MECHANISM. — A philosophical theory, or more generally a trend of thought, which interprets the world as a great machine and seeks to explain all sensible phenomena solely by quantity, local motion, and the notions derived from them (space, figure, time...), thereby excluding any substantial and qualitative diversification and change. Mechanism extends its explanatory attempt even to vital and psychic phenomena, and in this sense it stands opposed to vitalism, which recognizes the irreducibility of life and psyche to mere mechanical elements. Even when restricted to the inorganic world alone, mechanism has taken various forms in the history of human thought and has been connected with other conceptions of nature, from which it must be carefully distinguished. Mechanism has often been linked with atomism (q.v.), inasmuch as it responds to the same exigency of rationalization and visualization of the elements of the physical world. Yet not every form of atomism is mechanistic; for example, the atomism of Anaxagoras and Empedocles and the chemical atomism of the 19th century, which recognize atoms endowed with irreducible qualities and forces distinct from local considerations, are not mechanistic. Likewise, not every mechanism is atomistic, as in the case of Cartesian mechanism, which admits the infinitesimal divisibility of quantity. Moreover, mechanism must be distinguished from mechanics, or the science of motion, which was experimentally and mathematically founded by Galileo, Newton, and Lagrange, even though the founders and cultivators of mechanics were often dominated by more or less mechanistic conceptions.
I. ANCIENT MECHANISM
The first historical formulation of mechanism is found in the atomism of the Greeks Leucippus and Democritus (5th–4th century B.C.), Epicurus (4th–3rd century), and the Latin Lucretius (1st century: *De rerum natura*). In contrast to the doctrines of Epicurus and Lucretius, which posit weight as the cause of the motion of atoms, Democritus, according to the fragmentary testimonies that remain, held that no cause should be assigned to the eternal motion of atoms: *“Democritus does not think that a cause should be sought for things that always are”* (Aristotle, *Phys.*, VIII, 1, 252 a 35). For this reason, Democritean mechanistic thought has been linked by F. Enriques (*Storia del pensiero scientifico*, I. *Il mondo antico*, Bologna 1932, pp. 148–49) to the concept of inertia, which underlies the mechanics of Galileo and Newton, according to which uniform rectilinear motion is maintained indefinitely without the intervention of a new force that would cause acceleration. Certainly, Democritean conception offers greater points of contact with modern mechanical views than does the later Epicurean doctrine. Nevertheless, one must not forget the profound difference in logical structure between Democritean mechanism and modern mechanics, as well as between his atomism and modern atomic theory. While, in fact, the modern principle of inertia is the result of the Galilean experimental method, the motion of Democritus’ atoms is an a priori assumption, and the coincidence of Democritean mechanism with the kinetic theory of matter, from Bernoulli to Maxwell, is merely partial and extrinsic. Moreover, even the principle of inertia in modern mechanics, though interpreted in a mechanistic sense by many, following Descartes, with the denial of any reality distinct from the body itself and its motion, was understood by the very founders of mechanics, such as Leonardo and Galileo, and in a non-mechanistic philosophical interpretation, as involving in the moving body a reality distinct from the body itself and its velocity—the impulse or quantity of motion—which fully realizes in itself the Aristotelian notion of variable quality (cf. P. Hoenen, *Filosofia della natura inorganica*, Brescia 1950, pp. 123–31, 149). Thus, whereas Democritean mechanism, like all subsequent forms of philosophical mechanism, is essentially tied to the metaphysical idea of identity, modern mechanics is independent of it; hence the acceptance of the latter does not in any way imply the affirmation of the former.II. MODERN MECHANISM
Mechanism, with its fundamental idea that all physical phenomena must be explained solely by the elements of figure and motion, was revived in the modern age as a reaction against Aristotelian philosophy of quality, which, especially in the period of the decline of Scholasticism, had sought to explain new empirical data by recourse to an ever-increasing number of occult qualities. The new and characteristic element of modern mechanism is the introduction of the Galilean experimental method and, even more, the increasingly complete and rigorous mathematical description of the laws of motion, facilitated by developments in 17th-century mathematics, especially analytic geometry and infinitesimal analysis. From a philosophical standpoint, special mention must be made of Descartes’ mechanism (q.v.), one of the most rigid and consistent forms, which presents itself as the type of non-atomistic mechanism in opposition to the atomistic mechanism of the ancient Greeks, renewed at the same time as Descartes by Gassendi (q.v.).While rigid mechanism, consistently with its fundamental conception, denies any active power among bodies and admits no other cause capable of influencing changes in motion except mechanical impact, the Newtonian theory of universal gravitation and later developments in modern chemistry led scientists to adopt more moderate forms of mechanism, which acknowledge the existence of central attractive forces, affinities, and specific properties of different atoms irreducible to mere elements of figure and motion. Nevertheless, despite these partial concessions, the mechanistic conception, at least as an ideal tendency, continued to form the generally accepted premise of science until almost the end of the last century. The theoretical exigency and logical consequence of this conception were summed up in famous phrases by Laplace (*Théorie analytique des probabilités*, Paris 1850, pp. II–III).
The 19th century, however, also saw the rise of an anti-mechanistic current, supported by positivism and energeticism (q.V. DYNAMISM; ENERGY). The positivists, following Comte (q.v.) and Mach (q.v.), level against mechanism the same reproach that mechanism had directed at 17th-century Aristotelianism, namely, that it explains phenomena by recourse to hypothetical occult entities—particles and invisible motions—which are supposed to be the causes of visible phenomena. Positivist science, instead, wishes to remain within the bounds of sensible data, describing the concatenations and constants of phenomena, the laws of nature, without seeking a beyond or resorting to metaphysical hypotheses; thermodynamics would provide an example of this. The influence exerted by this philosophy has been great; and in minds that, while accepting its principles, felt the need for a concrete representation, it gave rise to a new epistemological theory intermediate between positivism and mechanism: the theory of models, which enjoyed great vogue in England with J. K. Maxwell (*Memoirs*, published in *Philosophical Magazine*, 1861–62; *Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism*, London 1873), W. Thomson (*Lectures on Molecular Dynamics and the Wave-Theory of Light*, Baltimore 1884; *Popular Lectures and Addresses*, London 1889–94), O. Lodge (*Modern Views on Electricity*, 1889), and was also taken up in Germany by H. Hertz (*Gesammelte Werke*, Leipzig 1894–95) and in Italy by A. Garbasso and A. Pastore (*Logica formale dedotta dalla considerazione dei modelli meccanici*, Turin 1906). The theory of models preserves mechanistic explanation, affirming with Thomson that a phenomenon is rendered intelligible when a mechanical model of it has been constructed; yet it does not attribute to these models any real ontological value, regarding them as purely mental, subjective schemas.
At the beginning of the 20th century, however, the advances in chemistry and the kinetic molecular theory, and especially the experiments on emulsions conducted by J. Perrin (*Les atomes*, Paris 1914) to determine Avogadro’s number and molecular magnitudes, contributed significantly to the debate between positivists and mechanists. The kinetic molecular hypotheses, though not strictly speaking the object of direct experience, received such confirmation as to render unquestionable the possibility of ontologically true mechanical representations. The impression on more or less positivist physicists was enormous: the atom and its movements ceased to be convenient fictions and ideal entities, becoming real entities, a laboratory reality (cf. *Bulletin de la soc. franc. de phil.*, sessions of 27 Jan. and 3 March, 10 [1910], pp. 81-121; H. Poincaré, *Dernières pensées*, Paris 1913, pp. 196-99; L. Brunschwig, *L’expérience humaine et la causalité physique*, 1912, pp. 375-76). This success also benefited the mechanistic philosophical conception, of which Meyerson (q.v.) became the principal exponent and which many physicists and philosophers identified with the kinetic molecular physical theory.
III. CRISIS OF MECHANICISM — Nevertheless, many of the observations advanced already by the energeticists and even more the developments in physics over the last fifty years have inevitably led physicists to revise the fundamental postulates of scientific constructions from the 17th to the 19th centuries and perhaps definitively to abandon a general mechanical interpretation. Impact, with the elastic forces it generates; central attractive and repulsive forces; electromagnetic forces dependent on charge, distance, and velocity, acting perpendicularly to the line joining the centers; radiant energy; gravitational and electromagnetic fields—all these phenomena had already revealed themselves as irreconcilable with the fundamental position of mechanism, demanding the acceptance of real elements distinct from pure extension and local motion, and thus necessarily introducing the Aristotelian notion of variable quality, as has already been noted with regard to impulse (cf. Hoenen, op. cit., pp. 149-60).
More fundamental is the permanent theoretical crisis at the very essence of mechanism, which has been highlighted by Meyerson himself. Mechanism, yielding to the exigency of visualizing the real, limits rationality to identity and the permanent; but a rationalization of the world understood in this sense inevitably leads, if one wishes to avoid Eleatic monism, to the negation of rationality itself. Just as Democritus had resorted to affirming the reality of the void, so Meyerson is compelled to admit the existence of the irrational. There is something that resists rationalization as understood by mechanism: thought, sensation, energy; even local motion presupposes forces acting to cause its variation and transmission from one body to another; indeed, the mere numerical multiplicity of the single fundamental matter presupposes an inexplicable heterogeneity in the face of the exigency of mechanistic rationality. Hence Meyerson’s conclusion, which is the logical conclusion of every mechanism: science arises from the clash between the rational and the irrational.
Finally, the theories of relativity and quanta have brought new difficulties to mechanistic interpretation, with the relativity of space and time measurements, the variability of mass, the conversion of mass into energy, the quantization of elementary phenomena, the dualism between corpuscle and wave, the principle of indeterminacy, the new statistics of Fermi and Bose with the indistinguishability of corpuscles, and so on. The difficulties are indeed such that many physicists believe they must conclude not only to the exclusion of a mechanistic representation but of any objective representation of elementary realities, reverting to a positivistic conception of science. On the other hand, however, physicists in their description of reality spontaneously employ terminology that is distinctly Aristotelian, such as energy states and potentials, the distinction of the true atom as a unitary whole from the mere dynamic aggregate of electron and proton (line and continuous spectra), the virtual presence of electrons and mesons in the nucleus, transformations of protons into neutrons and vice versa not through simple aggregation or disaggregation of identical permanent elements, and the generation and destruction of electron pairs. All this suggests the possibility that science may attain an objective but non-mechanistic vision of the physical world and its elements, in accordance with Aristotelian-Thomist epistemology and cosmology.
He possessed a knowledge of Armenian patristics and in the refutation of heretics. He did not, however, abandon the journey he had undertaken until he reached Cyprus, where he contracted a sudden illness and was forced to return to his native city.
In the spring of 1696 M. was ordained a priest. Full of zeal and aware of the urgent needs prevailing...
(For certainty of the pr. Mechitarists)
He had met them in the Levant. Then (1696-1700) he undertook a series of daring journeys between Constantinople and the Caucasus, in search of a suitable place and of some prelate or vartapet to sponsor his ideal. When this attempt failed and while Avetik was unleashing the first persecutions against Catholics and their leaders in Constantinople, including M., the latter, on 8 September 1701, founded his Institute in the convent of the French Capuchins of St. Louis, his inviolable refuge.
Acting on the advice of the Venetian ambassador to Constantinople, M. and his disciples traveled toward the Morea (Peloponnese), a Venetian domain since 1687, arriving at the beginning of 1703; settling in Modon, within a few years he built a magnificent monastery and laid the foundations of a church (1708). With two letters dated 16 June 1705, one addressed to Pope Clement XI and the other to Cardinal Fabroni, Prefect of Propaganda, M. petitioned for the approval of the Institute as a reformed monastic order of St. Anthony the Abbot. Propaganda approved the somewhat revised Constitutions ad experimentum (1711).
The work, barely transplanted to Modon, was soon shattered by the Turkish-Venetian war, which ended with the passage of the Peloponnese to the Turks (1715). M. and a few disciples, stripped of everything, were cast upon the shores of the Venetian lagoon, where they sought asylum and protection and were granted, for a symbolic rent, the island of St. Lazarus (26 August 1717).
A larger and more beautiful monastery with church and library, completed under M.’s guidance in 1740, now offered a worthy seat for his work, which, through intense missionary, literary and educational activity, became the centre of religious and cultural irradiation among the Armenian people. Indeed, during the fifty years of his activity, M. constantly promoted the apostolate among Armenians in Constantinople, in the inland cities of Armenia, in Transylvania and in Belgrade. His work, initially hindered, was expedited by a decree of the Propaganda (26 Sept. 1718), personally obtained by him, which granted to M. and his successors the faculty to send their own missionaries to the Levant. This decree, together with the fourth vow of the Missions, prescribed by the Constitutions, constitutes the canonical basis of the Mechitarist missions.
To his missionary activity M. added intellectual endeavour through Catholic printing. He himself reprinted books of piety and religion and composed others. About fifty works are counted as issued through his efforts, among which first the *Iniziazione* (Constantinople 1700), the *Book of Virtues and Vices* by P. d’Aragona, the *Paradise of the Soul* by Albert the Great, the *Exercises in Perfection* by A. Rodriguez, the *Compendium Theologicae Veritatis* attributed to St Albert the Great, and many others of an ascetical character. He compiled and published the Armenian Grammar, a commentary on Ecclesiastes and on St Matthew (a voluminous work), an Armenian Dictionary—the first of its kind—and many other commentaries. M., admired by his compatriots and foreigners (he has been called a second “Illuminator”), was buried in the abbatial church at San Lazzaro. The preliminary processes for his beatification have been initiated.
Monks, giving rise to an autonomous branch of the Mechitarists, settled first at Trieste and, from the beginning of the 19th century, at Vienna.
Both Congregations have displayed intense missionary, educational and cultural activity for the benefit of the Armenian nation. Besides the two mother-houses at Venice and Vienna, where the respective Abbots General reside and where printing-presses have been operating for centuries, various Mechitarist mission-stations, schools and colleges, scattered through the principal cities of the former Ottoman Empire, of Caucasian Armenia and of the diaspora, in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, etc., diffuse their beneficent work.
In the intellectual field the Mechitarists, though few in number, have achieved a remarkable output both in quality and quantity unparalleled in the nation: over three thousand works; two monthly reviews, *Pazmaweb* and *Handels-Ansorya* (the former has already surpassed a century of life), regularly illustrate the Armenistic cultural movement. In the educational sphere the two secular lyceum-colleges of Samuel Moorat and Raphael in Venice, directed by the Venetian Mechitarists, are renowned.