Mechanism philosophy

Chalmers, A. The lack of excellency of Boyle s mechanical philosophy. Studs Hist Philos Sci 24 (1993) 541-564. 

Time is a fundamental property of the physical world. Because time encompasses the antinomic qualities of transience and duration, the definition of time poses a dilemma for the formulation of a comprehensive physical theory. The partial elimination of time is a common solution to this dilemma. In his mechanical philosophy, Newton appears to resort to the elimination of the transient quality of time by identifying time with duration. It is suggested, however, that the transient quality of time may be identified as the active component of the Newtonian concept of inertia, a quasi occult quality of matter that is correlated with change, and that is essential to defining duration. The assignment of the transient quality of time to matter is a necessary consequence of Newton s attempt to render a world system of divine mathematical order. Newton s interest in alchemy reflects this view that matter is active and mutable in nature... 

Machamer, P., Darden, L. and Craver, C. F. (2000), Thinking about mechanisms , Philosophy of... 

Men are seen to be more like wolves after the wolf metaphor is used, and wolves seem to be more human. Nature becomes more like a machine in the mechanical philosophy, and concrete machines themselves are seen as if stripped down to their essential qualities of mass in motion. 19... 

Smith, Crosbie. " Mechanical Philosophy and the Emergence of Physics in Britain 18001850." Annals of Science 33 (1976) 329. 

Boyle was consistent with this cautious position even with regard to the mechanical philosophy which he so obviously preferred. He avoided the logical fallacy so common in the argumentation of his time, that of assuming that any explanation is the explanation, an attitude that might be called the rational imperative. His attitude is very clear in the following passage ... 

Because his mechanical philosophy provided no adequate intellectual basis by which chemistry could be restructured, Boyle was compelled when discussing specific chemical bodies to use the familiar vocabulary and attendant concepts of the Paracelsian chymists ... 

Though the mechanical philosophy became widely received, there was no successful effort to create a mechanical chemistry. But mechanical language explanations for certain kinds of chemical observations became increasingly common. In short, toward the end of the seventeenth century and early in the eighteenth, the chemical literature became increasingly descriptive in its style and eclectic in its explanations. The vocabulary utilized terms from both the older traditions and the new mechanical philosophy, but the theoretical implications associated with either seem much... 

Chemistry, in other words, is claimed by some of its practitioners to have a close connection with ultimate, spiritual reality. This purpose is much more subdued in Lemerys than it was in Paracelsus writings, but something of that attitude occasionally surfaces in later writings as well when chemists, trying to establish their distinction from mechanical philosophy, were self-consciously claiming a deeper understanding of the natural world. 

The above arrangement is more of a simple ordering than a true system with strong interlocking relationships, yet the importance of Rouelles explicit distinction between chemical and physical associations or combinations cannot be overemphasized. Chemistry at this time still had not established its clear independence, and one of its fundamental struggles of this century can be seen as that of independence from the mechanical philosophy. 

Rouelle also retained in his organization the hierarchical concept found in the mechanical philosophy of chemistry, as well as in the writings of Becher and Stahl. In the increasing order of complexity, the categories of combination were element or principle as the simplest, mixt (made up of two elements), compound (made of a mixt plus another element), and supercompound (a combination of a compound with a mixt or another compound). As with the older alchemical tradition, the principles or elements could never be obtained in a pure or isolated state. Their presence had to be inferred from the properties of the mixts in which they were found. 

The mechanical philosophy now provided a new justification for the philosophical inability to isolate the elements. Bodies combined with one another because of some kind of attractive force, and the strongest such attraction would be between the two principles which combined to form a mixt. The force between two mixts would be much smaller because much of that attractive force had been used up, so to speak, in forming the mixts themselves. Thus there came to be a rule that the more compounded a body was, the easier it would be to decompound it. Running that rule in the other direction, the simpler a body was, the harder it would be to decompound it further. The only way to decompound a mixt containing only two principles, was to offer another mixt with which the principles in the first could exchange partners. There was nothing that could take one principle from another and leave it in isolated state. Whatever the origin of this idea, it readily served as a mechanistic rationalization for what had been the traditional view from Aristotelian times, that the elements cannot be isolated in material reality. 

But the chemists struggle with chemical identity was mostly empirical, and toward philosophy chemists remained indifferent, or more precisely entirely unconscious of it. The chemists pride had long been in their devotion to the laboratory, an emphasis that kept chemistry separate from and independent of the more philosophical traditions of the universities, partially isolating chemical thought from mainstream thought. At best it enabled chemistry to resist the attempted incursions of the mechanical philosophy, and to ignore the species debates of the naturalists as unreal or arbitrary. 

See James A. Bennett, The Longitude and the New Science , Vistas in Astronomy, 28 (1985), 219—25 Bennett, The Mechanics Philosophy David W. Waters, Nautical Astronomy and the Problem of Longitude , in John G. Burke (ed.). The Uses of Science in the Age of Newton (Berkeley, 1983), 144-69. 

The Mechanics Philosophy and the Mechanical Philosophy , History of Science,... 

One of the earliest to recognize structure-activity relationships was Robert Boyle in 1685, who tried to explain the specific effects of drugs in terms of mechanical philosophy by suggesting that since the different parts of the body have different textures, it is not implausible that when the corpuscles of a substance are carried by the body fluids throughout the organism, they may, according to their size, shape and motion, be more fit to be detained by one organ than another [10]. 

Y. S. Kim, Another look at Robert Boyle s acceptance of the mechanical philosophy its limits and its chemical and social contexts , Ambix, 1991,38,1-10. 

Robison, System of Mechanical Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 148. This remark was in the essay on the Steam-Engine , which appeared originally in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1797. 

For Watt s description of the indicator see Robison, System of Mechanical Philosophy, vol. 2, pp. 156-7. On Farey and the indicator R. B. Prosser, Birmingham Inventors and Inventions (Birmingham The Journal Printing Works, New Street, 1881), p. 36 John Farey in Report of the Select Committee on the Law Relative to Patentsfor Inventions, 1829, p. 138 A. P. Woolrich, John Farey and his Treatise on the Steam Engine (1827) , History of Technology, 22 (2000), pp. 63-106. 

A System of Mechanical Philosophy...with Notes by DavidBrewster, 4 vols (Edinburgh John Murray, 1822). 

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