I don’t know if I agree that the ‘mechanistic’ picture of the universe dates back to the 1st century. In fact I would have placed this view at the beginning of modernity (say 16th C – ). I had thought that up until the end of the medieval period, the picture of the universe held by anyone educated enough to contemplate such an idea was ptolmaic and aristotlean – the superlunary realm was literary heaven and incorruptible and changeless, and the sublunary realm home to ghosts, spirits and changing phenomena. That is about my understanding of it. How could 1st century society form a mechanistic view when in fact there were very few machines?

Brian