In hmolscience, social mechanism, a common term used in social mechanics, refers to the notion of “mechanism”, whether chemical or mechanical, imported into sociology or economics to explain human phenomenon and experience.

History
The first to explicitly initiate social mechanism in chemical reaction terms was German polymath Johann Goethe, who in his 1809 physical chemistry based novella employed Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman's 1775 "affinity reaction diagrams" to pen out 36 chapters of human interaction in which the comings and goings of people, on an isolated estate, the reaction vessel, actuate out mechanistically, according to the following basic logic, namely the transposition of the 1757 chemical mechanism logic of Scottish chemist William Cullen, which underlies Bergman's reaction diagrams, to human reactions:

Chemical version
(1757)
William Cullen (1757): “the dart → between them expresses the elective attraction; when I put a dart with the tail to one substance and the point to another, I mean that the substance to which the tail is directed unites with the one to which the point is directed more strongly than it does with the one united to it in the crotchet {.”
Human version
(1809)

Chemical version (1757)	William Cullen (1757): “the dart → between them expresses the elective attraction; when I put a dart with the tail to one substance and the point to another, I mean that the substance to which the tail is directed unites with the one to which the point is directed more strongly than it does with the one united to it in the crotchet {.”	Human version (1809)

Goethe's protege German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer later expanded on this mechanistic logic, albeit with focus on a prolonged effort to argue that human "will" and chemical "will" are one and the same, being that, as Goethe famously put it in his anonymous advertisement, in defense of his novella, "there is, after all, only one nature."

In circa 1890, Henry Adams penned a nine volume history of the United Stated during the administration of Thomas Jefferson to prove to himself that historical process operates via cause-and-effect mechanism:

Stark classification

See main: Stark classification

In 1962, Czechoslovakian-born English sociologist Werner Stark, in his Fundamental Forms of Social Thought, divided fundamental sociological theory into the study of society as an organism, as a mechanism, and as a process, respectively. Within each perspective, he further subdivided into: normative form, positive form, secondary form, and extreme forms. Though Stark does not include Goethe in his classification scheme, he does mention him twice in his book, but refers to him as one of the great all around philosophers, though not necessarily a sociologist. It seems that Stark was unaware of Goethe's chemical mechanism usage.

See also
● Human chemical reaction theory

References
1. Stark, Werner. (1962). The Fundamental Forms of Social Thought. Routledge & Kegan Paul.