That sort of teleology would be understood through philosophy of science, metaphysics, aesthetics, though. What I'm referring to is teleology that is necessarily considered by the methods of empirical science, under names like Laws of Nature, Laws of Physics, the Four Forces, etc.
I was wondering if you can go through a bit more detail.
Ok, I'll try.
Aristotle thought that there were four sorts of explanations for things and events: Commonly called Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final. You are most familiar with the Efficient causal explanation, which is a prominent explanation in why, for example, a pool ball moved on the pool table; it was struck by a cue ball. A Final explanation, by contrast, is an end that something is "pulled" by or "guided" into. Aristotle thought that we grew into adults because we were "pulled" or guided toward that end, rather than just being
pushed by efficient causes in our genetic code and environment as we think today. Often forms themselves were seen as Final explanations, exerting force that drew beings to better exemplify them. I should note that a Final explanation's realization may depend on an Efficient cause as well (as when a craftsmen exerts efficient force to make a marble become a statue).
It's commonly thought that post-Galilean empirical science banished the Final explanation (i.e. teleology) in favor of purely efficient, material and formal. Thus, any talk of things being
for something,
toward something,
about something, etc. is seen as belonging to the realms of metaphysics, mental states, and faulty folk ways of talking about things in the world.
There are many things wrong with this picture, I think, and one of them is the notion that being-toward-some-end, which is teleological, does not have a place in the empirical sciences. I don't mean that the empirical science assumes implicit teleologies; of course it does. But what I'm talking about is rather explicit teleology that is within the scientific method instead of merely under-girding it from beneath the waters.
For example,
gravity is a teleological force because certain sorts of objects placed in certain configurations with respect to other objects naturally seek to be in certain states due to the Laws of Nature. Someday we will discover, or we already have discovered, what gravity supervenes on (what it is that's more fundamental behind gravity), but I doubt we could ever describe it properly in a non-telelogical fashion. Something will be brute and teleological at the base of it.