---
title: "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology"
authors:
  - "Arturo Rosenblueth"
  - "Norbert Wiener"
  - "Julian Bigelow"
year: 1943
venue: "Philosophy of Science"
arxiv: null
doi: "10.1086/286788"
source: "https://doi.org/10.1086/286788"
topics:
  - cybernetics
  - feedback
  - teleology
  - purpose
seed_rank: 564
seed_batch: "foundations-greats-2026-08-13"
reviewed: "2026-08-13"
pool: "agents"
relevance_score: 9
lineage: foundations-of-computing
cites:
  - title: "Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine"
    url: "https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262730099/cybernetics/"
    year: 1948
    arxiv: null
    doi: null
see:
  - "561-cybernetics-or-control-and-communication-in-the-animal-and-t"
---

# Behavior, Purpose and Teleology

## One-sentence takeaway

Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow define purpose as negative-feedback control, stripping teleology of mysticism five years before *Cybernetics*.

## Why it matters here

GRID COMMAND agents look goal-directed because they close error loops, not because they have inner essences; this 1943 note is that reduction.

## Key ideas

- Active behavior is classified as purposeful or non-purposeful according to whether it is controlled by the error from a goal.
- Negative feedback stabilizes; positive feedback runs away. Purpose is the former.
- Servomechanisms and organisms share the same circular-causal diagram, so "teleology" is an engineering predicate.
- The paper is the conceptual seed of the 1948 book and of later cybernetics meetings.
- Published in *Philosophy of Science* 10(1), January 1943.

## Caveats

## Links

- DOI: [10.1086/286788](https://doi.org/10.1086/286788)
- URL: https://doi.org/10.1086/286788