[f. as prec. + -ISM.]
† 1. The doctrine that there is no objective reality; subjectivism. Obs.
a. 1688. Cudworth, Immut. Morality, IV. vi. (1731), 286. But I have not taken all this Pains only to Confute Scepticism or Phantasticism.
2. The following of arbitrary fancy in art or speculation.
1846. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., I. II. VI. i. § 14. In all the trees of the merely historical painters, there is … fantasticism and unnaturalness of arrangement.
1868. J. H. Stirling, in The North British Review, XLIX. Dec., 203/2. Medicine unites the two elements which are indispensable to science: speculation, which, without experiment, yields phantasticism, and experiment, which, without speculation, yields empiricism.
