Mark Pagel

Humans like to think of themselves as unusual. We've got big brains that make it possible for us to think, and we think that we have free will and that our behavior can't be described by some mechanistic set of theorems or ideas. But even in terms of much of our behavior, we really aren't very different from other animals.

Scientist

Ellen Willis

My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.

American Writer

William A. Dembski

Give us detailed, testable, mechanistic accounts for the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, the origin of ubiquitous bio macromolecules and assemblages like the ribosome, and the origin of molecular machines like the bacterial flagellum, and intelligent design will die a quick and painless death.

American Philosopher

Jonathan Kozol

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be 'fixed' - I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines - ever asks the opinions of teachers.

Nick Hanauer

Middle-out economics rejects the old misconception that an economy is a perfectly efficient, mechanistic system and embraces the much more accurate idea of an economy as a complex ecosystem made up of real people who are dependent on one another.

American Businessman

Michael Hirst

My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.

English Writer

Gero Miesenbock

I don't know about you, but I find it exhilarating to see how vague psychological notions evaporate and give rise to a physical, mechanistic understanding of the mind, even if it's the mind of the fly.

Austrian Scientist

Stanislav Grof

A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the Western mechanistic paradigm.

Czechoslovakian Psychologist

Jennifer Doudna

As mechanistic biologists, we are hoping that by understanding how the virus works at the molecular level, we will be able to predict with more accuracy how it will evolve.

American Scientist

Kenneth L. Pike

So I see that Christianity in believing in a Creator pulls together more facts, data, inner experience and ability than any mechanistic view could hold for me.

American Sociologist

Focuses on a process in steps or stages explained by individual parts working together.

Parts and Functions

In academic or professional contexts, implies a logical and thorough method.

Systematic Analysis

Describes something in terms of physical or chemical properties without mystery or chance.

Physical Explanation

Refers to natural phenomena in a way that excludes spiritual or supernatural influences.

Non-Spiritual

Can imply a viewpoint is too simplistic for complex realities, especially in criticism.

Overly Simplistic?

Denotes a viewpoint that is not open to new ideas or adapts poorly to changes.

Lacks Flexibility

Indicates an expected or typical reaction without considering unique factors.

Predictable Response

 more mechanistic interactions with it within it and I've used the image of the government machinery earlier on we've heard the metaphors of war a great deal but in some of the speeches that we've heard from our leaders what we've also noticed is you know there's images of how they tell us you will not walk alone when you fall you will be helped you

New ways to understand...

 they don't say is well the numbers all seem to add up but before I present this idea I'll go and share some really crazy people to see if they can come up with something better and say we artificially I think prioritize what I'd call mechanistic ideas over psychological ideas an example of a great psychological idea the single best

Perspective is...

 What they don't say is, "Well, the numbers all seem to add up, but before I present this idea, I'll show it to some really crazy people to see if they can come up with something better." And so we -- artificially, I think -- prioritize what I'd call mechanistic ideas over psychological ideas. An example of a great psychological

Rory Sutherland:...

 also predispose individuals to mental health problems. And last year, we published a study which showed that a gene that's been linked to schizophrenia, when mutated, also smashes the sleep. So we have evidence of a genuine mechanistic overlap between these two important systems.

Why do we sleep? PIPE...

 how we motivate people, how we apply our human resources-- it's built entirely around these extrinsic motivators, around carrots and sticks. That's actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach

The puzzle of motivation...

 lots of things haven't helped this -- business and government suffers from a kind of physics envy. It wants the world to be the kind of place where the input and the change are proportionate. It's a kind of mechanistic world that we'd all love to live in

Rory Sutherland: Sweat...

 With some animals, it's really amazing, and we get to see into their internal experiences. We get this upfront look at the mechanistic interaction between how they respond to the world around them and the state of their biological systems.

Technology that knows...

 the trickle-down policies that so dominate both political parties and embrace something I call middle-out economics. Middle-out economics rejects the neoclassical economic idea that economies are efficient, linear, mechanistic,

Beware, fellow...

 to try to get ourselves -- to get children into the way of thinking about it. I want to end by applying the idea of Middle World to our perceptions of each other. Most scientists today subscribe to a mechanistic view of the

Why the universe seems...

 not because of it. It's like people are sailing into a headwind all the time. And the reason I think is that many of the current policies are based on mechanistic conceptions of education.

Mechanistic