catastrophismn.

1923 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 28 734 Little by little the conclusion gathered the force of demonstration in social science that, whatever may prove to be more particular principles of human relationships, gradualism rather than catastrophism is the universal manner of social cause and effect.

1953 Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 47 41 Bipartisanship helps to create and to strengthen stereotypes which inhibit thought and breed violent emotion. Inevitably it becomes the handmaid of a dogma of utopian catastrophism.

1961 A. Schlesinger in Internat. Affairs 38 (1962) 133 The whole point of the New Deal lay in its faith in ‘the exercise of Democracy’, its belief in gradualness, its rejection of catastrophism.

1976 Philos. & Public Affairs 5 321 Rejecting what he calls Marx's catastrophism and asserting that socialism is developing inside capitalist society, Bernstein substitutes for Marxist theory of transition to socialism a theory closer to Marx's theory of transition to capitalism.

1999 Boundary 2 26 236 Both of these contemporary theories of decolonizing nationalism are disillusioned and sobering. They do not exhibit the catastrophism and eschatology of a Marx or a Fanon.

1969 C. Milosz Hist. Polish Lit. 405 Cosmic visions of a doomsday made their appearances in poems, treated sometimes with solemnity, sometimes with macabre buffoonery. To some of these poets, the term ‘catastrophism’ has been applied.

1988 E. Możejko in Between Anxiety & Hope 3 The singularity of Miłosz's poetic pronouncement was classified by literary critics as belonging to the ‘second avant-garde’; its early phase was defined as catastrophism.

1999 Partisan Rev. 66 25 There has always been Milosz's work a fundamental element of catastrophism, a grave open-eyed lucidity about the twentieth century.

1996 National Rev. 31 Dec. 35/2 An increase in catastrophism. Militias, survivalists, paramilitary confraternities: all these groups will increase in an effort to forge a protective community ranged against whatever forces of darkness..they fear.

2001 Technol. Rev. 104 39/1 The good news..is that there is little call for catastrophism. The country's sheer size and the distributed nature of many aspects of the infrastructure..limit the amount of disruption any single terrorist group could cause.