The Human Question

A thing can be looked at as part of a machine only in virtue of its inner teleology, to which human purposes are superimposed. Mechanism is not the denial of teleology: it's the denial that higher level teleologies are more than the sum of their parts.  It's an attempt to demythologize wholes, but it's based upon the myth that knowledge of nature starts with abstract knowledge akin to geometry rather than familiarity with human agency.

A machine doesn't work at all unless desire exists, albeit desire that is extrinsic to the machine.  A machine in its primordial givenness is an aspect of a whole, the other part of which is the desiring agent. The universe as a whole, therefore, cannot be a machine... unless one posits an extrinsic, desiring agent.