A Mechanistic Model of Meaning

Abstract

Ever since the scientific revolution, physics has been the ‘queen’ science and biologists have been split into twp opposite camps, one in favour and one against adopting its paradigm, a view that has become known as mechanism. That paradigm, however, has undergone at least three major changes in the last few centuries, and we need to keep them well in mind if we want to avoid misunderstandings. The first version of mechanism in biology was the Cartesian doctrine that “the body is a machine” and that the clock is its model: “A healthy man is like a well functioning clock—wrote Descartes—and an ill man is like a clock that needs repairing”. The mechanical concept of nature spread very quickly in 17th century Europe, but not without conflict. Opposition came particularly from a new science that was slowly emerging from the night of alchemy and that regarded the human body essentially as a seat of chemical reactions. The heirs of the alchemists were determined to leave magic behind, but had no intention of accepting the ‘mechanical’ view of nature, and one of chemistry’s founding fathers, Georg Ernst Stahl (1659–1731), launched an open challenge to mechanism. He claimed that organisms cannot be machines because what is taking place inside them are real transmutations of substances and not movements of wheels, belts and pulleys. The arguments of the chemists did have an impact and forced mechanists to change the very concept of living machine. In the course of the 18th century, the view that organisms are mechanical machines, gradually turned into the idea that they are chemical machines. This change of perspective went hand in hand with the development of the steam engine, and that machine became the new model of biology. In the 19th century, furthermore, the study of the steam engine was pushed all the way up to the highest level of theoretical formalism, and culminated with the discovery of the first two laws of thermodynamics. The result was that any living system came to be seen as a thermodynamic machine, Biosemiotics (2011) 4:1–4 DOI 10.1007/s12304-010-9103-z