The author of the Waverley novels is another fine example; but he clearly takes his highest rank as a descriptionist—the painter of effects and appearances rather than of facts and of causes.1824, The Monthly Repertory of English Literature, page 344:
Although he is a descriptionist, he is often more effective than Roberts or Lampman.1897, Canadian Magazine, volume 8, page 105:
2 more examples
He was, on the other hand, the very opposite of a descriptionist in his physics, especially later in his career.1994, Dorothy Ross, Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences, 1870-1930, →ISBN, page 134:
“Oh,” said one of my lunch companions, “you’re a descriptionist rather than a prescriptionist.”2002, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, volume 122, page 4:
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Human sciences, Philosophy, Sciences One who subscribes to descriptionism.
In effect, they say "a plague on both your houses" to the two sides in the prescriptionist-descriptionist debate.2013, William D. Nordhaus, Economics and Policy Issues in Climate Change, page 97:
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Human sciences, Philosophy, Sciences Regarding utterances as primarily descriptive rather than as rigidly specifying a particular thing or kind of thing.
The problem with the descriptionist account of date-times is that it gives the wrong truth conditions to sentences like that in CAESAR.2015 January 8, Leo Carton Mollica, “Explanation and nowness: an objection to the A-Theory”, in Philosophical Studies, →DOI:
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Human sciences, Philosophy, Sciences Of or relating to descriptionism (theory of truth).