How to Use mechanistic in a Sentence

mechanistic

adjective
  • And so, the mechanistic worldview opened the door to exploitation, waste and abuse.
    — Kathleen Dean Moore, The Conversation, 20 Oct. 2021
  • But over the past few weeks, the murmur of Ocean Beach has been cut with a low mechanistic rumble.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Is its movement just a mechanistic response with no feeling behind it?
    — Sigal Samuel, Vox, 4 June 2024
  • In fact, Doerr’s is much more than a mechanistic or childish device for passing time.
    — New York Times, 24 Sep. 2021
  • And in fact, the researchers still don’t have a mechanistic explanation.
    — Quanta Magazine, 19 Apr. 2018
  • But when put to the test, with even the most basic mechanistic questions, our ignorance quickly shows itself.
    — Jason Castro, Scientific American, 11 Aug. 2020
  • People tend to describe their past immoral actions in concrete, mechanistic terms.
    — Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 Feb. 2023
  • In both cases, ecorithms describe adaptive behavior in a mechanistic way.
    — Quanta Magazine, 28 Jan. 2016
  • That lends more than a touch of jingoism to this otherwise amusing, mechanistic parlor trick, which builds to a surge of emotion that might make your heart sink or soar.
    — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 2023
  • This mechanistic view of humanity was not without its skeptics.
    — Joseph Bernstein, Harper's Magazine, 17 Aug. 2021
  • Other types of models, like mechanistic ones, account for the behavior of the disease itself.
    — Katherine Ellen Foley, Quartz, 22 Apr. 2020
  • That protein is now called mTOR, for mechanistic target of rapamycin.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 28 Jan. 2023
  • In a paper recently published in Science, Groves and his colleagues filled in some of the mechanistic blanks.
    — Quanta Magazine, 3 June 2019
  • And the idea most present is that things are beginning to get out of hand, that the mechanistic future promised by science is one in which human life will become cheap and embattled.
    — The New York Times, NOLA.com, 19 May 2017
  • On a mechanistic level, unabsorbed polyols draw water out of your body and into your gut lumen, resulting in loose, watery stools.
    — Patrick Wilson, Outside Online, 7 Aug. 2020
  • In our mechanistic framework, leaders face relentless, unforgiving pressure to be the best, the biggest, the first, the most.
    — Erica Ariel Fox, Forbes, 28 Oct. 2021
  • The other type is a mechanistic model, which predicts how case outcomes would be affected by certain policy actions.
    — Dallas News, 5 May 2020
  • Piecing together the details of this mechanistic puzzle, Dölen suspects, will keep her occupied for the next decade.
    — WIRED, 15 June 2023
  • This was, to my knowledge, the first mechanistic deconstruction of a social behavior circuit.
    — Quanta Magazine, 14 Dec. 2020
  • The reality is that rigid, mechanistic approaches to warehouse management are too brittle for our complex and volatile world.
    — Gurdip Singh, Forbes.com, 15 Aug. 2025
  • The present is no longer the result of determinism but response, not mechanistic reaction but creative intra-action.
    — Jenny Odell, Longreads, 2 June 2026
  • Gagosian’s quasi-spiritual register often recedes in the face of more mechanistic concerns.
    — Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker, 24 July 2023
  • But in a mundane, mechanistic sense, a year’s 13th full moon may be explained by citing the different number of days in a lunar month and in a calendar month.
    — Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2020
  • This tendency is most apparent in the ethos of the tech industry, a domain shaped by mechanistic, reductionist thinking.
    — Dr. Alex Gold, Forbes.com, 18 June 2025
  • But the mechanistic, reductionist, matter-in-motion worldview stripped the spirit from the natural world.
    — Kathleen Dean Moore, The Conversation, 20 Oct. 2021
  • As much as people want the rules for commas to be ironclad, no mechanistic rules can substitute for slow proofreading and redrafting, or even better, a good editor.
    — The Economist, 21 Sep. 2017
  • Perhaps the notion appealed to nineteenth-century tastes for cuckoo clocks and ideas about mechanistic, orderly nature.
    — Literary Hub, 23 Apr. 2026
  • Heyward then built the third dance from pure romance to a fiery frenzy — the fluid guidance of his fingertips suddenly sharpening into mechanistic chops and swipes.
    — Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 5 May 2023
  • What the Doomsday Clock lacks in mechanistic explanation of risk, the graphic makes up for by exposing our influence over the end of time.
    — Jonathon Keats, Forbes.com, 30 June 2025
  • Its short chapters and sheer eventfulness keep the story chugging along, while its (somewhat mechanistic) plotting creates enough suspense to hold the attention.
    — Washington Post, 21 Jan. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mechanistic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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