Explore: Mechanical Philosophy

Mechanical philosophy is a form of natural philosophy which compares the universe to a large-scale mechanism (i.e. a machine). Mechanical philosophy is

Robert Boyle, Thomas Browne and Isaac Newton. Unlike the mechanical philosophy, the chemical philosophy stressed the active powers of matter, which alchemists

thought known as mechanical philosophy. With this foundation of reasoning, Descartes formulated many of his theories on mechanical and geometric physics

large-scale mechanism, a philosophy that explained the universe is made with matter and motion. This mechanical philosophy was based on Epicureanism

espousing a more mechanical philosophy of the world, regarding it as being like a machine.[citation needed] The term natural philosophy preceded current

Outlines of a Course of Lectures on Mechanical Philosophy, Edinburgh, J. Brown, 1803. Elements of Mechanical Philosophy: Being the Substance of a Course

conception of mechanical philosophy partly in response to Descartes; he particularly opposed Descartes' reductionist view that only purely mechanical explanations

Christian materialism is a widely discussed position in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, defended by figures such as Peter van Inwagen and Trenton

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 ed.). Descartes, it can be justly said, is the founder of the other main school of the "mechanical philosophy" of the 17th

neither. Although often associated with the emergence of early modern mechanical philosophy, and especially with the names of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes