teleophobia

From German Teleophobie in the late 19th century. The OED[1] 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”).

teleophobia (uncountable)

1. (philosophy) Reluctance or refusal to ascribe purpose to natural phenomena.
   • 1912, Friedrich Paulsen, translated by Frank Thilly, Einleitung in die Philosophie [Introduction to Philosophy]:

     (please add the primary text of this quotation)

     v. Baer is evidently right: the current view is afflicted with teleophobia. It seems to me that he is also right in finding the reason for it, not in nature, but in the natural scientist's fear of a false teleology. Teleophobia is the reaction against the old teleology of design, which repudiated and wished to replace a causal explanation.

   • [1952, D. Maurice Allan, “Towards a Natural Teleology”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume 49, number 13, →DOI:

     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.”]

   • 1960, “New Books”, in Philosophy, volume 35, number 133:

     […] the teleophobia of biologists and physicists should not be carried over to the human sciences.

• teleology