The mechanists refuse to consider the causal and the teleological viewpoints as equally valid. Where they are forced to employ concepts of final purpose, they do so only with the reservation that all purpose is based on prior hypotheses, that it will have to be reduced to causal relationships. As they are nominalists, universal concepts to them are something that rank behind facts – universalia post rem –and they do not accept any purpose they cannot lay their fingers on. They deny that any such purposes could have reality, in re or ante rem ("in the object" or "prior to the object"). They fear that if they were to abandon the inductive method they would at the same time lose that exactness which classical-mechanistic physics possessed (or thought it possessed), the exactness of calculable determinations.
The vitalists, on the other hand, are just as wrong in contesting every position of the mechanists. They have to pay for that temerity again and again. Physico-chemical processes are present not only in the structure of molecules and cells; they can be observed also in the performance of an opera, or in a garden fiesta at the court of Montezuma. Whether they are important in such a context is another question. More precisely, the question is whether such opera performances and such fiestas are the results of physico-chemical processes, the existence of which cannot be denied; or whether the music and the merriment direct to their own purposes the sum of mechanical processes that take place. If the question is formulated in this way, it becomes evident that here the old battle between nominalists and realists is being waged once more. It will serve us to stay out of the fight and refrain from bringing up the question of which was first, the chicken or the egg.
For the realm of technology this dispute is not of very great importance. Both causal and teleological thought participate in the development of technical processes. To separate them or to play one way of thought against the other would hardly do. If we consider any kind of apparatus – an automobile, for ex- ample – we realize immediately that causal and
purposeful functions are inseparably united in it. They constitute two aspects of one and the same thing and this close union is one of the most outstanding features of technology. That is why we would do well to make a somewhat closer examination of this highly successful co-operation between causal and teleological thought .
When speaking of purpose, we are unconsciously using a metaphorical expression. For purpose or goal, in the true sense of the Germanic word, is nothing else than the bull's-eye in the center of the target – the spot at which the marksman draws his bead and which he hopes to hit. Something seems to serve a purpose when the means we employ for the achievement of a certain goal are appropriate to the goal. The statement, then, that something "serves the purpose" expresses a relation. When we say that something serves a purpose, we express a judgment derived from our reason, and such judgment presupposes the knowledge and the understanding of the means and the end.
It follows that we can only apply the concept of purpose with regard to men, animals, plants, or any other created thing that is not our creation in a very limited sense. For we do not know, and cannot determine by reason, the final purpose which men, animals, and plants serve. Whatever may appear purposeful to us in their behavior, we cannot draw valid conclusions about their final and basic purposes from mere adaptations of their organisms for certain functions. Whenever we draw conclusions about final purpose from the effects we see before us, we are in danger of deceiving ourselves, particularly when we misunderstand the relation that is inherent in the concept of purpose.
The concept of technological purpose makes good sense, in so far as we can plainly survey the means which our machine tools combine to serve a given end. Their efficiency can be understood and tested. But we must never forget that this efficiency always and everywhere concerns the means only, and not the end that is achieved. Only when the end that has been achieved constitutes in its turn a means to a further end does the mechanism become a means itself, and assume a purpose. This relation can also be expressed by saying that within the realm of technology there exist solely technical purposes.
Much has been gained when we have recognized that the increasing efficiency of mechanical means stands in an exact relation to the advance of causal thinking. Perfection of the machine would be impossible if this type of thinking were not incessantly at work. For its field and testing ground is preeminently our technology. The relation of means to ends corresponds to the relation of causes to effects. They are not identical, but they work together like chain drive and sprocket wheel. Every extension of the law of causality must have its effect on the relation of means to ends. Thus, the concept of technical purpose is directly influenced by causality. Since this is the case, the machine and the social organization are linked together, and one cannot be conceived without the other. They work like the blades of a scissors or the jaws of pliers. These similes are not chosen at random: they describe the process, and they also allude to the incisive pains and pressures that man here undergoes.
It may seem strange that this titanic modern industrial system with its human organization that tries to engulf everything, and whose power we encounter at every step, should have grown from seemingly unconnected trials and errors, from widely scattered inventions, from decidedly humble beginnings. But the convergence of these inventions is only an expression of the convergence of a way of thinking which is absolutely uniform no matter what its point of origin. Wherever this thought goes to work, its every manifestation contributes to the mechanical arts all over the world.