mechanism

In philosophy, a system of adapted parts working together, as in a machine. Mechanists hold that all natural phenomena admit of mechanical explanation, and that no reference to teleology (purpose or design) is necessary. In political philosophy, mechanists (like English thinkers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, and J S Mill) see the state as more or less the sum of the individuals composing it, and not as an entity in its own right (which is organicism).