atomismn.

1678 R. Cudworth True Intellect. Syst. Universe i. i. 16 This Spurious and Counterfeit Atomism of his [sc. Anaxagoras'].

1865 Q. Rev. Jan. 29 The Atomism of the philosopher of Abdera.

1897 Science 7 May 736/2 It would be too much to hope that the physics and the metaphysics of atomism had actually been disentangled and separated.

1971 Nature 30 July 351/1 Long established Aristotelian doctrines began to crumble before the assault of Baconian empiricism and atomism modified by Descartes, Gassendi and Boyle.

1992 Times Lit. Suppl. 28 Feb. 27/3 In discussing atomism and the mechanical philosophy, Brooke makes the valuable point that the mechanical world-view was as often used to support religion as to subvert it.

1836 Athenæum 20 Feb. 142/2 Unstable atomism is to give to the Church and the State new solidity and unity.

1879 S. Baring-Gould Germany II. 260 He repudiated altogether Liberal atomism, the doctrine that all social and political economy must start from the individual.

1928 Q. Jrnl. Econ. 46 321 Recent versions of English individualism have gone quite a distance in toning down the more extreme ‘atomism’ of writers even as late as Spencer.

1968 V. J. Tarascio Pareto's Methodol. Approach to Econ. ii. 17 An important implication of the individualistic orientation of the utilitarians was that it caused them to separate the social whole into individual units for the purpose of analysis. This tendency became known as atomism.

2000 A. Dobson Green Polit. Thought (ed. 3) ii. 38 Greater recognition of mutual dependence and influence, it is argued, will encourage a sensitivity in our dealings with the ‘natural’ world that discrete atomism has conspicuously failed to do.

1877 Mind 2 459 In the search for such an explanation of moral phenomena there came first an a priori attempt..to explain the Moral Cosmos by a conjectural Atomism, or resolve it into a single element.

1883 F. H. Bradley Princ. Logic II. ii. i. 276 The philosophy of Experience is psychological Atomism.

1890 W. James Princ. Psychol. I. vii. 196 The continuous flow of the mental stream is sacrificed, and in its place an atomism, a brickbat plan of construction, is preached.

1923 Mod. Philol. 21 36 Rationalism is an absolute, deductive atomism. It must interpose an absolute gulf between each two primary units of definition.

1946 Peabody Jrnl. Educ. 24 164 His [sc. Herbart's] explanation is a kind of psychological atomism. Every idea seems to be a distinct entity, possessing its own dynamic force which drives it towards consciousness and repells [sic] contrary ideas.

1976 J. D. Andrew Major Film Theories ix. 253 The sign language of cinema becomes another kind of sign, one with which the atomism of semiotics cannot deal.

1998 Noûs 32 (Philos. Perspectives Suppl.) 106 How is atomism possible?.. Fodor's answer—and here he departs from Locke and Hume—is that it is possible because meaning is to be understood wholly in terms of denotation.