To explain all Human Behaviour is impossible Monsieur Descartes
Contact Mechanics is a concept that originates from the age of the Scientific Revolution in early modern Europe from the sense of conquest and triumph of man over nature. It prescribes that a mechanistic understanding that can explain all of the animal behavior and all of human emotions. In essence, contact mechanics believe that by the following rationality, one can realize the what and how of the world by breaking it down to its simplest part. As opposed to the Aristotelian idea that sympathies of objects that exert influence on each other, the contact mechanic philosophy follows that it is not occult qualities but the observable nature and properties of bodies that define the way they function.
Descartes was a proponent of this idea. Following the mechanistic model, his method of doubts advised logic and rationale. By the way of breaking big things into smaller pieces, he first divides the universe into mechanistic parts. Upon dividing this, he goes on to define that the corporeal objects that are too small to be defined must resemble the larger structures. He derives a world of action and consequences observable to humans by their internal senses by way of emotions and mental states and external senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. In breaking this down further, Descartes goes on to explain bodily functions by the way of the actions of nerves and other organs in responding to the world. He believes that emotions and mental states follow thought and that this occurs due to animal spirits that also affect the blood flowing around the heart leading to different sensations/emotions.
But since Descartes, various theories have led us to conclusively believe that there is only one type of matter, which means that animal spirits don’t exist as Descartes put forth. Also to keep in mind is the fact that Descartes’ mission as a philosopher was to lay down rules for the direction of the mind for the human species. He believed that confusion, bad definition, and illogic diverted the direction of the mind from realizing its true nature.
But in definition, it is inadequate to say that we differ from animals in them being more mechanistic than we are. Descartes, also himself admits to not understanding what certain substances are such as sadness:
In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am yet to learn.
Besides Descartes’ own admission, the biggest example of such in-explanation would be religion, the creative prowess involved in constructing Gods with superhuman abilities while it serves no logical purpose. But humans differ from animals in their need for self-realization which serves for a better explanation yet brings us no closer to understanding why we do need such ideologies or why each individual might differ in their thoughts of the same.
