teleology

The view that developments and changes in organisms or systems are due to the purposes, goals, ends, or design served by them (see argument from design).

This belief that all evolution is purposive has been very influential in metaphysical thought from Aristotle and the Stoics in ancient Greece to G W F Hegel in the 19th century. Teleology has been opposed by, among others, Epicurus, Lucretius, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Francis Bacon, all of whom argued that evolution and change are purposeless.