Mechanism

Mechanism may refer to:

• Mechanism (engineering), rigid bodies connected by joints in order to accomplish a desired force and/or motion transmission
• Mechanism (biology), explaining how a feature is created
• Mechanism (philosophy), a theory that all natural phenomena can be explained by physical causes
• Mechanism (sociology), a theory that all social phenomena can be explained by the existence of a determinstic, eternally repeating mechanism, much like a computer algorithm. The algorithm always starts at the same point, follows the same processes or instructions and returns to the starting point and this process repeats forever.
• Mechanism (band), a death metal band from Canada

See also

• Machine
• Machine (mechanical)
• Linkage (mechanical)
• Mechanism design, the art of designing rules of a game to achieve a specific outcome
• Mechanism of action, the means by which a drug exerts its biological effects
• Defence mechanism, unconscious mechanisms aimed at reducing anxiety
• Reaction mechanism, the sequence of reactions by which overall chemical change occurs
• Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek analog computer