Mechanism
Mechanism is an ancient metaphysical doctrine modernized. The main problem it was meant to solve is that of change. This is how Descartes understood and applied it, and this is what made Boyle advocate it. Mechanism comes in diverse versions, and it is no
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Mechanism
Mechanism is an ancient metaphysical doctrine modernized. The main problem it was meant to solve is that of change.1 This is how Descartes understood and applied it, and this is what made Boyle advocate it. Mechanism comes in diverse versions, and it is not clear whether the systems of Newton and of Leibniz qualify as variants of mechanism or are too remote from the original for that. At times a few theories appear that are fairly similar to each other, yet they belong to different groupings or families of theories and it is not always clear where to draw the line between families of theories: it is often difficult to judge when two similar theories are variants of each other and when they belong to different families of theories. Thus, some consider the theories of Newton and of Leibniz mechanical and others deem them too different from Descartes’ theory to count as mechanical2 and they call Newton’s and Leibniz’ theories variants of dynamism (Čapek 1961, 96). As long as there is no measure of proximity of ideas, any answer to this question may count as reasonable. Much later, Faraday, Maxwell, and Einstein suggested a new metaphysical system, according to which atoms are not material but characteristics of fields of force. This surely is dynamism proper. The two initial and central versions of mechanism are the atomist and the continuist theories, and the atomistic one offers an idea of change that is easier to comprehend as it takes all change to be rearrangement of atoms. Descartes was a continuist and Gassendi was an atomist. Boyle followed the latter. He labeled his theory the mechanical or the corpuscular philosophy. The scientific import of metaphysical systems is that they purport to be research programs. (This is not contested; Bacon’s negative opinion 1 Marie Boas Hall rightly found here a problem (1952): it is as theoretical as they come, yet it was viewed as factual. She explains—rightly—that this was the anti-scholastic aspect of mechanism. We must add a no less important aspect of it, namely, anti-occultism. Newton’s opposition to all assumptions of occult qualities blurs the difference between the Aristotelian and the Neo-Platonist traditions between which Harry A. Wolfson was at pains to distinguish. Galileo declared his aim to be the denuding of the latter tradition of its murkiness, i. e., its magic (opening of his first dialogue). 2 Leibniz objected to Newton’s system because it is not mechanical. Leading historian of science Dijksterhuis declared it mechanical, refusing to discuss what the mechanical world picture is (Dijksterhuis 1969, 4, note 2).
225 J. Agassi, The Very Idea of Modern Science: Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science 298, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5351-8_15, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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Mechanism
of it is dominant but not unanimous.) Being speculative, metaphysical systems are inherently unfounded and in need of critical assessments. The central traditional problem of the philosophy of sci
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