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In On Purpose, Michael Ruse explores the history of the idea of purpose in philosophical, religious, scientific, and historical thought, from ancient Greece to the present. Accessibly written and filled with literary and other examples, the book examines "purpose" thinking in the natural and human world. It shows how three ideas about purpose have been at the heart of Western thought for more than two thoUSnd years. In the Platonic view, purpose results from the planning of a human or divine being; in the Aristotelian, purpose stems from a tendency or principle of order in the natural world; and in the Kantian, purpose is essentially heuristic, or something to be discovered, an idea given substance by Darwin´s theory of evolution through natural selection.

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"Do humans have purposes and values? Michael Ruse, after a lifetime´s quest for understanding,´ concludes yes.´ In this book, he journeys from Plato and Aristotle, through St. Augustine and Kant, to Darwin. The exploration is scholarly and profound, as well as eminently readable. There is much to learn from On Purpose and much to relish while reading it."--Francisco J. Ayala, University of California, Irvine

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Michael Ruse is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University. He has written or edited more than fifty books, including Darwinism as Religion, The Philosophy of Human Evolution, and The Darwinian Revolution.

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