mechanist
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈmɛkənɪst/
- Specialized
:
mecanicista
- For bio-mechanist, Lotta Jakobsson, today's test is the culmination of weeks of work.
Examples
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The mechanist argued that all natural phenomena could be explained through scientific laws and physical causes.
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However, as McDonough observes, "The concept of conatus as used by seventeenth-century mechanists was, in fact, by no means essentially nonteleological" ("The Heyday," 191).
Academic text (2016) -
We caught up with Mechanist Games' Dave and asked what the team has been up to and what the future holds for CoS.
Blog text (23) -
The battle is mostly over, though, and the mechanists have won, for now.
Blog text (29) -
So he was a mechanist and dealing with materialism.
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Similarly, when we work in society we are actuary mechanists.
Academic text (1993) -
I think that's, I mean, the new mechanists don't say anything about.
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As a mechanist, she believed that understanding the universe required a purely physical interpretation of its processes.
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Philosophers in the mechanist tradition claimed that everything from movement to thought could be reduced to mechanical principles.
Surface Forms
Morphology
mechanist = mechanism (transparent) = mechan + ist
The meaning 'adherent of mechanism' is directly signalled by the productive suffix '-ist' added to the recognizable base 'mechanism', so learners who know 'mechanism' and '-ist' can infer the sense.
Etymology
Mechanist comes from the root mechan-, which means 'machine' or 'device', and you can see the same root in machine and mechanic. So, a mechanist thinks nature works like a machine and explains life by physical causes.