Introduction: A Historical Paradox

In 1704 a contributor to a French learned journal observed that a new style of scientific explanation had become all the rage. One heard of nothing else but mechanistic physics. Nor was the fashion confined to savants. Ladies familiar with the philosophy of Descartes would blithely reduce animals to machinery. “Please do not bring a dog for Pauline,” a certain Mme. de Grignan begged in 1690: “We want only rational creatures here, and belonging to the sect we belong to we refuse to burden ourselves with these machines.” The universe has become so mechanical, Fontenelle announced in 1686, that one might almost be ashamed of it.

This mechanization of the natural world became such a feature of late seventeenth-century science that historians have sometimes spoken of the death of nature, as organic analogies were displaced by images of clockwork. The impact of mechanical analogies varied from science to science, often proving premature in the study of living systems. In the long run, however, there was scarcely any branch of science that was not affected. Despite the revolution in physics, which in our own century has made the image of a rigidly deterministic universe less secure, the assimilation of natural processes to machinery continues to be a conspicuous feature of scientific investigation. The legacy of the seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy is apparent in such terms as genetic engineering and in the description of computers capable of simulating aspects of human intelligence.