adaptionistn.adj.

1888 Friends' Intelligencer & Jrnl. 18 Aug. 525/2 ‘This’, says the adaptionist, ‘has been evolved for the purpose of aiding in the distribution of the seeds.’

1941 I. S. Cobb Exit Laughing xxxviii. 476 Since my script, if not used in its entirety, would likewise be available to subsequent adaptionists, the plan seemed fair enough. But I elected to work out my own synopsis first.

1982 Amer. Q. 34 226 In their ethnographic studies, cultural adaptionists focus on economic and subsistence systems which they see as the most adaptively central aspects of culture.

2001 G. Bhargava Environment & Global Implications II. 108 Some adaptionists proceed from the belief that because unilateral action to avert a warming is infeasible, and international cooperation impossible, adapting is the only option. Other adaptionists believe that climate warming will likely yield net positive benefits.

2005 Behaviour 142 1174 From an adaptionist's viewpoint, correlations between behavioural traits are not necessarily set and if present should reflect adaptation to the environment.

1915 J. P. Moore in Univ. Lect. 1914–15 (Univ. Pennsylvania) 136 The field of protective coloration has been the great playground for the extreme adaptionist school.

1981 Amer. Zoologist 21 813/2 Critics of the ‘adaptionist’ approach have given closer scrutiny to the problems and pitfalls of the approach.

2004 P. Lipton Inference to Best Explan. (ed. 2) iii. 52 An adaptionist explanation of why members of a species possess a certain trait..may not explain why they have that trait rather than other traits that would perform the same functions equally well.

c1931 G. Heaton Nicholls in Jrnl. Southern Afr. Stud. (1978) 4 180 An adaptionist policy demands as its primary concept the maintenance of chieftaindom, without which the tribal society cannot exist.

1977 C. F. Keyes Golden Penins. (1995) iv. 223 The adaptionist form of Communist ideology made Communism a popular ideology in Vietnam.

2002 Jrnl. Asian Stud. 61 1100 Ines G. Županov explores Italian Jesuit missionary Roberto Nobili's (1577–1656) experiments in adaptionist conversion techniques in South India.