atomistn.adj.
/ˈatəmɪst/, U.S. /ˈædəməst/ A. n.
1.
a. History of Science. A person who holds the principles of atomism as expounded by Leucippus and Democritus (see atomic theory n. and the note there). Cf. atomism n. 1.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > ancient Greek philosophy > pre-Socratic schools of philosophy > [noun] > Presocratic philosopher or adherent > of specific schools
Ionic1483
Pythagorean1531
Pythagorist1576
Italic1594
physiologer1598
Democritean1603
atomist1610
Pythagoric1652
physiologist1653
acousmatic1660
mathematic1660
Pythagorite1660
Anaxagorean1678
Anaximandrian1678
atomic1678
Heraclitic1678
Parmenidean1678
Pythagorician1678
hylopathian1809
atomician1850
neopythagorean1891
1610 J. Healey tr. J. L. Vives in tr. St. Augustine Citie of God xi. xxxiv. 438 Of the Atomists [L. qui crebros illos velut cuneolos infarciunt], some confound all, making bodies of coherent remaynders.
1678 R. Cudworth True Intellect. Syst. Universe i. v. 846 The old Religious Atomists.
1727 W. Warburton Crit. & Philos. Enq. Causes Prodigies & Miracles ii. 85 The Atomist Lucretius, whose cold Philosophy had formerly excluded all Intendency of a superior Mind.
1790 Monthly Rev. 3 483 Simple or pure atomists acknowledge extension and impenetrability alone, and the attributes necessarily arising from these.
1834 R. Southey Doctor I. 11 The old atomists supposed that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal things..assail the soul when she ought to be at rest.
1880 E. Cleminshaw tr. C. A. Wurtz Atomic Theory 27 The atomists of the seventeenth century..had revived..the ancient conception of the Greek philosophers.
1905 Daily Chron. 31 July 3/1 Physics and chemistry have lately made such strides that Clerk-Maxwell seems almost as remote as Lucretius, if not Democritus, the first atomist.
2003 Brit. Jrnl. Hist. Sci. 36 42 The controversy was started by Aristotle who against atomists staunchly denied the existence of any vacuum.
b. Science. An investigator or exponent of modern atomic theory as developed from the early 19th cent.
ΘΚΠ
the world > matter > chemistry > atomic chemistry > [noun] > theory of > student or adherent of
corpuscularian1666
atomist1845
atomician1850
1845 Brit. Q. Rev. Feb. 183 He [sc. Dalton] was an atomist before he was a chemist.
1869 J. Phillips Vesuvius x. 270 Symbols of chemical constitution, on which there is still some want of agreement among atomists.
1922 Sci. Monthly Oct. 364 When..even the foremost protagonist of the energetic school has come into the ranks of the atomists, there can now be little doubt that the evidence points to the reality of atoms and molecules.
1951 Kingsport (Tennessee) News 5 Jan. 4/5 The most striking difference between physics in 1900 and in 1950 is the complete victory of the atomists.
1995 A. Pais in L. M. Brown et al. 20th Cent. Physics ii. 51 This statement [by Faraday] might seem to indicate that he was a believer in the reality of atoms, an atomist.
2. Chiefly Philosophy and Psychology. A proponent of atomism (atomism n. 3).
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > philosophy of language > language theories of individual philosophers > [noun] > logical atomism (in Russell and Wittgenstein) > adherent of
atomist1877
1877 Mind 13 359 Mr Spencer is more of an atomist..than anyone else has ever been, for he says the syllogism must have four terms; i.e., the middle term is not identical in its two relations, but only similar.
1905 Jrnl. Philos., Psychol. & Sci. Methods 2 538 There are plenty of psychologists to whom Mr. Ward would probably give the name atomist who believe no more than he does that the actual workings of the mind are statable in terms of isolated ideas and sensations.
1956 P. F. Strawson in A. J. Ayer et al. Revol. Philos. 97 Atomists and Positivists alike accepted the skeleton language of the new mathematical logic.
2002 Law & Philos. 21 297 The atomists entirely ignored the contribution to meaning of the underlying language from (some part of) which the sentence emerges.
B. adj. (attributive).
Chiefly History of Science. Characteristic of or involving atomism (sense A. 1a).
ΘΚΠ
the world > matter > chemistry > atomic chemistry > [adjective]
atomical1653
atomistical1707
atomic1806
atomist1876
1876 J. Martineau Mod. Materialism 36 Union of the same combining elements in multiple doses for the production of a scale of compounds—of which the atomist hypothesis can be said to render an account.
1935 Philosophy 10 244 The inclusion in the Roman part of the whole of Book I, De Rerum Natura,..gives disproportionate space to the later Atomist theory.
1961 D. W. Hamlyn Sensation & Perception v. 67 Descartes was opposed not only to the suggestion that perception arises from the transmission of species, but also to the atomist theory of moving particles.
1966 H. A. Boorse & L. Motz World of Atom 567 In the midst of this I discovered that, according to atomist theory, there would have to be a movement of suspended microscopic particles.
2004 Isis 95 125/1 Some might see atomist alchemical explanations as anti-Aristotelian.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2008; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.adj.1610