FORMALISM • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Formalism

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/fˈɔrməlˌɪzəm/ Listen

Formalism

noun

The doctrine that formal structure rather than content is what should be represented. Antonym: imitation.

(philosophy) the philosophical theory that formal (logical or mathematical) statements have no meaning but that its symbols (regarded as physical entities) exhibit a form that has useful applications.

The practice of scrupulous adherence to prescribed or external forms.

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"Formalism" Quotes from Famous Books

... with them; and the difference in their artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the vital religion ...

— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... The formalism of bygone generations was no doubt conducive to respectful manners, but not to confidential relations, and her parents knew so little of their daughter's nature as never to dream that they had occasioned the first suggestion ...

— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... completed, the whole thing seems to be over and done with. We have seen some people, in whom as yet we take no particular interest, enmeshed in a difficulty arising from a strange and primitive formalism in the interpretation of law; and we have seen the meshes cut to the satisfaction of all parties, and the incident to all appearance closed. There is no finger-post to direct our anticipation on the way it should go; and ...

— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... it might have been said, of synagogue worship, with its mechanical dulness and its mistaken interpretations of God's word, its shallow and superficial and tedious traditional commentaries, its formalism and vain repetitions; all this, whatever might have been its value for the ordinary unenlightened Jew, how could it have been necessary and what profit could there have been in it for the divinely ...

— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... use such a language, were it the only one understood by such a people. St. Francis Xavier's "catechisms" were often hardly less uncouth. Still, her whole tendency would be towards restraint, order, and exterior reverence. Again, the stoical coldness and formalism of a liturgical worship, centered round no soul-stirring mystery of Divine love where there can be feeling so strong as to need the restraint of liturgy and ritual, has still less of the Church's style about it. For she is human, not merely in her reason and ...

— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

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