AustLit

Problems arise for mechanists when both the essence and uniformity of nature is explained through the accidental collision of matter. There is also an epistemological argument about what the meaning of life is if there is no distinction between living beings and the machinery made by living things. Referring to the use of functions and final causes, what does this all mean for mechanists if there are no final causes or end goal in a non-human nature other than to simply repeat the function and repeat the end goal. Problems for mechanists in a holistic sense can be encompassed by three main points. One, accounting for the identity of an organism and what it means to assign an organism with specific functions and causes as well as the unity of these matters. Two, accounting for the disparity between automata and organisms and how to define or explain differences between living things and non-living things. Three, explaining the complex and composite systems of biology as something strictly mechanical explained through resources without cognitive value or teleological means (Brown, 2017).

Metaphysically, solutions to problems attributed against mechanist theories lie in the ability to make sense of composite entities that are greater than a gathering of particles.  Digby provides sound solutions with his theories of composite entities and his criteria of an automaton. According to Digby, there must be a heterogenic unity between parts and motion; an interdependence on one another under a certain hierarchy of organisation must be present to attribute function (Digby, 1658). There must be indivisibility so there is no loss of identity of the thing, and, lastly, emergence which recognises that the whole performs irreducible of its separate parts. Mechanists also offered alternatives to Aristotle’s view on hylomorphism and argued that a substantial form could differentiate from its things, explained by its distinctive behaviour, and that natural change consists in the change of accidental forms or substances.