Vitalist

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A supporter of the belief that living organisms are governed by a unique life force that sets them apart from non-living matter
2. An individual who endorses the concept that a distinctive vital principle is essential for understanding the essence of life and its diverse phenomena
3. A person who upholds the idea that a specific life force distinguishes living beings from inanimate objects and is crucial to life itself

Etymology: "Vitalist" is a plain combination: the adjective "vital," from Latin "vitalis" (of life, from "vita," life), with the suffix "-ist," which marks a person who holds a particular doctrine or follows a particular system. A vitalist, then, is someone committed to the idea that living things are animated by something beyond physics and chemistry. The doctrine it names has a long history, but the word itself is a later construction built on that older idea. The suffix did the work of turning an adjective describing life into a label for a believer in a theory about it. The pattern is common in English, appearing in words like "materialist" and "idealist," which follow the same logic of naming a school of thought after its central concept.

Synonyms: life force, animist, spirited

Antonyms: materialist, reductionist