We argue that teleological thinking plays a central role in biology and, more specifically, in theory of natural selection, and, therefore, the didactic goal cannot be its unnuanced elimination. In this sense, we will suggest that students’ teleological views can be used as the starting point for the construction of knowledge in this area of biology. To establish possible didactic strategies, we will turn to the way Darwin himself dealt with the teleology of former naturalists: Darwin had to modify several aspects of the previous teleological thinking: He had to reform functional biology. We will develop an alternative approach to teleology problem by conceiving of the contemporary student as a pre-Darwinian teleologist. Working from there, we will sketch two possible approaches for dealing with the students’ teleological thinking. The first approach seeks to modify the students’ intuitive functional biology in order to bring it closer to the modified functional biology developed by Darwin but avoiding the use of notions from evolutionary biology. The second approach involves using theory of natural selection as a guide to reformulate the functional biology of the students.

我们认为目的论思维在生物学中起着核心作用，更具体地说，在自然选择理论中，因此，教学目标不能是无差别地消除它。从这个意义上说，我们会建议学生的目的论观点可以作为构建生物学这一领域知识的起点。为了建立可能的教学策略，我们将转向达尔文本人处理前博物学家目的论的方式：达尔文不得不修改先前目的论思想的几个方面：他必须改革功能生物学。我们将通过将当代学生设想为前达尔文主义目的论者来开发解决目的论问题的替代方法。从那里开始，我们将勾勒出两种可能的方法来处理学生的目的论思维。第一种方法试图修改学生的直觉功能生物学，使其更接近达尔文开发的修改后的功能生物学，但避免使用进化生物学的概念。第二种方法涉及使用自然选择理论作为指导重新制定学生的功能生物学。