It can be said to "want" these things. When referring to something without consciousness or free will, such as a magnet, we can colloquially say something like "the magnet wants to move towards a (larger) ferrous object". Of course, this attempt at movement through magnetic force is just a consequence of the magnetic attraction between the two objects and not some type of conscious thought, but criticizing the use of the word "want" here seems like needless pedantry to me. This is HN, not a peer-reviewed scientific paper.