Mechanism , mechanical, and mechanistic, as these words are used in philosophy, have come to designate a worldview which renders superfluous the existence of disembodied conscious agents; in other words, "everything in the universe is produced by mechanical [i.e. physical] forces" (OED mechanism 6). This is a peculiar variation on those meanings which have accompanied these words from their Indo-European and Greek roots through Latin, Old English and Present-day English. Mechanism has always meant machinery, contrivance; mechanistic, having to do with machines and similar structures with a mutual adaptation of parts; and in the case of mechanical, having to do with tradesmen or manual labour. There is always the sense of human (or analogous to human) purpose and design. How is it then, that the philosophical sense of mechanism has managed to cast off the implication of purpose, contrivance and design, leaving only the activity of physico-chemical laws, i.e. materialism? Furthermore, what residual effect does the common meaning of mechanism ("machine") have on this philosophical sense? Does the implication of purpose linger?

When William Paley claims in his 1802 work Natural Theology that "[m]echanism is not itself power" and that "[m]echanism, without power, can do nothing," he marks a kind of midpoint between the ancient roots of the word and its modern philosophical sense, both of which invest mechanism with generative power. Although the Greek root mechanikos, from mechane (machine) refers to contrivances that would require a source of power, the OED notes a root form in Indo- European: magan, "to be able," which is related to a group of Germanic words denoting human agency, such as Indo- European mag and Old Slavic moga, "I can" (OED machine; may). These are the same roots from which modern German macht (power) and English might derive, hence mechanism was, at one time, power. But it was power intimately connected with human agency, just as the first machines used by human beings were. In fact, many early appearances of machine and mechanism do not refer to external contrivances at all, but rather to mental plots and intentions; in PDE, these have become machinations. The OED cites an example from St. Cuthbert, c. 1450: "Sho . . . machynd in hir mynde for thy at it was best for hir to fly" (machine [v.]1b). As human beings became more and more accustomed to exerting their agency with the assistance of tools and machinery, it seems that mechanism and related words became increasingly identified with material devices, whereas other descendants of magan still express power and resolve. (Device itself has, of course, undergone a similar semantic change, although it has retained the sense of stratagem where this has all but withered away in the case of mechanism.)

Mechanism, in the sense of mechanistic philosophy as it is currently conceived, shares with its ancient roots the sense of power and ability. For according to this philosophy, the organization of the universe, including living things, is entirely explicable by the "mechanical" laws of physics and chemistry. As William Provine puts it,

the world is organized in accordance with mechanistic principles. There are no purposive principles whatever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable. (25)

Here we find that all generative power has devolved from some conscious agent to materia itself. Whereas older forms of mechanism subsume contrivance in an agent with the power to contrive, the modern philosophical usage dissolves conscious agency in a universal "mechanism" with no purpose, no "machination" behind it, creating thereby something that sounds oxymoronic.

Between these extremes we have a period of ferment which lasted from the time of Descartes to the beginning of the 20th century. It is in Descartes where English writers found what they called the "Mechanick Philosophy," in which all bodily structures, including the nervous system, are characterized as machines. Descartes himself denied neither the existence of a powerful God nor an immaterial human soul capable of exerting power over the material body; but others assumed that such a philosophy conduced toward atheism, i.e. the worldview expressed by present-day philosophical mechanism. Jonathan Swift, through his satire "The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit," shows his distaste for mechanic philosophy by making his persona treat "spirit" as mere mechanical wind. In fact, the implications of mechanism were so uncertain in 1665 that Joseph Glanvill found it necessary to make a distinction between "Mechanical Atheism" and "Mechanical Philosophy" as practiced by the Royal Society (a2;b verso). For Glanvill, "Mechanick Philosophy yields no security to irreligion"; furthermore, it was seen by his fellows in the Royal Society as a means of securing religion against atheism:

Nature it self is nothing else but the Art of God. Then, certainly, to find the various turnings, and mysterious process of this divine Art, in the management of this great Machine of the World, must needs be the proper Office of only the Experimental and Mechanical Philosopher. (Henry Power; quoted by Jones, 195)

This is the tradition in which Paley wrote his Natural Theology, where we find the necessity of God’s existence predicated on the similarity of animals and watches, the mutually adapted parts of which suggest conscious design. Yet as machines became more and more automatic--a word which itself was once reserved for "self-willed" things(1)--the notion that mechanisms required no intent or design became more prevalent. Already in the seventeenth century we find the prime mover himself incorporated within the universal mechanism:

God’s the main spring, that maketh every way

All the small wheels of this great Engin play. (Quoted by Barfield, 182)

Here, a part of the mechanism, God, is also the creator of the mechanism--or is he? Given such conceptions, it is a short step to the idea of mechanism as operating without purpose or an original designing agent.

Mechanism and related words originally implied human agency, but over time they came to be applied almost exclusively to mechanical appliances and the physical laws by which these are governed. When these laws were reapplied to the human body from which they in a sense issued, they were applied as if the body (and eventually the mind) were also mechanisms. As Owen Barfield suggests, it is as though our notions of ourselves vis-ˆ-vis machinery were turned "inside out" (188). Originally, this application was justified on the supposition that the human body is a mechanism "machined" by God. Even though this supposition has been discarded by materialists, they continue to refer to their philosophy as "mechanist," and materialist arguments are riddled with mechanistic analogies. Whereas this practice might have been inconsequential had earlier associations of mechanism fallen away, we continue to refer to purposefully designed artifacts as mechanisms. It is therefore inappropriate to describe as "mechanistic" a view of the universe which eschews postulations of purpose, design, and deity; for a residual connotation of contrivance will inevitably attend this word so long as our primary experience with it remains in the context of artificial machinery.

1. "The Greek ‘automatos’ . . . meant ‘self-moved’. . . . [I]n Plato’s philosophy the distinction between that which is 'self-moved’, and that which can only be moved by something outside itself had been taken as the very antithesis between spirit and matter, between eternal and perishable" (Barfield 180-81). Barfield suggests that it was through the association of the noun automaton with clocks that automatic gained its association with lifeless machinery.

Barfield, Owen. History in English Words. London: Faber & Faber, 1954.
Glanvill, Joseph. Scepsis Scientifica (1665). Ed. René Wellek. New York and London: Garland, 1978.
Jones, Richard Foster. Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth-Century England. 2nd ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1965.
Provine, William. "Evolution and the Foundation of Ethics." MBL Science. Vol 3: 6-30.