mechanistic

What it means

1. Having the impersonal and automatic characteristics of a machine.

   The graceful, otherworldly sounds on which the first movement was built gave way to sharply articulated, dissonantly blaring woodwind and brass chords, and eventually to a mechanistic passage that combined rumbling low notes and a steady, searing high pitch.

   2009 September 14, Allan Kozinn, “Austrian Avant-Garde: Eerie Textures and Text”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 17 Jun 2022

2. Predetermined by, or as if by, a mechanism.
3. human sciencesHaving a physical or biological cause.

   Such ateleological explanation is what is meant by mechanistic explanation in the broad sense.

   1908, William McDougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology, section 449

In a sentence

The graceful, otherworldly sounds on which the first movement was built gave way to sharply articulated, dissonantly blaring woodwind and brass chords, and eventually to a mechanistic passage that combined rumbling low notes and a steady, searing high pitch.

2009 September 14, Allan Kozinn, “Austrian Avant-Garde: Eerie Textures and Text”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 17 Jun 2022

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*megʰ-der.?
2. Ancient Greekμηχᾰνή (mēkhănḗ)
3. New Latinmechanismu
4. Englishmechan(ism)
5. Englishmechanistic

From mechan(ism) + -istic.