The study of the intrinsic constitution of matter has given rise to four great cosmological systems;

• Pure Atomism, known usually as Mechanism.
• Hylomorphism, the Scholastic theory of Matter and Form.
• Dynamic Atomism.
• Dynamism.

Mechanism, or Atomism, in the Ancient world;— As a philosophical system it can be traced back to Thales (BC 624), Anaximander (BC 611), Anaximenes (BC 588) and Heraclitus (BC 535) who all derived the universe from one primitive homogeneous substance, and thus laid down the first principle of that evolution on which the modern theories of mechanism are based.

The primary substratum of reality was presumed to be water, a subtile matter spread through infinite space, air and earth.

Later, for Empedocles (BC 495) water fire and earth were the four constituent elements of the universe; and this, right up until Lavoisier (1790), was treated as a sacred deposit of practical wisdom.

Empedocles asserted the essential intransmutability of the elements, attributing two forces (attraction and repulsion) to them which he termed love and hatred.

This reduction of every compound to a simple juxtaposition of immutable elements already outlines a fundamental idea of Modern Mechanism.

According to Anaxagoras (BC 500) each body contains particles of all the other elements, in such a way as to constitute a world in microcosm, omnia in omnibus. Although he accommodates Motion in ord er to explain the union and dissolution of particles of matter. Despite this, he attributes the efficient causality of all natural activities to some Higher Principle — and that Principle he endowed with intelligence.

Democritus (BC460) developed the mechanical theory by laying down as a First Principles, the identity (or homogeneity of cosmic matter, the atomic constitution of bodies, and the reduction of all material forces to local motion*.

His system is the complete negation of any First Efficient Cause and of any Final Cause.

Movement is purposeless, without beginning or end.

Everything is explained by the eternal motion of matter and the laws of an absolute determinism.

Epicurus (BC 342) adopted the fundamental principles of Democritus’ cosmology but introduced a slight modification as to the cause of motion. In the Epicurean theory the atom is self-moving. Although subject to the action of gravity which gives it the tendency to fall in a straight line, it has th e power of changing the direction of its movement without any internal or external cause of this deviation.

By this extraordinary hypothesis Epicurus sough to reconcile the cause of motion with the possibility of collision and of the combination of the material particles.

NB: Motion is the newcomer within ancient Mechanism (Pure Atomism) and then an uncomfortable guest.

1. Local motion (movement); is the successive or continuous reception of new positions in space.
2. Motion in quality or alteration; which consists in receiving new qualities.
3. Motion in quantity (increase or diminution); the acquisition or loss of a certain amount of matter.

Mechanism after the Fifteenth Century

He concluded that such a property was Extension. By an act of thought we may strip off all the qualities from a body without making it cease as a real body so long as we retain its extension — length, breadth and thickness.

Extension was the fundamental, sole constituent of material being, its essence — according to Descartes.

Establis hing this Principle, he denied to matter all properties which cannot be logically deduced from the analysis of extension.

1. First, he denied all intrinsic activity to bodies because the nature of extension contained no ground for such activity. He therefore rejected substantial forms, final causes and active qualities.
2. In the second place, since extension is everywhere and always homogeneous, he concluded that matter, the essence of which is extension, must therefore also be homogen eous.
3. From the above principle he further inferred the absolute impossibility of a vacuum. For a vacuum is a kind of extension; but extension constitutes matter; therefore to admit a vacuum in the world is tantamount to identifying this vacuity with the presence of matter — which would be a contradiction.
4. Further, since extension is divisible ad infinitum, the existence of atoms or small particles of matter incapable of further division is inconceivable.
5. All phenomena are modes of motion communicated by God to the masses of matter at the very moment of creation: For since motion cannot be accounted for by passive extension, it must proceed from an extrinsic cause*.

Unscientific

Cartesian mechanism lacked a scientific basis. It had been built up a priori, that is to say, on the mathematical concept of extension.

With the nineteenth century, mechanism entered a new phase and was adopted by many scientists as a convenient basis for the philosophical unification of the results obtained by science. This constitutes a synthetic distortion of the true purpose of natural philosophy, by tying-in the conclusions reached by specific sciences to detached and generally subjective supposits., i.e. specific descriptions of genetic codes to Darwinism as a Mechani stic (Atomist) model for the origins of inanimate and animate forms.

NOTE: Dalton’s application of the Atomist hypothesis to chemistry perhaps contributed most to the success and popularity of Mechanism among modern scientists.

 Modern mechanism