology by extending the concept of nature in a way eliminating any need for “supernatural” intervention, and improves on neo-Darwinism by addressing the full extent of nature and its causal dynamics.

In the past, teleology and evolution were considered mutually exclusory. This was at least partially because they seem to rely on different models of causality. As usually understood, teleology appears to require a looping kind of causality whereby ends are immanent everywhere in nature, even at the origin (hence the causal loop). Evolution, on the other hand, seems to require a combination of ordinary determinacy and indeterminacy in which the laws of nature deterministically guide natural selection, while indeterminacy describes the “random” or “chance” dimension of biological mutation.

In contrast, the phrase teleologic evolution expresses an equivalence between teleology and evolution based on extended, refined concepts of nature and causality. This equivalence is expressed in terms of a self-contained logic-based model of reality identifying theory, universe and theory-universe correspondence, and depicting reality as a self-configuring system requiring no external creator. Instead, reality and its self-creative principle are identified through a contraction of the mapping which formerly connected the source and output of the teleology function. In effect, the creative principle itself becomes the ultimate form of reality.

The self-configuration of reality involves an intrinsic mode of causality, self-determinacy, which is logically distinct from conventional concepts of determinacy and indeterminacy but can appear as either from a localized vantage. Determinacy and indeterminacy can thus be viewed as “limiting cases” associated with at least two distinct levels of systemic self-determinacy, global-distributed and local-nondistributed. The former level appears deterministic while the latter, which accommodates creative input from multiple quasi-independent sources, dynamically adjusts to changing conditions and thus appears to have an element of “randomness”.

According to this expanded view of causality, the Darwinian processes of replication and natural selection occur on at least two mutually-facilitative levels associated with the evolution of the universe as a whole and the evolution of organic life. In addition, human technological and sociopolitical modes of evolution may be distinguished, and human intellectual evolution may be seen to occur on collective and individual levels. Because the TE model provides logical grounds on which the universe may be seen to possess a generalized form of intelligence, all levels of evolution are to this extent intelligently directed, catalyzed and integrated.