How does Newton approach the challenge of mechanizing gravity and, more broadly, natural philosophy? By adopting the simple machine tradition’s mathematical approach to a system’s co-varying parameters of change, he retains natural philosophy’s traditional goal while specifying it in a novel way as the search for impressed forces. He accordingly understands the physical world as a divinely created machine possessing intrinsically mathematical features, and mathematical methods as capable of identifying its real features. The gravitational force’s physical cause remains (...) an outstanding problem, however, as evidenced by Newton’s onetime reference to active principles as the “genuine principles of the mechanical philosophy”. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the English response to Thomas Hobbes as a mechanical philosopher. Hobbes's mechanical philosophy was by no means merely derivative from Descartes's Principia philosophiae; indeed, Hobbes came closer than anyone else to developing a mechanistic system to match it. Hobbes's system was a carefully thought‐out and uniquely original system of mechanical philosophy, and none of his contemporaries, not even his staunchest critics, ever considered it to be simply derived from Cartesianism. An important (...) aspect of the dispute between Robert Boyle and Hobbes was concerned with the correct method to arrive at knowledge of the natural world. The distinctions between the thought of Hobbes and his critical contemporaries were by no means as stark as his critics wanted to maintain, but were highly nuanced. This can be seen in the marked similarity between Hobbes's concept of a corporeal God, and Henry More's influential concept of a supposedly immaterial but nonetheless three‐dimensionally extended God. (shrink)

In the late eighteenth century Newton's Principia was studied in the Scottish universities under the influence of the local school of ‘Common Sense’ philosophy. John Robison, holding the key chair of natural philosophy at Edinburgh from 1774 to 1805, provided a new conception of ‘mechanical philosophy’ which proved crucial to the emergence of physics in nineteenth century Britain. At Cambridge the emphasis on ‘mixed mathematics’ was taken to a new level of refinement and application by the (...) introduction of analytical methods in the 1820s. The fusion of these two schools, with emphasis on conceptual unity on the one hand, and mathematisation on the other, came about from the 1830s onwards, and reached full expression in the new framework of a unified mathematical physics based on the energy principle. (shrink)

This volume argues for a new image of science that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, casting the work of science as an effort to understand those mechanisms. Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them in physical, life, and social sciences.

Social machines are a prominent focus of attention for those who work in the field of Web and Internet science. Although a number of online systems have been described as social machines, there is, as yet, little consensus as to the precise meaning of the term “social machine.” This presents a problem for the scientific study of social machines, especially when it comes to the provision of a theoretical framework that directs, informs, and explicates the scientific and engineering activities of (...) the social machine community. The present paper outlines an approach to understanding social machines that draws on recent work in the philosophy of science, especially work in so-called mechanical philosophy. This is what might be called a mechanistic view of social machines. According to this view, social machines are systems whose phenomena are explained via an appeal to socio-technical mechanisms. We show how this account is able to accommodate a number of existing attempts to define the social machine concept, thereby yielding an important opportunity for theoretical integration. (shrink)

We study the state of mechanics and astronomy between 1660 and 1675 in order to understand the extent of the commitment to the mechanical philosophy of Kepler prior to the writing of Principia.

This book is about the influence of varying theological conceptions of contingency and necessity on two versions of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century. Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes both believed that all natural phenomena could be explained in terms of matter and motion alone. They disagreed about the details of their mechanical accounts of the world, in particular about their theories of matter and their approaches to scientific method. This book traces their differences back to (...) theological presuppositions they inherited from the Middle Ages. Theological ideas were transformed into philosophical and scientific ideas which led to the emergence of different styles of science in the second half of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

This article analyses the underlying interpretation of the natural world as mechanical during the early modern period. It describes the so-called mechanical ideal and discusses three cases involving important interpretations of the philosophical implications of this ideal. It suggests that the mechanical ideal raised new problems in different contexts and inspired antagonistic views of its philosophical implications in proponents who operated within the same intellectual context. It also discusses foundationalism versus mitigated scepticism and animated machines versus (...) class='Hi'>mechanical animations. (shrink)

Early modern natural philosophers put forward the ontological program that was called "mechanical philosophy" and they gave mechanical explanations for all kinds of phenomena, such as gravity, magnetism, the colors of the rainbow, the circulation of the blood, the motion of the heart and the development of animals. For a generation of historians, the mechanical philosophy was regarded as the main alternative to Aristotelian orthodoxy during the so-called Scientific Revolution and mechanical explanations were presented (...) as paving the way for the use of experiments and mathematics in the understanding of natural phenomena. However, the historical category of mechanical philosophy was later criticized as being too broad, while early modern mechanical explanations were condemned by more epistemologically oriented minds for being incompatible with, or at least not necessarily connected to, the use of experiments and mathematics. In the last ten years, just as the new mechanistic literature emerged in philosophy of science, there has been a reevaluation of early modern mechanical explanations in a domain that had been until then considered as peripheral to the so-called Scientific Revolution, namely the domain of biology, anatomy, physiology and medicine. Although they were neither confirmed nor predictive, some early modern explanations in these domains appear to have a cognitive value similar to the value of contemporary mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

Foreword It is flattering, but startling, to learn that a monograph published over twenty-five years ago, and originally written over thirty years ago as a ...

In a recent paper, Keith Hutchison has advanced the thesis that the Mechanical Philosophy represents a shift towards supernaturalism in our conception of the physical world. This paper concentrates on one of the great problems of seventeenth-century biological theory — animal generation — to illustrate (and modify) Hutchison's thesis, thereby also serving to locate one role of the life sciences in the Scientific Revolution. This choice of focus enables us to draw heavily on Jacques Roger's seminal work on (...) animal generation to illuminate the change that occurs, within the Mechanical Philosophy, between Descartes and Malebranche. Once the necessary distinctions have been drawn, it is argued, it will be seen that (in one important sense) this is a shift from naturalism to supernaturalism, brought about largely by problems native to the life sciences. (shrink)

We can distinguish ‘mechanical’ in the strict sense of the mechanical philosophers from ‘mechanical’ in the common sense. My claim is that Boyle's experimental science owed nothing to, and offered no support for, the mechanical philosophy in the strict sense. The attempts by my critics to undermine my case involve their interpreting ‘mechanical’ in something like the common sense. I certainly accept that Boyle's experimental science was productively informed by mechanical analogies, where ‘ (...) class='Hi'>mechanical’ is interpreted in a common sense. But this leaves my original claim untouched and, in the main, unchallenged.Keywords: Boyle; Mechanism; Mechanical philosophy; Corpuscular philosophy; Reductionism. (shrink)

We argue that Isaac Newton really is best understood as being in the tradition of the Mechanical Philosophy and, further, that Newton saw himself as being in this tradition. But the tradition as Newton understands it is not that of Robert Boyle and many others, for whom the Mechanical Philosophy was defined by contact action and a corpuscularean theory of matter. Instead, as we argue in this paper, Newton interpreted and extended the Mechanical Philosophy's (...) slogan “matter and motion” in reference to the long and distinguished tradition of mixed mathematics and the study of simple machines. (shrink)

Historians of science and the philosophy of science find the substance and stance of Isaac Beeckman's thought highly interesting, for it represented an early attempt to develop a comprehensive picture of the world by means of mechanistic theory, that is, forces acting upon one another. Besides possibly influencing Descartes, this view broke away from medieval religious assumptions and belief in occult forces. Berkel teases out Beeckman's evolving approach to nature by means of his extensive journals, explaining the leading concept (...) of "picturability." Beeckman supplied a stepping stone (one still not widely appreciated) on the path that led to the scientific revolution. (shrink)

A long tradition, which starts with the metaphor of the wax tablet presented in the Theaetetus of Plato, leads us to think that the relationship between mental representation and the represented reality is in a certain way mechanical or automatic. But the truth is that the conventional aspects of signification make it impossible to understand it as a physical- mechanical process. The computer sciences, contrary to a superficial vision, do not support but rather disprove this mechanistic conception of (...) rationality, confirming that semiosis can only occur in free subjects, that is to say, not completely subject to the laws of matter. (shrink)

The mechanical philosophy that emerged during the Scientific Revolution can be characterised as a reductionism according to which all physical phenomena are to be explained in terms of corpuscles of different sizes, shapes, and motions. It provided early modern natural philosophers with a unified view of nature that contrasted primarily with the Aristotelian view of nature, but also with other naturalist, hermetic, mystic, occultist, Paracelsian, and chymical accounts. Indeed, early modern natural philosophers devised mechanical explanations of almost (...) every kind of phenomena; even supranatural phenomena, such as transubstantiation, or phenomena today described as paranormal, like the action of sympathetic powder on a wound, the influence of the stars on terrestrial events, or the identification of thieves with a divining rod, were given mechanical explanations. Confronting this explanatory deluge, historians adopted two opposing narratives. The first narrative amounted to view the mechanical philosophy as a well-identified category that captured something about early modern natural philosophy. The critical narratives of the last thirty years, however, have deconstructed both the belief that it is an adequate historical category and the conviction that it made a positive contribution to the sciences. First, in an era that privileged microscopic case studies over sweeping panoramas, and emic over etic categories, ‘mechanical philosophy’ came to be thought of as lacking any real descriptive significance. Second, from an evaluative point of view, it has been claimed that the mechanical philosophy had no impact on the development of the new sciences. Considering these descriptive and evaluative challenges, taking the mechanical philosophy at face value is historically inadequate and philosophically naïve. Hence the questions addressed in this chapter: What to do with the mechanical philosophy? Does it have to be dropped completely as a category? And, if not, how is it to be used? My view is that it captures something of the transformations that we put under the umbrella of the Scientific Revolution, but that it is not possible to treat it as a naturally given category. Rather, to be employed usefully, it needs conceptual clarification and historical specification. (shrink)

From the operation of the universe to DNA, the brain and the economy, natural and social frequently describe their activity as being concerned with discovering mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its (...) kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the _Handbook_ is divided into four parts: Historical Perspectives on Mechanisms The Nature of Mechanisms Mechanisms and the Philosophy of Science Disciplinary Perspectives. Within these sections central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century; mechanisms as parts and wholes and their interactive powers; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience and the social and political sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science and philosophy the _Handbook _will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology and history of science. (shrink)

Volume 97, Issue 3, September 2019, Page 621-624.

The wheel has come full circle. A century ago scholars were writing books about the warfare of science with theology. That fashion gave way to examinations of the impact of modern science on religion. Now historians of science are expounding the role of Christianity in shaping modern science. In this outstanding book, Margaret Osler, who is far from alone in pursuing such studies, follows the influence of two established traditions of theology on the epistemological assumptions, and conceptions of nature related (...) to them, of the seventeenth century’s mechanical philosophers. Her book cannot fail to leave an enduring mark on our understanding of the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

Robert Boyle thought that his scientific achievements in pneumatics and chemistry depended on, and thus provided support for, his mechanical philosophy. In a recent article in this journal, Alan Chalmers has challenged this view. This paper consists of a reply to Chalmers on two fronts. First it tries to specify precisely what ‘the mechanical philosophy’ meant for Boyle. Then it goes on to defend, against Chalmers, the view that Boyle's science does support his natural philosophy.Keywords: (...) Robert Boyle; Mechanical philosophy; Reductionism. (shrink)

Volume 32, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 69-72.

How do cognitive neuroscientists explain phenomena like memory or language processing? This book examines the different kinds of experiments and manipulative research strategies involved in understanding and eventually explaining such phenomena. Against this background, it evaluates contemporary accounts of scientific explanation, specifically the mechanistic and interventionist accounts, and finds them to be crucially incomplete. Besides, mechanisms and interventions cannot actually be combined in the way usually done in the literature. This book offers solutions to both these problems based on insights (...) from experimental practice. It defends a new reading of the interventionist account, highlights the importance of non-interventionist studies for scientific inquiry, and supplies a taxonomy of experiments that makes it easy to see how the gaps in contemporary accounts of scientific explanation can be filled. The book concludes that a truly empirically adequate philosophy of science must take into account a much wider range of experimental research than has been done to date. With the taxonomy provided, this book serves a stepping-stone leading into a new era of philosophy of science—for cognitive neuroscience and beyond. (shrink)

This article pursues two objectives through a close reading of Newton’s 1713 General Scholium. First, it examines his relationship to the canonical mechanical philosophy, including his response to criticism of his own theory that that canonical philosophy’s requirements motivated. Second, it presents an interpretation of Newton’s own mechanical philosophy, glimpsed in draft material for the General Scholium: he takes the natural world to be a machine operating by causal principles that arise only within systems and (...) that require mathematical methods because they fundamentally involve interdependent and thus co-varying quantities. Newton’s realism about impressed forces links the two objectives examined. (shrink)

It is often assumed that in the collapse of the Aristotelian distinction between art and nature that results from the rise of mechanical philosophies in the early modern period, the collapse falls on the side of art. That is, all of the diversity among natures that was explained previously as differences among substantial forms came to be seen simply as differences in arrangements of matter according to laws instituted by the “divine artificer”, God. This paper argues that, for René (...) Descartes, the collapse occurs on both sides. Natures are artefacts of God, and human artefacts, under some conditions, can be classified as natures or, at least, continuous within nature. Drawing on developments across both horticulture and engineering in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as Descartes’ mechanical philosophy, this paper explores challenges to the Aristotelian nature/art distinction. The question then is what, in the advent of this collapse, are human artificers doing when they construct artefacts? Are they replicating God’s powers by creating new natures, or are they doing something else, and if so, what might that be? It is argued that we should view human invention for Descartes not as creating new natures so much as discovering them. These findings have consequences for how we interpret Descartes’ use of the term “nature” in relation to automata and other artefacts produced by human hands. (shrink)

This article explores the speed and form in which the mechanical philosophy was absorbed into the college curriculum in Louis XIV’s France. It argues that in general a mechanist approach to nature only began to be received sympathetically after 1690. It also emphasizes that it was the Cartesian not Gassendist form of the mechanical philosophy that professors espoused. While admitting that at present it is impossible to explain successfully the history of the reception of the (...) class='Hi'>mechanical philosophy in the classroom, the article concludes by attempting to throw light on the French preference for Descartes. This, it is suggested, is linked to the relative familiarity of Cartesian mechanism, the way the philosophy was packaged, and the political and religious environment. (shrink)