The Collaborative International Dictionary
Vitalist \Vi`tal*ist\, n. (Biol.) A believer in the theory of vitalism; -- opposed to physicist.
Wiktionary
a. Of or espousing vitalism, the doctrine that life cannot be entirely reduced to physical and chemical factors n. Someone who believes in vitalism, the doctrine that life cannot be entirely reduced to physical and chemical factors
WordNet
n. one who believes in vitalism
Usage examples of "vitalist".
It is this transition from the taxonomic to the synthetic notion of life which is indicated, in the chronology of ideas and sciences, by the recrudescence, in the early nineteenth century, of vitalist themes.
The 19th-century mechanists were a heck of a lot closer to the mark than were their competitors, the vitalists, the theologians, and the mystics.
The traditionalists insist they are not vitalists and point out that the molecular biologists are biochemists by training and know virtually nothing of biology.
The molecular biologists insist that the traditionalists are vitalists and stubbornly insist on the molecularbiological road to ultimate biological truth.
The vitalist argument has not gone away as a consequence, however, but has simply shifted levels and reappeared in a new disguise: instead of between the living and the nonliving, it now searches for some fundamental difference between the thinking and the nonthinking, between mind and body.