Aristotle’s Telos and the NPN Correction

Abstract: Aristotle’s philosophy of nature represents the most sophisticated ancient attempt to resolve the Eleatic crisis of change and determinacy. His solution—hylomorphism grounded in immanent teleology (telos)—provided a coherent, empirically informed system that dominated Western thought for two millennia. This paper argues that the ultimate failure of Aristotle’s system, exposed by Hume’s critique and incompatible with evolutionary theory, stems from a fundamental synchronic flattening: Aristotle’s telos functions as a pre‑determined, intrinsic pull from a future endpoint, reducing diachronic process to the actualization of timeless forms. In contrast, the Neo‑Pre‑Platonic Naturalist (NPN) framework corrects this by positing Hormē (constitutive striving) as an intrinsic, open‑ended push from the present, and by asserting the ontological primacy of Becoming (FP2). This shift—from pull to push, from synchronic blueprint to diachronic navigation—explains why Aristotle’s system could not accommodate genuine contingency, novelty, or evolution, while NPN provides a robust metaphysical basis for a dynamic, navigational, and post‑Darwinian worldview.