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The Distinction between “Mechanics” and “Mechanism”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

J. E. Turner
J. E. Turner*
Affiliation:
The University of Liverpool
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Abstract

The recent far-reaching developments of Physics have produced the widespread impression that all those ideas of mechanics and mechanism, which were so influential in the nineteenth century, have now been completely abandoned, because they have proved to be quite inadequate as explanations, or even as mere descriptions, of the ultimate constitution of the physical world. “Has not modern physics”, asks Prof. Millikan, “thrown the purely mechanistic view of the universe root and branch out of its house?“ It is frequently contended, still further, that the place of these concepts has been taken by others, very closely approximating to biological, or even to psychological, interpretations of all natural phenomena; the physics of today, in short, and yet more of tomorrow, is essentially non-mechanical.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 1940 , pp. 49 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1940

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References

Notes

1 Science, vol. 73, p. 5.

2 The New Background of Science, p. 43.

3 Science, vol. 71, p. 205.

4 Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, vol. II, p. 365.

5 Microcosmus, vol. I, p. xvi.

6 Through Science to Philosophy, pp. 123, 111.

7 ibid. p. 311.

8 ibid. p.112.

9 The Universe of Science, p. 228. This is true even if explanation is regarded as falling outside the scope of science, as such. This issue remains highly controversial; “chemistry as a science has to ask why? and to go on asking why?“. Dr. Snow, Cambridge University Studies, p. 99. But to answer this question is to explain, not simply to describe, however intricate and complete the description may be.

10 Rutherford, The Newer Alchemy, p. 33.

11 G. W. Gray, The Advancing From of Science, p. 115.

12 The Place of Value in a World of Facts, p. 287.

13 ibid. pp. 296, 319, 111, 99, 320.

14 ibid. p. 109.

16 Darrow, 'The Renaissance of Physics, p. 217.