Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Mechanically determined.
- adj. Philosophy Of or relating to the philosophy of mechanism, especially tending to explain phenomena only by reference to physical or biological causes.
- adj. Automatic and impersonal; mechanical.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to mechanism or to mechanists: as, “mechanistic combination,”
Wiktionary
- adj. Having the impersonal and automatic characteristics of a machine
- adj. Predetermined by, or as if by, a mechanism
- adj. philosophy Having a physical or biological cause
WordNet 3.0
- adj. explained in terms of physical forces
- adj. of or relating to the philosophical theory of mechanism
Examples
“Pivar says he's been working for years in the Thompson tradition, which he characterizes as a mechanistic approach to evolution, using lab simulations, algorithms and topology.”
“All evolutionary theories must offer an explanation in mechanistic terms of how it should or could have happened in order to be tested.”
A critique on the endosymbiotic theory for the origin of mitochondria
“Somehow you seem to think that the mere offering of what you term a mechanistic model with no evidence (nor even much of an explanation) trumps other concepts and makes you "scientific" and others not.”
“I suggest scientific patience is quickly running out since inventors are already using applied quantum mechanics and there are two main mechanistic explanations.”
“This sort of thing suggests that minds are grounded in mechanistic biology, rather than the other way around.”
“In typography, a slab serif (also called mechanistic, square serif or Egyptian) typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs.”
“Pictures of Canadian oil refineries, shot as if advertising their pipes and chimneys, recall the mechanistic precision of Charles Sheeler's 1920s paintings of Ford's River Rouge plant.”
“Personally, I am looking forward to his coming examination of the supposed conflict concerning ID and a "mechanistic" perspective.”
“This, it soon becomes clear, involves embracing beauty and love, and rejecting the Enlightenment, or what he calls the "mechanistic" values of the Enlightenment, and Modernism.”
The Huffington Post: Christina Patterson: What I Learnt from Prince Charles
“Hmm. This makes your mention of "mechanistic" in your first point even more difficult to understand.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘mechanistic’.
-
EN - fine scholarly language
exhort, accretion, twenty-nine, atrophy, additive, brilliantly, interreligious, empiricism, pathologic, limitless, half-century, vigilant and 488 more...
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
-
Recently viewed
A random list of things people are looking up on Wordnik.
craftsperson, bobble-head, kiwi and emu brot..., st. isidore the f..., cloudlessness, sangwidges, omnes Una Manet nox, Chappie, Inca dove, ew, C'mere, skepticism and 966 more...
-
Dismantling Modernism
unequivocal, realism, positivism, handmaiden, naturalize, repository, reify, indeterminate, instrumentality, attest, omniscience, counter revolution and 36 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for mechanistic.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.