The question of purpose, goal, design, Telos, end is troublesome. Using a conservative approach, one can only ascribe purpose to humans and perhaps higher mammals. In lower animals, one would say that behavior is generated by instinctive and reflexive connections between stimulus and response. Absent a complex nervous system, one can only say that things happen, developing according to rules, but without goal or purpose.
Ascribing purpose to anything other than rational actors (which are by definition human, since we have no certain knowledge of any other kind) is generally frowned upon in serious thought. I believe philosophers call it 'committing a teleology' and scientists refer to it as 'anthropomorphism'. Yet the lack of an idea of direction or cause limits the possibilities of inquiry. One can speculate neither on the meaning of life nor the purpose of an individual life or life-form. Indeed, absent the existence of a rational actor completely external to our entire frame of reference or universe, it would appear that our universe is without meaning or design unless it can be found within itself. If the universe has no meaning, how can a part of it have meaning? Rather a fine fettle, n'est-ce pas?
I suggest a concept which may be useful, which could be called 'emergent design'. I conjecture that just as 'emergent behavior' is a derivative meta-property of Complex Systems, 'emergent design' is a sort of second-order meta-meta-property of complex systems. One would expect, by the way, that higher-order abstractions would continue to emerge as complexity increases.
It has been shown in Artificial Life research that the flocking behavior of birds can be simulated by modeling each bird as a process choosing its vector based on simple rules governing distance and proximity from neighboring birds. Work is under way to model a bee hive in a similar manner. In general, social species of insects, viewed collectively, exhibit what appears very much like complex, purposeful behavior, which is produced by the interaction of many small, fairly simple units.These examples are merely inferential evidence: I suspect no certain proof is possible.
The idea may nonetheless be useful: it enables us to speculate about purposes or goals for abstractions such as life as a whole, species, cultures, and so forth. I do not argue that such apparent or emergent design is "genuine" or that it is produced by or results in some sort of consciousness. However, if the idea is merely a good heuristic, it may still be preferable to the lack of an alternative.