vitalism
the doctrine that phenomena are only partly controlled by mechanical forces, and are in some measure self-determining.
vitalist
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a word derived from
vitalism.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
As a vitalist it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the "back seat" to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry.
From Life: Its True Genesis by R. W. Wright
"New-born specks of living matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by sheer inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian, should trip in this definitional way.
From Life: Its True Genesis by R. W. Wright
But even the vitalist had no need to deny this proposition.
From Naturalism And Religion by Rudolf Otto
These truths are as plain to the mechanist as they are to the vitalist.
From Theism or Atheism The Great Alternative by Chapman Cohen
Anaximenes is the historical successor of Thales; he was unquestionably a vitalist.
From Christianity and Greek Philosophy or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles by B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Cocker
