Meaning of Purposiveness | Babel Free

Definitions

The state or condition of being purposive.

uncountable, usually

Equivalents

Examples

“1853, William Benjamin Carpenter, Principles of Human Physiology, Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 5th American and 4th Enlarged London Edition, Chapter 14, p. 675, These reflex actions of the Spinal Cord have⟳ much more regularity and apparent purposiveness in the lower Vertebrata, approaching in this respect⟳ to the reflex actionso fhte ganglionic column of Articulata, than they have⟳ in Man.”

“The majestic spectacle of this blind, inarticulate purposiveness thrusting its way upward and ever upward in an endless unity of differentiated achievements towards an ever-increasing complexity of organisation, towards spontaneity and spirituality, swept away all my old conception of a duty to Man as such.”

“1963, Walter Cerf (translator), Analytic of the Beautiful from The Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Third Moment, § 10, p. 24, If the concept of an object is regarded as the cause of the object (as the real source of its possibility), then that object is a purpose; and purposiveness […] is the causality of a concept with respect⟳ to its object.”

“We do not regard uranium as having any in-built purpose, or in-built drives or tendencies, at least not in the way that animals have⟳; organisms, on the other hand, have⟳ a purposiveness, and death puts an end⟳ to such purposiveness.”

CEFR level