schematist

• IPA^(key): /ˈskiːmətɪst/

schematist (plural schematists)

1. (obsolete) One given to forming schemes; schemer.
   • August 26 1711, Jonathan Swift, letter to William King

     He never wants a reserve upon any emergency, which would appear desperate to others; and makes little use of those thousand projectors and schematists, who are daily plying him with their visions, but to be thoroughly convinced, by the comparison, that his own notions are the best.

   • 1728, Edward Chandler, A Vindication of the Defence of Christianity from the Prophecies:

     Otherwise, if the Schematist knows any thing of the Christian Religion, he must know, that a true Christian is an enemy to Lies, Forgeries , Impostures, Occasional Conformity for a Place of Honour, or Profits, & c .

2. One who thinks about or develops formal schemata or abstract frameworks.
   • 2013, Henry Harris, The Group Approach To Leadership-Testing, page 169:

     What is the scalar extreme to spontaneity? To the schematist it might seem to be inhibition: but clinically —as the manifestations described above suggest — it would seem to be a behavioral complex of compulsive and inhibitory elements.

   • 2016, Babette Babich, The Hallelujah Effect: Philosophical Reflections on Music, page 18:

     It is also about some important others in passing, such as Siegmund Levarie who, as mathematical and musicological schematist, wrote on “sound,” along with a study of tone and another book on harmony and musical acoustics with Stanley Levy,

   • 2021, Katharine Worth, Beckett the Shape Changer: A Symposium:

     Beckett's fatal Cleopatra takes possession: the schematist in him comes to the fore and instead of a living body of art we get a thin ghost called anti-art, that would like, if it could, to extinguish itself altogether.

• schematism

schematist (comparative more schematist, superlative most schematist)

1. Involving schemata or abstract frameworks.
   • 1965, Roman Szporluk, M.N. Pokrovsky's Interpretation of Russian History, page 292:

     Was Pokrovsky's view of the differences between history and sociology regarded as more "schematist" than that which was introduced following Stalin's "Observations"?

   • 1978, Survey Sarajevo - Volume 5, page 162:

     Such a schematist approach and methods have always proved restrictive and conducive to some dogma or other.

   • 1992, Randall Whitaker, Venues for Contexture, page 186:

     A review of linguistics illustrated the concepts transplanted into IT applications are predominantly schematist -- based on abstract formal models .