Natural teleology, associated above all with Aristotle, and dealt with in a separate chapter of this volume, seeks to establish and elucidate the explanatory role of purposive structures and processes in the natural world, especially biological. Acorns exist for the sake of producing oak trees, eyelids for protecting the eyes. Natural teleology may or may not go on from there to seek the explanatory role of larger cosmic features, such as the shape and position of the earth. Much less does it need to ask – although it is not debarred from asking – the even bigger question, of how those structures and purposes came to be present in the first place. Thus it comes with no unavoidable theological implications.