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the attribution of human form or characteristics to natural phenomena, animals, deities, spirits, etc. Anthropomorphism is a central feature of many systems of religion and cosmology which frequently assert a relationship between human affairs and the natural and supernatural realms.


(religion, spiritualism, and occult)

Religions are typically expressed in anthropomorphic ways. The term comes from the Greek anthropos ("man") and morphe ("form") and refers to the human tendency to visualize nonhuman concepts in human form. We say the waters of a placid lake "lie still." A fire "rages" within a forest. Gods, spirits, and abominable snowmen take on human attributes.

This concept is summarized by Kurtis Schaeffer of the University of Alabama in a review of Stewart Guthrie's book Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion:

Our tendency to find human characteristics in the non-human world stems from a deep-seated perceptual strategy: in the face of pervasive (if mostly unconscious) uncertainty about what we see, we bet on the most meaningful interpretation we can. If we are in the woods and see a dark shape that might be a bear or a boulder, for example, it is good policy to think it is a bear. If we are mistaken, we lose little, and if we are right, we gain much. So in scanning the world we always look for what most concerns us—living things, and especially human ones. Even animals watch for human attributes, as when birds avoid scarecrows. In short, we follow the principle, better safe than sorry.

Genesis teaches that humans were created in the image of God (although the television character Archie Bunker of All in the Family fame would later remark, "I won't say you can't tell us apart"). Some posit that, in art and literature, humans have recreated God in our image, both "Father God" and "Mother Earth."

Although all religions, even pantheistic ones, tend to see God or gods in human form, anthropomorphic expression of the divine found full expression in the Greek pantheon. Gods were, quite literally, made in the image of men. This tendency, however, was predated by biblical descriptions of God as a being with human form (Exodus 15:3)—with feet (Genesis 3:8), hands (Exodus 24:11), a mouth (Numbers 12:8), and heart (Hosea 11:8)—while at the same time displaying human emotions (Exodus 20:5). To be sure, when God is described as "a consuming fire," natural forces as well have been called upon to conceptualize the divine.

Much later, the Qur'an attributes noble human emotions to Allah, calling him "most merciful" and reminding us that "Allah heareth and knoweth all things."

Biblical writers must have been aware of this tendency, because they grappled with the problem of reducing spirit to human language. In the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, Alexandrian Jewish scholars felt the need to freely translate a few texts. Because the Israelites "saw no form" at Mount Sinai on the occasion of the delivery of the Ten Commandments, resulting in the instructions to make no images or idols of the divine, the translators felt free to add a descriptive word or two from time to time. Where Numbers 12:8 says, "I will speak with Him mouth to mouth," the Greek version reads, "I will speak to Him mouth to mouth apparently."

Perhaps it was the problem of anthropomorphism that caused early Hindu writers to insist that Brahman, the ultimate, universal creative principle, could not be "soiled by the tongue." The Upanishads describe Brahman as "Him the eye does not see, nor the tongue express, nor the mind grasp." Although there are said to be thirtythree million gods in India, ultimately all are faces of the inexpressible Brahman.



a resemblance to man; the attribution of human psychological characteristics to objects and phenomena of inanimate nature, celestial bodies, animals, and mythical beings.

Naive, dogmatic anthropomorphism is a primitive ideology which is expressed in the endowment of inanimate objects with the ability to act, live, die, have experiences, and so forth. (For example, the land sleeps, or the sky frowns.) Such an anthropomorphism was the prevailing world view during the early stages of development in human society. Echoes of such a conception of the world exist even in the languages of modern cultures—for example, numerous impersonal verbs such as morosit (it is drizzling), svetaet (it is dawning), and others. They exist also in the arts, especially poetry. As a way of thinking, however, such a type of anthropomorphism is today characteristic only of a child’s psychology; among adults it is usually a symptom of infantilism. Naive, dogmatic anthropomorphism developed into religious anthropomorphism; the image and characteristics of human beings were transferred to fantastic objects. This transference is inherent in religious conceptions of gods and other supernatural beings. The gods of the so-called higher religions are also anthropomorphic, although this is denied in theology.

Elements of anthropomorphism have even penetrated into scientific consciousness. For example, such terms as rabota (work) and napriazhenie (voltage) are anthropomorphic in their derivation, although their real meanings long ago lost any connection with their derivation. With the development of science, anthropomorphism has been replaced by the scientific world view, although in certain branches of knowledge anthropomorphic concepts remain ex tremely strong—for example, in animalpsychology: Some researchers have ascribed human thoughts, feelings, and even ethics to animals. In modern scientific, technical, and especially cybernetic literature, there are uses of anthropomorphic concepts (the “prolonged life” of particles, the concept that the machine “remembers” and “solves problems,” and so forth). Such usages are based upon the objective similarity between the functions and results of human actions and the functions and results of machine actions. They are fully justified, if essential, differences between human and machine processes are taken into account.


References in periodicals archive ?
A postmelancholic anthropomorphism would try to counteract this anthropomorphization of agency by asserting the indestructibility of non-human animal identity.
But the anthropomorphization of the mediator, Humbert, and his problematic report on the level of the fictional world, although central to a reading in terms of unreliability, do not feature very prominently.
Here, no anthropomorphization is required to detect the defiance.
But a bird is not a poet, and that alienation from "the open" is more adequate to a description of the human predicament and not the bird's, whose anthropomorphization Oppen immediately corrects, curiously echoing Heidegger in his reading of Parmenides: "Never would it be possible for a stone, no more than for an airplane, to elevate itself toward the sun in jubilation and to move like a lark, which nevertheless does not see the open.
SEATTLE, May 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Statistics from a recent Purina Pet survey confirm the nations' collective anthropomorphization of our pets:
Danta's critique targets a philosophical act he terms "the anthropomorphization of agency," whereby the human capacity for self-determination becomes coterminous with the human.
81, 85 (2001) (dismissing one reading of the Court's solicitude for dignity as "silly" because "states have no feelings of dignity to be protected; the Court's apparent anthropomorphization of states [would] simply reflect[] a category mistake" and rejecting more sophisticated versions of the dignitarian argument as implausible).
In sum, we are not only learning to replace internal human parts but also increasingly learning how to externalize and replicate these parts that will result over time in the anthropomorphization of non-flesh and blood beings.
The drama over the invisibility, then exposure, of her face suggests that her face is also the screen that supports the necessary and inevitable anthropomorphization of the inhuman.
Impact: If fundamentalists' find anthropomorphization unacceptable in trade literature, (53) it seems hypocritical to accept it in McGuffey's.