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How does mechanical materialism describe the world?

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Bronze bust of Epicurus with a full beard and draped clothing, displayed on a round inscribed base at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. — Materialism Epicurus, bronze bust from a Greek original, c. 280–270 bce; in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.

Mechanical materialism describes the world as consisting entirely of hard, massy material objects, similar to stones, which may exist alongside a void or empty space. In this view, all natural phenomena are explained by the interaction of these objects through impact and potentially gravitational attraction.1

This philosophy, often referred to as mechanism, holds that the world is governed by matter and motion according to physical laws. It seeks to eliminate unobservable qualities from science, reducing complex biological functions to physical and chemical processes to reject spirit-body dualism.2

Regarding minds or other seemingly immaterial entities, mechanical materialism either denies their existence or explains them away as being material things or the motions of such things. While critics argue that this perspective struggles to account for concepts like intentionality, materialists maintain that physical systems can possess such properties or that the concepts themselves lack clarity.13