Entelechy

Entelechy (Greek: entelecheia) is Aristotle's term for the condition of having one's end or goal realized within oneself — the structural encoding of purpose in the organization of a thing rather than its imposition from outside. A seed contains the entelechy of a tree: not a miniature tree waiting to unfold, but an organizational disposition toward tree-hood that is intrinsic to the seed's form. The concept is Aristotle's answer to both preformationism and external design: goal-directedness emerges from internal structure, not from a blueprint or a designer. Contemporary systems theory and artificial life explore precisely this territory — whether self-organizing systems can exhibit intrinsic goal-directedness without consciousness or external programming.\n\n