ABSTRACT
A search for possible precursors of our concept of mechanism in ancient texts is potentially rewarding—that is, if we remain mindful of the original methods and aspirations that informed those works and we handle our own terminology with caution. At the beginning of an important article on “Ancient Automata and Mechanical Explanation” (2003), Sylvia Berryman addresses the use of “mechanical” and “mechanistic” in connection with purely material explanations based on contact action. The use of these words, she points out, can be sometimes more opaque than illuminating. One of Berryman’s goals—in that article, in her 2009 book on the “mechanical hypothesis,” and elsewhere—is to reveal the usefulness of such terminology with specific reference to “a method of investigating the natural world through terms and principles drawn from the discipline called ‘mechanics’” (2003: 344). I agree with her assessment that a promising direction of research was largely ignored, while teleology and materialism were regarded by many and for too long as the only positions in ancient natural philosophy worth studying.
