ABSTRACT
A common worry about the utility of philosophical analyses of mechanism is that the term “mechanism” is applied to such a staggeringly diverse collection of things that nothing informative can be said about it as a general category. This is especially true for those like us (Glennan forthcoming; see also Chapter 1, Illari and Williamson 2012) who have argued for a conception of mechanism that is expansive enough to allow most anything scientists have called mechanisms to fall under its extension. In response to such worries, we have argued that, while the things scientists (and philosophers) call mechanisms are heterogeneous, there are enough commonalities to allow for an informative analysis of mechanisms. Such an analysis can show what mechanisms are, and distinguish them from things that are not mechanisms.
