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Teleology Without Tears: Aristotle and the Role of Mechanistic Conceptions of Organisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sylvia Berryman
Sylvia Berryman*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BCV6T 1Z1, Canada
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Extract

In this paper I outline a role for mechanistic conceptions of organisms in ancient Greek natural philosophy, especially the study of organisms. By ‘mechanistic conceptions’ I mean the use of ideas and techniques drawn from the field of mechanics to investigate the natural world. ‘Mechanistic conceptions’ of organisms in ancient Greek philosophy, then, are those that draw on the ancient understanding of the field called ‘mechanics’ — hê mêchanikê technê—to investigate living things, rather than those bearing some perceived similarity to modern notions of ‘the mechanical.’ I have argued elsewhere that evidence of mechanistic conceptions of the natural world can be found, not only among seventeenth and eighteenth century ‘mechanical philosophers,’ but also—albeit in vestigial form — in some ancient Greek texts. Unfortunately, these reports are slight, often by detractors of this approach, and offer only clues as to the motivational context for employing these mechanical conceptions. Here, my purpose is to suggest what role they might have played in the history of natural philosophy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 351 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007

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