Mechanical Thinking
Term
Mechanical Thinking
Idea level
Pillar
Definition
Mechanical thinking refers to a mode of reasoning that treats societies as simple machines, governed by linear causality and predictable inputs and outputs. In this view, social problems are assumed to have single causes and can be solved through standardized interventions, technocratic control, or the replication of “best practices.” Mechanical thinking has also been termed by economist Esther Duflo as “thinking in machine mode.”
In Yuen Yuen Ang’s critique, mechanical thinking is ill-suited to complex societies because it strips away the inherent realities of multiple causation, feedback loops, and emergence. When applied to development and governance, it often produces policy failure, misdiagnosis, or paralysis in the face of disruption.
Sources
Canonical articulations:
Ang, Y.Y. “Adaptive Political Economy: Toward a New Paradigm.” World Politics (2024).
Ang, Y.Y. “Doing Development in the Polycrisis,” Project Syndicate, 25 Nov 2024. (Reprinted at UNDP Development Blog)
Comparison source:
Duflo, E. (2017). “The Economist as Plumber.” American Economic Review, 107(5), 1–26.
Genealogy
[Paradigm] Industrial–Colonial Paradigm
→ [Pillar] Mechanical thinking applied to political economy (societies as toasters)
Replaced by
[Paradigm] AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral)
→ [Pillar] APE (Adaptive Political Economy): Systems thinking applied to political economy (societies as trees)
Alternative Expressions & Related Terms of “Mechanical Thinking”
Mechanistic thinking
Thinking in machine mode
Plumbing mindset in economics
Plumbing in policy design
Taps and pipes (in behaviorial economics)
Quotes
Adherents of the mechanical worldview are often proud: they think that by treating trees as toasters, they simplify and control a messy world. In reality… treating nature as industrial objects has spawned a range of problems in real life, from ecological degradation to new diseases.
The classical paradigm is inherited from the industrial age, a time of domination when humans revered machines and factories and sought to bring wild, messy nature under control. We are using a mechanical paradigm passed down from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries to grasp the crises and possibilities of the twenty-first century. What is worse, we are doubling down on the paradigm of the past.
- Ang, Adaptive Political Economy (2024)