| 释义 |
reductive, a. and n.|rɪˈdʌktɪv|
[f. as reduct v. + -ive. Cf. F. réductif (14th c.).]
A. adj.
1. a. That leads or brings back. Also with of.
1655Stanley Hist. Philos. i. (1701) 11/2 The Zoroastrian Oracles mention reductive Angels, which reduce Souls to them, drawing them from several things. 1677Gale Crt. Gentiles iv. 389 God is..of those things that ascend up to him the way and reductive manuduction. 1821Lamb Elia Ser. i. Old Benchers Inner T., Her prettiest blushing curtsy..reductive of juvenescent emotion!
b. Psychol. That leads back to an earlier state.
1928H. G. & C. F. Baynes tr. Jung's Contrib. to Analytical Psychol. 58 If now, by means of a reductive procedure, we uncover the infantile pre-stages of an adult psyche, we find as the ultimate foundation the infantile seeds. 1950J. A. Hadfield Psychol. & Mental Health xvi. 410 We style our method direct reductive analysis: it is reductive in that we analyse back to the deep-seated and predisposing causes as well as the more recent and precipitating causes. 1962Listener 29 Mar. 568/2 Psychoanalysis is primarily historical and reductive, deducing the analysand's present situation from his past history. 1967J. A. Hadfield Introd. Psychotherapy xxii. 182 By reductive analysis I mean all those systems of psychotherapy whose methods are to go into the past to discover the causes of the neurosis in childhood experiences.
2. a. That reduces, or serves to reduce, in various senses of the vb.; connected with, of the nature of, reduction. Also with of.
1633H. Gellibrand in T. James Voy. R 2 b, [The moon's] Reductive Scruples. 1651Jer. Taylor Holy Dying iv. §6 Repentance..productive of fixed Resolutions of holy Living, and reductive of these to act. 1674S. Jeake Arith. (1696) 156 So such kind of Reductive Questions become transient. 1694Salmon Bate's Dispens. (1715) 326/2 They can never be separated without some reductive Salt. 1741tr. Cramer's Assaying 51 Artificers compose a great many Fluxes with the above-mentioned Salts and with the reductive ones. 1822–34Good's Study Med. (ed. 4) II. 295 The important question before us, under what circumstances it may be expedient to employ a palliative plan, and under what a cooling and reductive? 1838W. Bell Dict. Law Scot. 834 An action of reduction reductive is an action in which a decree of reduction, which has been erroneously or improperly obtained, is sought to be reduced. 1898Westm. Gaz. 29 Nov. 6/3 The Imperial Government do not expect to be recouped one penny on the reductive move. 1924C. E. Montague Right Place iii. 29 Calvin cast his reductive shadow over the naturally high spirits of Scotland. 1957G. E. Hutchinson Treat. Limnol. I. ix. 626 Reductive organic sediments. 1969Listener 14 Aug. 203/3 A British cinema..need not be one that seeks to indoctrinate foreigners in some reductive British image. 1974Times 19 Nov. 9/4 Mr. Wilson..is not a reductive writer: he wants to recreate Crowley, not to explain him away. 1979Quarto Oct. 3/4 There may be something reductive in Wolfe's constant harping on the rivalry and the petty resentments of the astronauts and their wives.
b. That tends to reduce, or is connected with reduction, esp. reduction 6 e and 7 b. (See also reductionism.)
1937T. Parsons Struct. Social Action v. 181 He [sc. Pareto] is thus free at the outset at least from the ‘reductive’ tendencies so prominent in the older positivism. 1957P. Lafitte Person in Psychol. v. 62 Reductive tendencies in social psychology can now be considered. The first of these is the tendency to see the person as an object which is pushed around in a field of force. 1966O. Wojtasiewicz tr. Kotarbinski's Gnosiology iv. i. 221 All reasonings are usually divided into deductive and reductive, the former being from reason to consequence, and the latter, from consequence to reason. 1977R. Williams Marxism & Lit. i. iv. 62 What is in fact idealized, in the ordinary reductive view, is ‘thinking’ or ‘imagining’. 1979Dædalus Summer 96 The search for a common denominator can prove fruitful—if it does not degenerate into a reductive maneuver.
c. Art. = minimal a. c.
1967New Yorker 25 Feb. 99 To judge by art magazines and museum programs, nothing new has been done in the past few years but Happenings, optical displays, and so-called primary structures and reductive paintings. 1970Britannica Bk. of Year 1969 798/3 Rejective art, a simplified and often depersonalized art (as painting or sculpture) based on the principle of the artist rejecting the various options open to him; called also reductive art, reductivism, rejectivism.
†3. That may be referred to or derived from something else; reducible. Obs.
1660Jer. Taylor Duct. Dubit. iii. iii. rule 6 §32 The church makes laws either by her declarative and direct power, or by a reductive and indirect power. 1662W. Gurnall Chr. in Arm. verse 19. viii. (1679) 502/1 His Commission is to make known the Gospel; to deliver that..which is not reductive to this, is besides his instruction. 1691W. Nicholls Answ. Naked Gospel 59 There is a guilt contracted from this reductive Heresy as well as from the other.
B. absol. as n. That which tends to reduce. rare.
a1676Hale Prim. Orig. Man. ii. ix. 215 There needed no other Reductive of the Numbers of Men to an Equability, than the Wars that have happened in the World. 1681J. Chetham Angler's Vade-m. xxxviii. §14 (1689) 249 All sorts of Creatures whatever have their Reductives and Corrections, else would the World be over-stocked. 1871T. D. Haye tr. Taine's On Intelligence I. ii. i. 53 It is the special reductive, that is to say, the contradictory sensation, which fails in the conflict, and, instead of depriving the image of its externality, becomes itself effaced. 1890W. James Princ. Psychol. II. 125 The usual explanation of hypnagogic hallucinations is that they are ideas deprived of their ordinary reductives.
Add: Hence reˈductiveness n., the quality of being reductive.
1980Times Lit. Suppl. 22 Aug. 928/2 [Robert] Lowell's great originality..only a great poet could be so reductive, with a reductiveness—and of an American kind—that leaves Yeats standing. 1989Chicago Tribune 3 Mar. v. 3/5 The reductiveness of these books is the price of bringing clarity to a subject too often treated as a kind of noble tragedy. |