The application to God or gods of human characteristics, such as a body (as in Greek mythology), or the mental, psychological, or spiritual qualities of human beings. It is often used to indicate insufficient appreciation of transcendence and mystery of the divine.
See also: AnthropomorphobiaAnthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics and qualities to non-human beings, objects, natural, or supernatural phenomena. A form of personification (applying human or animal qualities to inanimate objects), anthropomorphism is similar to prosopopoeia (adopting the persona of another person).
The term comes from two Greek words, άνθρωπος (anthrōpos), meaning "human", and μορφή (morphē), meaning "shape" or "form."
In religions and mythologies
In religion and mythology, "anthropomorphism" refers to the perception of a divine being or beings in human form, or the recognition of human qualities generally, in these beings. Many mythologies are almost entirely concerned with anthropomorphic deities who express human characteristics such as jealousy, hatred, or love. The Greek gods such as Zeus and Apollo were often depicted in human form exhibiting both commendable and despicable human traits.
Biblical literalism
Numerous different sects throughout history have been called anthropomorphites, including a sect in Egypt in the 4th century, and a group in the Roman Catholic Church in the 10th century. This included attributing to God a human form, human parts, and human passions.
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God created man around His own image, in the image of God He created him; male or female He created them. |
Hinduism
The ten avatars of the Hindu supreme God Vishnu possess both human and divine forms and qualities, although their divinity varies in degree.
Condemnation
Numerous religions and philosophies have condemned anthropomorphism for various reasons.
From the perspective of believers of a religion where the deity or deities have human characteristics, it may be more accurate to describe the phenomenon as theomorphism, or the giving of divine qualities to humans, instead of anthropomorphism, the giving of human qualities to the divine. The reason for this being that according to their beliefs, the deity or deities usually existed before humans, and therefore humans were created in the form of the divine, not vice versa. However, for those who do not subscribe to the beliefs of the religion, the phenomenon can be considered anthropomorphism. In fact, Stewart Elliott Guthrie, in his 1993 book Faces In The Clouds: A New Theory of Religion, theorizes that all religions are simply anthropomorphisms that originate in the human brain's tendency to over-detect the presence or vestiges of other humans.
In rhetoric
Anthropomorphism in the form of personification consists of creating imaginary persons who are the embodiment of an abstraction such as Death, Lust or War.
In classical rhetoric, personification is a figure of speech (more specifically a trope) that employs the deliberate use of anthropomorphism, often to make an emotional appeal. In rhetorical theory, a distinction is often drawn between personification (anthropomorphism of inanimate, but real, objects) and figures such as apostrophe, in which an absent people or abstract concepts are addressed.
An example of rhetorical personification:
An example of rhetorical apostrophe:
In literature
Anthropomorphism is a well established device in literature, notably in books for children, such as those by C.S.
Terry Pratchett is notable for having several anthropomorphic personifications in his Discworld books.
The Indian books Panchatantra (The Five priniciples) and The Jataka tales employ this trick of anthropomorphized animals very effectively to illustrate various principles of life.
It may be noted that the majority of monsters and fantastical beings portrayed in Science Fiction and Fantasy, are extremely anthropomorphic, having only superficial details (such as ears or colour of skin) that differ from normal humans.
Common usage
It is a common tendency for people to think of inanimate objects as having human-like characteristics.
Advances in artificial intelligence are beginning to identify such foibles as a potentially more significant phenomenon as computers begin to reach the point where they can recognize spoken language. Anthropomorphobia, a phobia traditionally associated with anxiety responses to nonhuman living things displaying human behavior, is now used to define the phobia of nonliving things that exhibit human qualities.
Technical use
Hackers and programmers have always anthropomorphised technology, mostly as a time-saving metaphorical device. Hackers, therefore, may use human actions and even emotions to describe a computer system's behavior. This human action (complaining) conveys that there is a difficulty while acknowledging the triviality of the difficulty, and perhaps the fact that the program does what was required despite the difficulty.
This form of anthropomorphism is common in other technical fields as well. On the other hand, in finance, when a financial market rises and falls, it might be described as "fickle", but because it is a human-driven process based on human reactions to market forces, it is capable of reflecting, if not having, human emotions. If the criterion for anthropomorphism is that the subject is ascribed human attributes it does not have, then financial markets and other demographic forces may not qualify. However, they might be considered true personifications of human emotion, and qualify the same way as the personification of desire does.
Modern occurrences
The use of anthropomorphized animals has a long tradition in art and literature. While children-and-family-oriented series have often featured anthropomorphic animals, newer adult-oriented television series such as Family Guy also make use of anthropomorphized characters.
The human characteristics commonly ascribed to animals in popular culture usually centers on either their perceived personality or disposition (for example, owls are usually designated as wise);
One example of modern anthropomorphism is 'OS-tan', an Internet phenomenon on Futaba Channel that personifies computer programs, mostly operating systems like Windows, Linux and Mac OS 9.
Since the 1980s, furry fandom has focused on the appreciation, promotion, and production of stories and art about anthropomorphic animals, as well as the exploration, interpretation and examination of humanity and human values through anthropomorphic expression.
Anthropomorphism has also been frequently applied to entities other than animals in modern times.
In logical reasoning
Using anthropomorphized caricatures or projecting human qualities on conceptual entities or inanimate objects in reasoning is also known as committing a pathetic fallacy (not a pejorative term).
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