This notion led to the idea thai alt human actions are predetermined. Human beings, after all, are made up of tiny particles like everything else. If it was, in principle possible to predict the future course of these particles, it was equally possible in principle, to predict the course of a person composed of them. He believed that the natural laws he described so well were established and sustained by God. He would not have felt at home in what historians call the Newtonian Age with its mechanistic evolution dogma, either materialistic or theistic.
Mechanistic philosophy is the dogma that all of reality is governed solely by mechanical forces.
It maintains that the world is like a huge machine and can be understood entirely in terms of laws of cause and effect. The entire universe is determined by the motion of its particles. As we have noted, one can, in principle. predict exactly the future behavior of any system by knowing its present state. Mechanistic philosophy held sway over Western thought for a full three centuries. It was extended to all phenomena, including living things, human thought, and emotions.