Being
mechanistic, modern science is also historicist: It argues that a complete description of the efficient and material causal history of an entity is a complete
explanation of the entity itself» in other words, that an understanding of how something
came to be is the same as understanding what it is.
This is not because such words are supposed to have some kind of vitalistic tinge which will redeem what we have to say from apparent
mechanistic suggestions, but because they are in fact required for any genuine understanding of the world and any sound
explanation of how things
come to be.