Rest and Teleology

• Though the expenditure of energy prevents it, physical teleology tends towards a state of rest (diffusion, the second law of thermodynamics).
• Though the addition of new information prevents it, economic teleology is always tending towards a final state of rest (equilibrium) with regard to prices (Mises, Human Action, Chapter 14.5).
• Though borrowing, language contact, and grammatical change prevent it, phonetic teleology in linguistics tends towards a state of rest, in which marked phonemes are eliminated and syllables tend towards consonant-vowel structure, simplifying consonant clusters (see the universal tendency towards CV syllabification).
• Though sin prevents it, spiritual teleology brings the individual to a state of final rest and fulfillment in God (Matthew 11:28-30).

Rest is the necessary defining feature of all ends, for if there is no rest, there are no ends. God rested on the seventh day of creation (Genesis 2:2) in order to signify that the initial act of creation had come to an end: it was complete. The earth itself was in a perfect state of rest with the Lord (note that this does not preclude labor, c.f. Genesis 2:15) – but it was sin that threw the earth into a state of unrest (Romans 8:20-22). In fact, in each of the above cases, it is imperfection that throws the system into a state of unrest. An economy will never reach equilibrium because knowledge is never perfect. The universe, left to its own, would in fact end in a state of perfect material equilibrium as entropy approached infinity – unless of course gravity, imperfection in space, caused it to crunch.

It is therefore not a stretch to say that the mark of the attainment of perfection or fulfillment is rest, for at that point there is nothing better to aim for. There are indeed those who equate life with change and thus see imperfection as a prerequisite of life, but this can only lead to nihilism: without final rest, life itself has no purpose. Human action is driven by the desire to improve one’s lot, but without final and permanent rest at the end, life is nothing but a series of actions with no meaning outside one’s own existence. Life is not action: in this imperfect world, it is acting to attain rest, in some form or another. In the next, it is the consummation of that desire (as a side note, Hell is so horrible simply because therein is neither rest nor hope of rest. Immortality on Earth, or in any perpetually imperfect state, would thus be an effective Hell after long enough). Final rest for the individual soul must ultimately be sought in God.

The aim towards rest is the mark of Divine design. What other systems are there that tend towards rest – certainly there are more than I’ve thought of here?