However, the decline of this vitalistic rationalism coincided with the rise of a mechanistic rationalism which had its roots in ancient Greek atomistic theories of matter.
This conception has now given place to the mechanistic or naturalistic theory on which our modern physical science is based.
But the vitalist theory, as well as the mechanistic theory, conceives the movement and change which is life as dependent on the previous existence of a matter or stuff which is moved or changed.
His system was a purelymechanistic one, being based upon the atomic doctrine of Leucippus and Democritus, which had been completed by Epicurus and recently introduced to the Roman public in Lucretius's great poem "De Rerum Natura.
Lord Kelvin, the chemist, knew thoroughly the mechanisticidea of the world.
Over against the testimony of the sub-human that there is a mechanistic aspect to the world, stands the unalterable testimony of the human that there is as well an ideal, purposive, and spiritual aspect to the world.
Plot then the mechanistic aspect of the world, but do not suppose that you have caught all of truth in that wide-meshed net!
He took over the mechanistic principle and handled it as never a man had done before; he became the mechanizer of the world.
Moreover, the mechanistic view, where all is "given," is quite inadequate to explain the facts.
Then there is the false idea that all causality is mechanistic and that there is nothing in the universe which is not mathematically calculable.
The Pit and the Pendulum, with its diabolical machinery, is akin to the modern mechanisticstories rather than to anything that had preceded it.
We do not see here the mechanistic supernaturalism, which is to become important in later tales, and the effects here are crude, yet of interest in themselves and as suggesting later uses of the idea.
Of course, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, with its social and mechanistic miracles that now seem flat and tame to us, might be said to be the father of most of these modern prophecies of scientific futurity.
So long as this gulf remains unbridged, the possibility of a satisfactory mechanistic explanation of life seems far away.
When Goethe undertook his studies in this field he had not to reckon with the forms of thought which have become customary since the development of mechanistic and above all - to put it concisely - of 'electricalistic' thinking.
Mayer actually had a picture directly contrary to the mechanistic conception.
Such a world-outlook was bound to be a mechanistic one.
This explains, in some measure, the mechanistic tendencies of physiology.
Now, this change is undoubtedly accompanied by phenomena of organic destruction: to these, and to these alone, will a mechanistic explanation of ageing be confined.
We should then be able to speak simply of a collection of little squares, and we should be under the mechanistic hypothesis.
The mechanistic instinct of the mind is stronger than reason, stronger than immediate experience.
Thus viewed, the evolutionist hypothesis does not seem so closely akin to the mechanistic conception of life as it is generally supposed to be.
The mechanistic philosophy is to be taken or left: it must be left if the least grain of dust, by straying from the path foreseen by mechanics, should show the slightest trace of spontaneity.
The mechanistic explanations, we said, hold good for the systems that our thought artificially detaches from the whole.
With the rise of mechanistic science there has come about a sharp collision between the conception of the goodness of the universe as theology declares it, and of its blindnesses and indifference as science seems to unfold it to us.
Theology, when it incorporates science and sets itself up as a direct and factual description of the universe, thus comes sharply in rivalry with modern mechanistic science.
It must be pointed out, however, that Christian theology has increasingly accepted modern mechanistic doctrines, including the doctrine of evolution.
Modern theology sometimes grants the apparent reality of the evils which are current in a mechanistic world, but insists that they are making for goods which we with our finite understanding cannot comprehend.
They are organic problems, not mechanistic problems.
Without attempting adequately to illustrate the nature of organic adaptations, I will direct your attention to what seems to me one of their most striking features regarded from the mechanistic position.
Here, too, the fundamental problem is, how far the process may be mechanically explicable or comprehensible, how far it is susceptible of formulation in physico-chemical or mechanistic terms.
I do not know whether the great French philosopher actually used these particular words, but they express the essence of the mechanistic hypothesis that he adopted.
These phenomena are therefore becoming intelligible from the mechanistic point of view.
It is my own conviction that whatever be the difficulties that the mechanistic hypothesis has to face, it has established itself as the most useful working hypothesis that we can at present employ.
If such a principle exists, then the mechanistic hypothesis fails and the fundamental problem of biology becomes a problem sui generis.
Ordered," a purelymechanistic and materialistically realised cosmos cannot be.
We have now to ask ourselves in what way this energy conception of life differs from, or goes beyond, the two theories of life--mechanistic and vitalistic, which have hitherto been supposed to have exhausted the possibilities of explanation.
On the other hand, if there is no such a thing as direction, if everything happens by chance, if the mechanistic theory is right, how does energy save us from complete surrender to that theory?
Very often, indeed, the question has been raised by the defenders of a mechanistic theory of life, Why then did the organisms not reject all poisons from the very beginning?
But we are not fully entitled to say[118] that there never will be any mechanistic explanation of physiological functions in the future.
All that can be urged in favour of such a belief is that there are still many obscure facts which we are not altogether able to explain on a purely mechanistic theory.
The Theistic attempt to disprove the mechanistic conception of nature by insisting that evolution is a law of progress, that it implies an end, and indicates a goal, is wholly fallacious.
This is, I think, the proper use of the term creative in a mechanistic sense.
Space Command has already concluded that a man can be stripped of his humanity and driven to an utterly mechanistic state with the robotic responses of a machine.
But I'll bet the final answer turns up on the side of a completely mechanistic man, shorn of all other responses and motivations.
In fact, the reversed film of the cinematograph may be regarded as the reductio ad absurdum of the mechanistic hypothesis.
According to the old mechanistic theory, the world could be reduced to two elements, matter and motion.
Ostwald's recognition of its significance gives to his philosophy a character decidedly different from the view dominant in the last century, the mechanistic theory of the universe.
The course of the mechanistic theory of life has been surprisingly similar to that of its complement, the theory of the general evolution of the organic world.
It might have been expected that in the domain of plant-biology, if anywhere, the mechanistic standpoint would have been the prevailing one.
Of course all this still gives us no ground for drawing conclusions as to the correctness of the mechanistic theory, but only affords a reason for its power of persistence.
The fallacy, he says, of the mechanistic claims was due to the increasing number of physical explanations of isolated vital phenomena, and of imitations of the chemical products of organic metabolism.
Garbowski's studies may be highly recommended as giving a sharp and vivid impression of the modern anti-mechanistic tendencies observable even in technical research.
To proceed according to the fundamental maxims of the mechanistic view can only be wholesome for a time and, so to speak, for paedagogical reasons.
The fact, omne crystallum e crystallo, like the corresponding fact, omne vivum e vivo, was long a barrier against mechanistic derivation.
But even this criticism shows us how far the untenability of the mechanistic position has been recognised.
See what we have previously said on the "second line" of mechanistic theory, along which Neumeister's thought mainly moves.
Driesch started from their ranks, and is a most interesting example of consistent development from a recognition of the impossibilities of the mechanistic position to an individually thought-out vitalistic theory.
It is one of the greatest difficulties in the way of the mechanistic and materialistic theories.
Antithesis: Some things did not come into existence according to mechanistic laws only.
If we assume for the moment that this mechanistic explanation be "true," it would be the sort of truth which is exceptionally tiresome and rigidly limited in scope.
Not only is the mechanistic conception of life compatible with ethics, it seems the only conception of life which can lead to an understanding of the source of ethics.
It was obviously none of her affair; and yet to come upon these cunning mechanistic devices in this deserted field stirred her, set something ineffable free in her--gave it joy for wings.
On the whole, I suppose I was inclined to favor common-sense mechanistic explanations of such phenomena, and to regard all others with alert suspicion or wearily amused contempt.
Even biology never considers life, but onlymechanistic functioning and apparatus of life.
But we are mental creatures, and with the explosive and mechanistic aid of ideas we can pervert the whole psyche.
