mechanism
Pluralmechanisms
- 1A mechanical means of converting or controlling motion, or of transmitting or controlling power.
The lifting mechanism in the crane transfers power from the motor to the cable.
Designers simplified the steering mechanism to reduce friction.
Similardevice, apparatus, machinery, gear, assembly
Note
The core engineering sense, and the one closest to the word's origin: a learned borrowing through New Latin mechanismus from Greek mēkhanē, "machine." It names the working part inside a machine, not the machine as a whole. A car has a steering mechanism and a crane has a lifting mechanism. Its usual job is to turn one kind of motion into another, such as rotary into linear, or to pass power along.
- 2
- 3An assembly of interacting machine parts, such as gears, cams, links, belts, and chains, or mechanical elements that perform logic.
The watchmaker assembled the mechanism from dozens of tiny gears and springs.
This printing press relies on a mechanism of cams and belts to feed paper.
Similarmovement, works, workings, machinery
Note
Here the word points at the parts themselves, the cams, gears, links and chains, and English usually names such an assembly by the job it does. Henry Petroski, writing on doorknobs in American Scientist (2012), calls the hidden works a latching mechanism and its axis the spindle, the fulcrum about which the turning takes place. Steering, lifting and latching mechanisms all follow that same naming pattern.
- 4Any system of objects or other entities that interact with one another.
Economists treat the grain market as a mechanism in which thousands of buyers and sellers interact to set the daily price.
Researchers described the coral reef as a single mechanism of interdependent organisms.
Similarsystem, network, organism
Note
Stretched beyond machinery, the word covers any arrangement of interacting parts, from proteins in the brain to transport bodies in a region. Used without an article, it comes close to meaning "provision" or "means": RAIL (2023) notes there was "little mechanism to re-open routes." Medical writing favors the plural, as in prionlike mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease.
- 5
- 6The philosophical view that all natural phenomena can be explained entirely by physical causes.
Mechanism holds that living organisms operate according to the same physical laws as machines.
Critics of mechanism argue that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical processes alone.
Similarphysicalism, materialism
Oppositevitalism
Note
A name for a doctrine, not a device. It holds that life and mind, like everything else in nature, run on material interactions governed by physical law, which leaves no room for purposes or vital forces. As the name of a position it usually takes no article: mechanism holds, critics of mechanism. The picture behind it is the machine's working parts scaled up to the whole world.
Practice
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Origin
A learned borrowing from New Latin mechanismus, which derives from the Ancient Greek μηχανή (mēkhanḗ, "machine").