teleophobia en · NOUN
Etymology
From German Teleophobie in the late 19th century. The OED considers the word modern Latin, but the earliest appearance is in the writing of Karl Ernst von Baer in German in the 1860s. Whatever the immediate source it can be analyzed as teleo- + -phobia, from Ancient Greek τέλος (télos, “purpose”) + -φοβία (-phobía, “-phobia”).
Meanings
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(uncountable) Reluctance or refusal to ascribe purpose to natural phenomena.
[…]the teleophobia of biologists and physicists should not be carried over to the human sciences.
1960, “New Books”, in Philosophy, volume 35, number 133:In the period from Spinoza to the end of the 19th century, the reading of design into nature received such devastating attacks from naturalists to non-naturalists alike that there developed an epistemological neurosis which Von Baer aptly termed “teleophobia.”
[1952, D. Maurice Allan, “Towards a Natural Teleology”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume 49, number 13, →DOI: