mechanistn.adj.

1606 Bp. J. King Serm. Sept. 32 They will turne..Princes into mechanistes and artificers.

a1688 R. Cudworth Treat. Eternal & Immutable Morality (1731) iv. ii. 175 The Material Universe, which is the Artifice of God, the Artifice of the best Mechanist.

1718 J. Chamberlayne tr. B. Nieuwentyt Relig. Philosopher I. x. 93 Adapted by Mechanists to other sort of Uses.

1759 S. Johnson Prince of Abissinia I. vi. 36 Having seen what the mechanist had already performed.

a1761 J. Cawthorn Poems (1771) 200 Observing this unlucky railer Was neither mechanist, nor taylor.

1806 Edinb. Rev. Oct. 210 The mechanist could have very little to do with the success of the play.

1852 G. Grote Hist. Greece X. ii. lxxxii. 664 He collected..all the best engineers, mechanists, armourers, artisans, etc., whom Sicily or Italy could furnish.

1964 P. White Let. 13 Mar. (1994) viii. 250 Wendy's [theatrical] sets were most effective in the end, though fiendishly difficult to construct and manage without experienced mechanists.

1668 H. More Divine Dialogues Characters Cuphophron, A zealous..Platonist and Cartesian, or Mechanist.

a1822 P. B. Shelley Def. Poetry in Prose Wks. (1888) II. 28 Poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners and mechanists.

1880 (title) A letter on ‘the exact God’. By a mechanist.

1925 C. D. Broad Mind & its Place 43 One feels that the disputes between Mechanists and Vitalists are unsatisfactory.

1931 Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. Oct. 137 Those whom their opponents call ‘vitalists’ can see in the relationship an attribute of something living. Those whom their opponents dub ‘mechanists’ can see in the relationship [between association processes and neuronic excitation] a property they attribute to mechanism.

1965 Listener 19 Aug. 286/2 Pain due to emotional disturbance..arises in the mind (or in the brain if you tend to be a mechanist).

1998 Isis 89 75 Here we see the mystic Fludd lecturing the early mechanist Gassendi on the proper use of observational evidence.

1704 J. Norris Ess. Ideal World II. ii. 90 Placing their bodies in the aptest postures for their preservation, such as the wisest mechanist cannot correct.

1751 S. Johnson Rambler No. 117. ⁋1 The Mechanist will be afraid to assert..the Possibility of tearing down Bulwarks with a Silkworm's thread.

a1774 O. Goldsmith Surv. Exper. Philos. (1776) I. 212 It is called by mechanists the center of gravity.

1809 S. T. Coleridge Friend 30 Nov. 230 One State possesses Chemists, Mechanists, Mechanics of all kinds, Men of Science.

1835 J. Abbott Princ. Hydraul. Engine 126 Mechanist, one acquainted with the laws of mechanics.

1855 F. Bowen Princ. Metaphysical & Ethical Sci. 75 What is meant, then, when we speak of the success of the physical inquirer,—the chemist, the meteorologist, or the mechanist, for instance,—in pointing out the causes of material phenomena?

1868 N. Amer. Rev. Oct. 382 Among biologists two great tendencies exist, which find expression in what may be designated as the mechanist and the vitalist theories.

1916 Jrnl. Philos., Psychol. & Sci. Methods 13 159 The essentially mechanist world of science.

1919 G. B. Shaw Heartbreak House Pref. in Heartbreak House, Great Catherine, & Playlets of War p. xv Their mechanist theory taught them that medicine was the business of the chemist's laboratory, and surgery of the carpenter's shop.

1977 A. Sheridan tr. J. Lacan Écrits vi. 180 I would dare to lump together, if I may say so, all the positions, whether they are mechanist or dynamist.

1998 E. Davis TechGnosis (1999) xi. 324 Our phenomenological experience of both these calculating devices [sc. the Internet and the human brain] can never be entirely reduced to mechanist explanations.