the.com/formalism

means An approach that treats correctness as a matter of following explicit rules, symbols, or structures, rather than relying on intuition, content, or context.

from From Latin 'formalis' (pertaining to form), from 'forma' (shape, mold). The '-ism' turns a quality into a doctrine. The word crops up across fields — philosophy, law, mathematics, art criticism, linguistics — wherever people started insisting that the shape or procedure of a thing mattered more than, or independently of, its content. Its heaviest use came in the early 20th century, when mathematicians and logicians tried to ground all of mathematics in formal symbol systems, and Russian literary critics (literally calling themselves 'formalists') argued that literature should be studied by its structures and devices rather than its messages. The word has carried a faint whiff of accusation ever since — 'mere formalism' meaning rules worshipped past the point of sense.