The Search for Generality in the Notion of Mechanism

  1. Saúl Pérez-González
Revista:
Teorema: Revista internacional de filosofía

ISSN: 0210-1602

Ano de publicación: 2019

Volume: 38

Número: 3

Páxinas: 77-94

Tipo: Artigo

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Outras publicacións en: Teorema: Revista internacional de filosofía

Resumo

In this paper, I introduce and discuss a general principle shared by new mechanists: the search for generality. New mechanists agree that an appropriate notion of mechanism has to be suitable for most of the fields of science where mechanisms are relevant. The development of general notions of mechanism is pursued with two different and alternative strategies, which I call the extrapolation strategy and the across-the-sciences strategy. After analysing paradigmatic examples of them, I argue that both strategies face outstanding difficulties and that the prospects for overcoming them are dim. It is concluded that it would be advisable to abandon the search for generality.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Marc Artiga, Raffaella Campaner, and Valeriano Iranzo for their valuable comments. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under grants FPU16/03274 and FFI2017-89639-P.

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