Mechanisms in Science Method or Metaphysics?

In recent years what has come to be called the 'New Mechanism' has emerged as a framework for thinking about the philosophical assumptions underlying many areas of science, especially in sciences such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology. This book offers a fresh look at the role of mechanisms, by situating novel analyses of central philosophical issues related to mechanisms within a rich historical perspective of the concept of mechanism as well as detailed case studies of biological mechanisms (such as apoptosis). It develops a new position, Methodological Mechanism, according to which mechanisms are to be viewed as causal pathways that are theoretically described and are underpinned by networks of difference-making relations. In contrast to metaphysically inflated accounts, this study characterises mechanism as a concept-in-use in science that is deflationary and metaphysically neutral, but still methodologically useful and central to scientific practice.

Introduction; Part I. Ideas of Mechanism: 1. Mechanisms, Then and Now; 2: Extending Mechanism Beyond the two 'Most Catholic Principles of Bodies; Part II. Causation and Mechanism: 3. Mechanisms in Scientific Practice: the Case of Apoptosis; 4. Mechanisms as Causal Pathways; 5: Mechanisms, Causation and Laws; 6: Against Activities; 7: Whither Counterfactuals?; Part III. Beyond New Mechanism: 8. Constitution vs Causation; 9. Multilevel Mechanistic Explanation; 10: Methodological Mechanism.

Stavros Ioannidis is Assistant Professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is principal investigator of the project MECHANISM, funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation.
Stathis Psillos is Professor of Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is the author of Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth (1999) and Causation and Explanation (2002), and editor (with Henrik Lagerlund and Ben Hill) of Reconsidering Causal Powers (2021).