We may therefore also term the theory of descent a mechanical explanation of organic forms, or the science of the true causes of Organic Nature.
He expresses himself most decidedly against the mechanical explanation of organic nature in the following passage (Sec.
On the other hand, it is established that if a mechanical explanation of a phenomenon can be given, we can find an infinity of others which likewise account for all the peculiarities revealed by experiment.
It would thus reintroduce an element of differentiation of which it seems very difficult to give a mechanical explanation.
Certain philosophers and physicists see in this fact a reason which condemns a priori all attempts made to give a mechanical explanation of the principle of Carnot.
Like other machines it consists of parts adjusted to each other for the accomplishment of definite ends, and its action depends upon the adjustment of its parts.
This will enable us to see more clearly the position in which science stands to-day upon this matter of the natural explanation of living phenomena, and to picture to ourselves more concisely our knowledge of the living machine.
We must admit that the disclosures of the modern microscope have complicated rather than simplified this problem.
We are apparently as far from the real goal of a natural explanation of life as we were before the discovery of protoplasm.
The great problems still remaining for solution, which have hardly been touched by modern biology in all its endeavours to find a mechanical explanation of the living machine, are, therefore, three.
If we find that the functions of human life are amenable to a mechanical explanation we cannot hesitate to believe that this will be equally true of the lower orders of nature.
But the possibility of giving a mechanical explanation of organic nature was not seen until Darwin provided a solid foundation for the theory of descent by his theory of selection in 1859.
Darwin has given us in his theory of selection a mechanical explanation of the apparent design and purposiveness in this.
Mechanical explanation consists, accordingly, in making out an actual connection between two existing facts.
So far as the principle of mechanical explanation is concerned, the clew is given by considering the factor upon which he laid most emphasis, namely, motion.
But this, as Leibniz said, was simply to give up the very idea of mechanical explanation, and to fall back into the purely general explanations of scholasticism.
The above list will hopefully provide you with a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "mechanical explanation" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this group of words.
