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But Cartesian mechanism was opposed by many central figures in Bertoloni Meli's narrative. The further employments of the term in the biomedical and natural-philosophical literature after the 1660s instantiate Bertoloni Meli's characterization of "mechanism" as defined earlier. To give Bertoloni Meli the final word, which summarizes this important contribution to both the history and the philosophy of science: Often ... mechanisms remained plausible explanations, concrete or even abstract projects rather than becoming detailed accounts of some of the pressing cases anatomists and natural philosophers were seeking. [Extracted from the article]