Today, a scientific explanation is not meant to ascribe agency to natural phenomena: we would not say a rock falls because it seeks the center of the earth.
The Re.
Since the seventeenth century, many thinkers have made agency, in various forms, central to science.
This has not always been the case, nor, perhaps, was it inevitable.
A modern botanist would not say that plants pursue sunlight.
Even for Living things, in the natural sciences and often in the social sciences, the same is true.
Today, a scientific explanation is not meant to ascribe agency to natural phenomena: we would not say a rock falls because it seeks the center of the earth