The concept of mechanism in biology

• Published in: Studies in history and philosophy of science. Part C, Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences, 2012-03, Vol.43 (1), p.152-163
• Main Author: Nicholson, Daniel J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biology - history; Causal explanation; Concept Formation; Function; History, 17th Century; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; Life; Machine; Mechanicism; Mechanism; Models, Biological; Organization; Philosophy - history; Science - history
• ISSN: 1369-8486; 1879-2499
• DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.05.014

The concept of mechanism in biology has three distinct meanings. It may refer to a philosophical thesis about the nature of life and biology (‘mechanicism’), to the internal workings of a machine-like structure (‘machine mechanism’), or to the causal explanation of a particular phenomenon (‘causal mechanism’). In this paper I trace the conceptual evolution of ‘mechanism’ in the history of biology, and I examine how the three meanings of this term have come to be featured in the philosophy of biology, situating the new ‘mechanismic program’ in this context. I argue that the leading advocates of the mechanismic program (i.e., Craver, Darden, Bechtel, etc.) inadvertently conflate the different senses of ‘mechanism’. Specifically, they all inappropriately endow causal mechanisms with the ontic status of machine mechanisms, and this invariably results in problematic accounts of the role played by mechanism-talk in scientific practice. I suggest that for effective analyses of the concept of mechanism, causal mechanisms need to be distinguished from machine mechanisms, and the new mechanismic program in the philosophy of biology needs to be demarcated from the traditional concerns of mechanistic biology.