Mechanistic explanation
But historians also employ another form of explanation of human practices, what I am calling mechanistic explanation. Mechanistic explanation specifies not paradigm and performance but cause and effect. Unlike the semiotic form of explanation, which can be applied only to humans, the mechanistic form of explanation applies most obviously to physical nature. Its analogical extension to social life has traditionally been the prime goal of the social sciences, at least until the linguistic turn. In the simplest form of mechanistic explanation, the presence of some phenomenon (a cause) determines the appearance of another phenomenon (an effect). Thus the application of heat sufficient to raise the temperature of water to one hundred degrees Celsius cause the latter to turn to steam. Of course, the laws governing social phenomena always take a probabilistic form, thanks to the extraordinary complexity of the determinants of human behavior, including “determinants” of the semiotic sort discussed above. But few would deny that causal mechanisms do operate in the social world or that these mechanisms must be taken into account in explaining human practices.