Marx loved Darwin's work because he saw how anti-teleological it was. He sent Darwin a fan letter along with volume 1 of Capital—I'm not sure how Darwin would have reacted to this gift.
Science, unmoored from philosophy, drifts around in its explorations of the real, marred by implicit assumptions (“principles,” Heidegger) that it doesn't often question. Like paper boats floating on a lake. One science thinks reality is made of atoms (neuroscientists, strangely are the most crassly materialist in this respect at present). Another thinks it's some inconsistent kluge of quanta and spacetime (physicists). This means that despite its Darwinian inheritance there must be some teleological notions floating around in biology. Some kind of implicit direction. Like, “Life forms mustn't be able to take in certain chemicals. Those would destroy them. Life forms are based on the avoidance of certain chemicals and the utilization of others.”
So when in Mono Lake, Nevada a lifeform was discovered that metabolizes arsenic, some biologists were taken aback.
Doesn't this show us, though, that evolutionary science eats away at the life–nonlife boundary? And that there is no teleology in evolution?
Isn't it elementary, then, that what we have in this story is another example of lifeforms as strange strangers, uncanny beings that become more strange the more we know about them.
Mono Lake, by the way, is an excellent shoegazer band.