humanisticadj.
/ˌhjuːməˈnɪstɪk/, U.S. /ˌhjuməˈnɪstɪk/ 1.
a. Of, relating to, or espousing the principles and ideas of the Renaissance humanists; (more generally) literary (as opposed to scientific).
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > knowledge > branch of knowledge > humanistic studies > [adjective] > relating to the Classics
humanistical1716
humanistic1840
1840 Educ. Mag. 2 247 The Humanistic system, which had more influence upon the superior schools than upon those of the citizens and the poor,..was especially defended by Ernesti and his followers.
1845 S. Austin tr. L. von Ranke Hist. Reformation in Germany (ed. 2) I. 287 A collision between the new and humanistic method [of instruction]..and the old modes, was inevitable.
1885 W. Pater Marius the Epicurean II. 128 The Church was becoming [in the latter part of second century] humanistic, in a best and earliest Renaissance.
1898 Science 19 Aug. 210/2 It is..as grave a mistake to develop a pupil's training mainly along the scientific line as it is to confine him to humanistic studies alone.
1906 Times 3 Aug. 8/3 Dr. Garnett..spoke eloquently for the need of the scientific man for literary discipline, as e converso the lamented Professor Sir Richard Jebb pleaded for the application of scientific methods to humanistic studies.
1957 R. H. Fife Revolt Martin Luther xxvii. 521 The greatest of humanistic scholars, Erasmus, was, however, growing alarmed by the rising tide of conflict.
1990 G. Snyder Pract. of Wild iii. 66 One of the formal criteria of humanistic scholarship is that it be concerned with the scrutiny of texts. A text is information stored through time.
1997 L. Hutson Usurer's Daughter i. ii. 57 Elyot's provulgation of the history occurs as part of a project to educate the nobility along humanistic lines, through a programme of exemplary reading.
b. Palaeography. Of, relating to, or designating a simplified style of script developed from medieval book hands by Italian scholars during the early 15th cent.; = humanist adj. 3b.
ΘΚΠ
society > communication > writing > handwriting or style of > [noun] > others
plastograph1658
Merovingian1694
book hand1885
Lombardic1893
bastarda1894
micrographia1903
micrography1905
humanistic1911
bastard1920
rotunda1927
humanist1954
1911 C. H. Beeson in Classical Philol. 6 243 The plates..are arranged chronologically and represent the various scripts from square capitals to the humanistic script.
1943 S. Morison in Library 24 4th Ser. 3 This hand of Petrarch's,..novel as it was in some respects, does not possess..the structures essential to the humanistic script.
1978 Acta Musicologica 50 236 Both [folio and treatise] illustrate the humanistic cursive introduced by Niccolò Niccoli at the beginning of the 15th century.
1991 L. Avrin Scribes, Script, & Bks. 194 Although Poggio's own cursive was a combination of Gothic and Humanistic, his formal Humanistic hand was used as a model by most Italian calligraphers, and eventually by printers.
2011 B. Mak How Page Matters ii. 25 A mixture of Gothic and Humanistic letter-forms can be seen on the pages of some manuscripts of the Controversia that date from the fifteenth century.
2. Of, relating to, or characteristic of humanism (humanism n. 5).
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > pragmatism > [adjective] > of humanism
humanist1854
humanistic1855
post-humanist1953
1855 Methodist Q. Rev. July 462 He appears, also, to have an ideal of culture which is largely humanistic, and conflicts somewhat with the perfect appreciation of the Christian ecclesiastical life.
1904 W. James Coll. Ess. & Rev. (1920) xxxii. 451 But humanistic empiricism will have many other steps forward to make before it conquers all antagonisms.
1923 B. Russell Prospects Industr. Civilization ii. xiii. 266 The distinction between the mechanistic and the humanistic conceptions of excellence is the most fundamental of all distinctions between rival sets of ideals.
1961 B. Wootton in J. S. Huxley Humanist Frame 350 Plainly, what is actually happening in the world is the result of the accommodation of religions to evolving humanistic ideas and not vice versa.
2002 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 25 Apr. 62/1 The school, an outgrowth of the Ethical Culture Society, was in a sense a religious school—a nondeistic, humanistic religion that taught ethics as a part of the curriculum beginning in the first grade.
Compounds
humanistic psychologist n. a practitioner or student of humanistic psychology.
ΚΠ
1930 O. Oeser tr. E. R. Jaensch Eidetic Imagery ii. 76 The ‘intellectualism’ of these theories, which only takes account of those aspects of psychic events that are most amenable to such ‘physicalistic’ treatment, and in doing so overlooks those aspects of personality, which seem to the psychiatrist and to the humanistic psychologist the ones that really determine psychic events.
1974 M. W. Fox Understanding your Cat viii. 164 Humanistic psychologists refer to such a human condition as being ‘other-directed’.
2001 Sci. News 17 Feb. 105/2 In the 1960s, humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of ‘self-actualization’.
humanistic psychology n. psychology as informed by the principles of humanism (humanism n. 5); (now) spec. a branch of psychology influenced by existentialism and phenomenology, stressing individual free will, responsibility, and self-actualization.
ΚΠ
1907 Philos. Rev. 16 332 The book is perhaps the best statement of humanistic psychology and modernized Berkeleyanism that has yet appeared.
1968 Brit. Jrnl. Psychiatry 114 672/2 He is surprisingly aware of European humanistic psychology, and evaluated psychology in its pragmatic aspect of understanding people over a wide range of parameters.
2002 Jrnl. Relig. 82 119 Fuller concentrates on..the relation between nature religion and the drug culture, and the complicity of Eastern religions and humanistic psychology in the move to unchurched forms of mystical awareness.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2009; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.1840