teleogenesis

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word teleogenesis. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word teleogenesis, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say teleogenesis in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word teleogenesis you have here. The definition of the word teleogenesis will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofteleogenesis, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

Etymology

From teleo- +‎ genesis.

Noun

teleogenesis (uncountable)

  1. (cybernetics) Autonomous setting of goals
  2. (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.
  3. (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.

Coordinate terms

See also

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia