I focus on how, for me, big questions such as, “How can we tell whether something is true?” were funneled by haphazard influences into specific interests. Classes on logic got me interested in the origins of concepts. Contact with Piaget’s theory of concept acquisition added a developmental dimension. Wondering about the meaning of words led to the problems of opaque contexts like belief reports. A brush with artificial intelligence made me focus on the distinction between implicit and explicit mental representations and consciousness. My thesis supervisor’s expertise in game theory led me to explore children’s perspective-taking. Work with Heinz Wimmer on the false belief task got me firmly entrenched in theory of mind research, focusing on simulation theory as its main opponent. And to get beyond documenting children’s flourishing achievements I turned to mental files theory to understand how perspectival thinking grows from our basic ability to think about objects.

The notion of the “Greek miracle” is problematic for an obvious reason: it implies that some transcendent set of values was present in a parochial section of humanity. While anti-racist arguments serve to historicize this miracle and show how it is explained without reference to the identity of the Greeks, we should be on our guard concerning the potential racist ways in which discussion of the “Greek miracle” may be appropriated. The chapter surveys such racist appropriations and comments that we need, nevertheless, to come up with concrete accounts of the Greek miracle, precisely so as to refute such racism and also, and less obviously, we should recognize the way in which certain processes, begun with the Greeks, have a progressive political valence, the theme of the remainder of the book.

This chapter details Schopenhauer’s critique of a key modern ideology that grew increasingly strong during his own lifetime: nationalism. First, it notes how Schopenhauer argued that ethnic sameness cannot ground any moral obligations of individuals. Second, it turns to Schopenhauer’s critical dissolution of teleological national history, according to which nations are collective agents with a singular fate. For him, nations were not unified subjects with one shared destiny. Third, it reviews his caustic comments on the increased importance of the vernacular in scholarly communication and the attempt to establish an exclusively German literary canon. To Schopenhauer, nationhood was not even a useful category of cultural appreciation. Through this reconstruction, Schopenhauer emerges as a fierce antinationalist who questioned the importance of the nation as a supposedly cohesive community of mutual care, a unified historical subject, or even a meaningful cultural phenomenon.

Global history stands out by its intimate relationship to the processuality of history. As they put forms and structures of ‘global integration’ centre stage, global historians have not only made statements about the direction of history the foundation of how they define their area of study; they also ascribe at least partial explanatory power to them. The chapter argues that there is a lot to gain from stronger reflection on how global historians construe historical change over time. It delves into the theory of historical processes to develop more precise questions about directionality and presents responses global histories may offer to the teleological pitfalls of global integration. It also discusses the dialectics involved in processes of global integration and offers the outlines of a global history more attuned to the (unrealised) expectations and ‘futures pasts” among historical actors and to historical uncertainties produced under the impact of global interconnection. While the directionality/teleology problem poses particular challenges for global historians, it also can help think about multiple ‘guiding scripts’ global historians may use, refine and variegate in practice.

In his oft-cited and still fundamental Criticism in Antiquity (1981), Donald Russell wrote that ancient literary history was ‘very rudimentary by modern standards’. Going far beyond Russell’s brief chapter on the subject, this volume seeks to understand ancient literary history on its own terms. The introduction places the present volume in context by considering how the recent history of modern literary history, both inside and outside the discipline of classics, puts us in a better position to re-evaluate its ancient congener. Embracing a more expansive and less essentialist approach to the objectives and methodology of the modern study of ancient literary history can enable us to approach the ancient study of literary history in a fresh light. In other words, abandoning misconceptions about both ancient and modern literary history is a necessary condition for a full ‘rehabilitation’, as it were, of an often neglected subject within Classical Studies: the Greeks and Romans’ perception, study, and representation of their own literary pasts. The introduction closes by drawing out some of the overarching themes of the volume and provides a short introduction to each chapter.

Aristotle describes the history of poetry (in Poetics 4–5) in terms of a gradual progress, starting from primitive beginnings and concluding with the perfect forms of Attic (classical) drama. Characteristic of this Aristotelian approach to literary history are the notion of gradual progress, the notion of a τέλος, and the suggestion that different historical ideas, authors or genres belong to one coherent process of development. This chapter examines to what extent Aristotle’s approach has informed ancient literary criticism. It is demonstrated that the Aristotelian framework is in different aways adopted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his history of early historiograpy (On Thucydides 5–6), and by Demetrius in his history of prose styles (On Style 12–15). Modern histories of (ancient) literature likewise adopt the Aristotelian narrative of progress. The author of On the Sublime, however, contradicts the Aristotelian model: Longinus’ enthusiasm for early authors like Homer, Archilochus and Hecataeus shows that, according to this critic, the history of the sublime is not one of gradual progress from a primitive beginning towards a perfect form in the classical age. Longinus suggests that the sublime was there from the very beginning. The special position of On the Sublime is explained as resulting from a deliberate rejection of Aristotelian principles.

It is widely believed that one of Charles Darwin’s most important accomplishments was to have banished teleology from biology. Darwin’s view of teleology was a much-debated question in the 19th century, when both advocates and opponents of teleology equated it with divine design (Asa Gray and Karl Ernst Von Baer, for example). Darwin himself, however, did not think he had done so, and didn’t think that teleology should be banished from biology. This chapter will challenge the myth of Darwin the anti-teleologist by looking at two distinct kinds of evidence. First, we will look at his correspondence with Harvard Botanist Asa Gray, who praised Darwin’s use of teleological explanation. While Gray and Darwin agree on the value of teleological thinking in biology, Darwin disagrees with Gray that this counts as evidence for divine design in nature. Then we will look at Darwin’s own biology, especially his botanical works written after the publication of On the Origin of Species, to better understand his use of teleological explanation in biology.

In addition to the ‘architectonic’ sense in which the faculty of judgment allows a transition from understanding to practical reason, Kant argued for a logical (or teleological) and an aesthetic transition. In the latter, the pleasure of taste is assigned the role of promoting, moral feeling. Although this is a standard 18th-century view, it takes on a deeper significance against the background of Kant’s moral philosophy after 1785. In later works, Kant is explicit that a being that possesses theoretical reason and the ability to set itself purposes could still be a merely natural being; a special (‘aesthetic’) receptivity for moral feeling must be added to those capacities in order to qualify such a being as one with practical reason. I suggest that Kant’s realization of this pivotal role played by moral feeling is the reason for his emphasis on the importance of any aesthetic preparation that can promote moral feeling.

In the science–theology dialogue, a ‘causal joint’ understanding of ‘special’ divine action has until recently been predominant. However, the distinction between ‘general’ and ‘special’ modes of divine action has recently been questioned in what Sarah Lane Ritchie has called a ‘theological turn’ in understandings of divine action. In the author’s own contribution to this turn, criticism of causal joint theorists’ implicit (and sometimes explicit) assumption of a temporal God is criticized, as is the failure to apply apophatic perspectives to the notion of God’s ‘personal’ nature. In addition, an argument from human providential action is seen as significant for developing a ‘fixed instructions’ model of divine action, in which teleology is regarded as important (though not in a way that challenges scientific perspectives). What is effectively a ‘single act’ model of divine action is thus defended, but of a different kind to that which is usually understood when this term is used.

General conclusion summarizes the entire project, restating its principal objectives and achievements. (1) It emphasizes that evolution does not oppose or contradict the classical Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical and theological view of reality. (2) It stresses the importance of the constructive proposal of metaphysics of evolutionary transitions, which takes into account the interplay of chance and teleological order in speciation. (3) It refers to the importance of the distinction between creation and divine governance of the universe, where the evolutionary origin of the new living beings belongs to the latter category and not to the former. (4) Finally, it emphasizes the relevance of Aquinass view of divine action as applied to the notion of divine concurrence in evolutionary transitions. All these aspects contribute to the contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic model of theistic evolution developed in the volume. The research presented in it proves that, despite a certain dose of skepticism toward classical philosophy and theology, the longstanding legacy of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition remains vigorous and ready to enter a vivid and fruitful conversation with contemporary philosophy and science.

Chapter three engages in the investigation of the meaning and role of natural selection, teleology and chance in evolutionary processes. From Aristotle and Aquinas, through Darwin and the twentieth-century evolutionary synthesis, to the most current philosophy of evolutionary biology, the fate of the notion of goal-directedness is traced and it is defended as indispensable and intrinsically related to chance in processes that affect the fittingness of organisms, which is tested by natural selection.

This chapter explores two scripts of thauma (marvel/wonder) regarding the interior of the human body: the first derives from the Aristotelian idea that a purpose can be assigned to virtually everything in the world, our interior organs included; as soon as the design within our bodies has been figured out, our interior instantly enters the realm of the beautiful. The second script of marvel pertains to the idea that there are little ‘machines’ and ‘sub-machines’ inside of us, with their own complex structures and their own distinctive power to make us marvel at their artistry and efficiency. Considerable attention has been paid recently on the reevaluation of the presumed polarity between teleology and mechanics in ancient Greek philosophy and medicine. Rather than assume a mutually exclusive relationship between the two, scholars argue that the two models can be seen as converging and combining with each other in a number of significant ways. An organ which looks like a machine is still working with a specific purpose; in fact, its machine-like design can be adduced as a confirmation of the fact that nature did everything in wisdom. Differences, however, persist, and one of them relates to the important issue that teleology ascribes the purpose of things to an invisible force, whereas a mēchanē has a human constructor. To argue that the body can be figurally understood in analogy with a machine can thus be seen as opening, among other things, new avenues concerning the question of how we look at and appreciate the body’s marvellous properties: kallos in this case, while still being thought to ultimately derive from a superhuman designer, is simultaneously more concretely understood and appreciated in practice with direct reference to the inventiveness of the human mind.

In recent times, self-interest has been seen as the main driving force of behaviour and function in organisms. This is particularly evident in the concept of the selfish gene. However, as elaborated in this book, living systems strongly depend on cooperative behaviour, which is found everywhere in nature. All the way from millions of minute bacteria cooperating in the way they feed and grow, to massive whales talking with each other across oceans, organisms communicate with each other, and that communication is used as the glue of cooperation, even between distinct species. The idea of nature as ‘red in tooth and claw’ is at best a distorted perspective of the entirety of nature. However, in the grand scheme of things, both cooperation and competition are part of the story, and – whether wittingly or unwittingly – organisms form part of and interact with their ecosystems.

The view of living systems as machines is based on the idea of a fixed sequence of cause and effect: from genotype to phenotype, from genes to proteins and to life functions. This idea became the Central Dogma: the genotype maps to the phenotype in a one-way causative fashion, making us prisoners of our genes.

Living systems are characterised by intelligence. Treating organisms as gene-driven automata, blindly reacting to events, does not take account of their social or ecological being. Living systems anticipate the actions and reactions of other living systems. As in a chess game, anticipation can consider many options. Nevertheless, the chess analogy only gets us part of the way to understanding this characteristic of life. It is more like a chess game in which the players can create the rules, much as happens in a game of poker, in which anticipation is the key to success, including assessment of the other’s power of anticipation. Life is rule-creating, rather than rigidly rule-following. This does not mean there is no logic to what happens or how organisms behave; there is, and often it involves a clear strategy. But this is not regulated by genes. Much behaviour may be programmed, and much is learned; the logic, however, is situational (that is, dependent on circumstances) and subject to change. The ability to adapt to circumstances is an example of evolved functionality. Therefore, dogmatic models of life, seeking to reduce behaviour to little more than a set of algorithms, misunderstand the intelligence of organisms.

Where is the living mind that thinks? Culture is the matrix of the mind. Organisms owe their social and mental abilities to the ‘nesting’ of causation between all levels of their functioning. Higher levels mould what the lower levels can do. This is how living systems can use their flexibility, from cultural and linguistic variability to the water-based jiggling around of their molecules, to enable the evolution of rational and ethical social organisation. It is within this purposiveness that genuine freedom and responsibility are to be found.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a tool created by living organisms, us humans. Like the hydraulic robots of the seventeenth century which inspired Descartes’ mechanical view of organisms, AI has become the latest in a list of mechanical metaphors for life. Yet it is just as limited, just as much a mistaken view of organisms. It views life as just processing further and further information faster and faster. Computers exist to process rapidly. That is their function, given to them by the humans who created them. Organisms use processing to help them create objectives, purpose.

Standard evolutionary theory represents genes as the target of evolution. But organisms may functionally develop without alterations in their DNA, and they may also buffer changes in the DNA to retain function. It is organisms that are the agents in the process of evolution. Outside a living system, DNA is inactive, dead. Furthermore, many significant transitions in evolution have not depended on new DNA mutations. They arose from the fusion or hybridisation of organisms with existing but different DNA. All the molecular processes in a living system are constrained by its purpose. Viewed this way, genes are the most constrained elements in organisms. Evolution of different species has occurred through extraordinarily creative and varied processes that include cooperation and fusion of existing species and the exchange of DNA and organelles. It is much more like nature using preformed tried and tested functionality than through slow gradual mutation. Evolution can occur in leaps and bounds.

If the dichotomy between replicator and vehicle is wrong, then what is it that replicates? The purpose of reproduction is not replication, at least not exactly. Reproduction brings about change. It shakes up the templates and provides new avenues to explore in adapting to a changing environment. It creates and propagates variation. But it also provides a way for the lessons learned in one generation to be passed on to the next. Reproduction is sensitive to the environment of the parent generation and enables change through the germ line.