Mechanisms in Science

Abstract

Many areas of science are animated by the search for mechanisms: experiments are designed to find them, explanations are built to reveal them, models are constructed to describe them, funding is disbursed to prioritize their discovery, and translational research is premised on their value for manipulation and control. Over the last twenty or thirty years, a number of philosophers of science, starting from the biological and neural sciences, have directed attention at the concept of mechanism. They have emphasized that mechanisms play central roles in discovery, explanation, experimentation, modeling, and reduction. At the same time, the idea of mechanism has served for many as a suggestive hint as to the metaphysics of the middle range: covering that domain of phenomena above the size scale of atomic physics and beneath that of planets, encompassing biology, physiology, psychology, and the human and so-called special sciences more generally. What must mechanisms be if they are to play these diverse roles? The term “new mechanism” (to distinguish the modern account from the classical mechanical worldview defended by philosophers such as Descartes or La Mettrie), introduced to describe this research area, runs the risk of homogenizing what has become a heterogeneous body of work, serving many masters and tugging the analysis in many directions at once. Here, we attempt to collect some points of consensus while highlighting areas of productive disagreement and criticism going forward. The authors thank Stuart Glennan and Lindley Darden for feedback on an earlier draft, Sue McKinney for assistance formatting references, and Paola Hernandez-Chavez for support in finding non-English texts.

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