Regarding final causes, we must observe that their rejection [by modern science] is a methodological principle guiding inquiry rather than a statement of ascertained fact issuing from inquiry. There is not first a record of persistent failure to detect them in nature… [Rather,] the mere search for them was quite suddenly, with the inauguration of modern science, held to be at variance with the scientific attitude… To repeat, the exclusion of teleology is not an inductive result but an a priori prohibition of modern science.