mechanism mechanism

There is no constant meaning in the history of philosophy for the word Mechanism. Originally, the term meant that cosmological theory which ascribes the motion and changes of the world to some external force. In this view material things are purely passive, while according to the opposite theory (i.e., Dynamism), they possess certain internal sources of energy which account for the activity of each and for its influence on the course of events; These meanings, however, soon underwent modification. The question as to whether motion is an inherent property of bodies, or has been communicated to them by some external agency, was very often ignored. With a large number of cosmologists the essential feature of Mechanism is the attempt to reduce all the qualities and activities of bodies to quantitative realities, i.e. to mass and motion. But a further modification soon followed. Living bodies, as is well known, present at first sight certain characteristic properties which have no counterpart in lifeless matter. Mechanism aims to go beyond these appearances. It seeks to explain all "vital" phenomena as physical and chemical facts; whether or not these facts are in turn reducible to mass and motion becomes a secondary question, although Mechanists are generally inclined to favour such reduction. The theory opposed to this biological mechanism is no longer Dynamism, but Vitalism or Neo-vitalism, which maintains that vital activities cannot be explained, and never will be explained, by the laws which govern lifeless matter. As Mechanism professes to furnish a complete system of the world, its extreme partisans apply it to psychical manifestations and even to social phenomena; but here it is at best only tentative and the result very questionable. Its advocates merely connect, more or less thoroughly, psychological and social facts with the general laws or leading hypotheses of biology. It is preferable, therefore, in the present state of our knowledge, to disregard these features of mechanistic doctrine, which are certainly of a provisional character. In a word then, Mechanism in its various forms shows a tendency to interpret phenomena of a higher order in terms of the Lower and less complex, and to carry this reduction down to the simplest attainable forms, i.e. to those quantitative realities which we call mass and motion. Psychology and sociology derive their explanation from biology; biology derives its explanation from the physical and chemical scienc, while these in turn borrow their explanation from mechanics. The science of mechanics becomes by a very simple process a particular phase of mathematical analysis, so that the ideal of Mechanism is Mathematism, that is to say, the representation of all phenomena by mathematical equations. Hence it is plain that Mechanism tends to eliminate from science and from reality all "qualitative" aspects, all "forms" and "ends". We shall first state the arguments brought forward in support of the theory, and then subject it to criticism
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10100a.htm
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