Teleology

Aristotle#

It is, in short, scarecely an exaggeration to say that for Aristotle the entire functioning of the natural world, as also that of the heavens, is ultimately to be understood as a shred striving towards godlike actuality.

See Metaphysics, Lambda 10, the culminating chapter of his theological treatise.

The problem of self-organization, in David Sedley's Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity, p.177:

Without the admission of a creative or productive intellect operative in natural processes, how can purpose exist in nature? 

Aristotle's reply, roughly, is that deliberation is a strictly ancillary factor even in crafts, since it is the craft itself that is the ultimate cause of the product. But this seems to be bluring the meaning of “purpose”, or rather, “purpose” becomes purely semantic. The latter case is not a deficiency if the metaphysics itself is purely semantic, but this is not the case for Aristotle.