Students enter educational settings with complex and well-established intuitive conceptual understandings of the world, which have important educational consequences. In biology, intuitive thinking can be characterized in terms of cognitive construals (anthropocentric, teleological, and essentialist thinking, Coley & Tanner, 2015). We examined relations between intuitive thinking and biological...

Teleological explanations account for objects and events by reference to a functional consequence or purpose. Although they are popular in religion, they are unpopular in science: Physical scientists in particular explicitly reject them when explaining natural phenomena. However, prior research provides reasons to suspect that this explanatory form may represent a default explanatory preference...

Among the epistemological obstacles described by Gaston Bachelard, we contend that unitary and pragmatic knowledge is correlated to the teleological categories of Ernst Mayr and is the basis for prevailing debate on the notion of "function" in biology. Given the proximity of the aspects highlighted by these authors, we propose to associate the role of teleological thinking in biology and the no...

In two recent papers, Rose and Nichols present evidence in favor of the view that humans represent category essences terms a telos, such as honey-making, not scientific essences, bee DNA. Here, I challenge their interpretation show it is directly predicted by main theory they seek to undermine. argue results can be explained instances diagnostic reasoning about essences.

It has been commonly assumed that teleological explanations are unnecessary and have no place in the physical sciences. However, there are indications that teleology is fairly common in the instructional explanations of teachers and students in chemistry classrooms. In this study we explore the role and nature of teleological explanations and the conditions that seem to warrant their use in che...

Individual differences in reflectiveness have been found to predict belief in God. We hypothesize that this association may be due to a broader inclination for intuitive thinkers to endorse teleological explanations. In support of our hypothesis, we find that scientifically unfounded teleological explanations are more likely to be endorsed by intuitive compared to analytical thinkers, and that ...