Abstract: The widespread acceptance of natural selection has led to the belief that telos in the natural world can be explained by physical processes. However, teleological statements persist in current biology. This paper examines the teleological implications of different conceptions of function and their connections with scientific explanations. Early attempts to reduce functional statements to logical relations failed, leading to two main approaches: the selected effect function and the causal role function. The former grounds function in actual evolutionary history, legitimizing an account of biological teleology, while the latter defines function through physical causation in a target system, eliminating the normative aspect of function and biological teleology. Subsequent discussions explore the relationships between the two approaches in which the teleological implications of normative function have changed from evolutionary history to the persistence of organisms. 

Key Words: Function; Biological teleology; Functional explanation; Selected effect function; Causal role function

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