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Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
IN SCIENCE
Anthropomorphism is an inveterate tendency to pro-
ject human qualities into natural
phenomena—
consciously or not. The standard and most
important
variant of anthropomorphism is animism which sees
a soul in
everything in nature. Before entering into
the role of anthropomorphism in
the history of science,
let us consider a few important and usually
neglected
logical aspects of the idea.
First, when we draw an analogy from humans to
nature, we assume that we know
humans; that is to
say, we make an analogy from known human qualities
to unknown natural qualities. However, it is not what
we know of human beings, but what we assume
to
be human that we read into nature. For all we know,
the analogy may
go the other way: like sticks and
stones, human beings may not have souls.
At the very
least, we may leave the question, “Do human
souls
exist?” open, and still speak of animism as based on
an analogy—not so much from known human qualities
to unknown
natural qualities, but from assumed human
qualities to nonhuman qualities.
The second characteristic of anthropomorphism in
need of critical attention
is one related to the “genetic
fallacy.” When we make
an anthropomorphic assump-
tion, the
assumption may be true or false; it is not
decisive to show that it is
anthropomorphic, just as it
is no criticism of any idea to point to its
origins. Some
anthropomorphic assumptions are known to be false,
but
not simply because they are anthropomorphic,
since other assumptions, e.g.,
that animals behave like
humans in certain respects, may indeed be anthro-
by and large that when we make an anthropomorphic
assumption, it is not likely to be true. This, however,
may rest on a more general situation, in which any
guess—whether based on analogy or not—is not very
likely to be true simply as a guess. If we want our
guesses to be more likely than wild fancies, we may
suggest a theory concerning the increase of the likeli-
hood of a priori guesses. But then, this theory may be
false as well. And therefore we have, at least for the
time being, to leave open the question “Are any an-
thropomorphic assumptions true?” Nevertheless, on
different grounds we may suggest that practically all
anthropomorphic assumptions are likely to be false.
The reason is very simple. Looking at the history of
culture, we can see that the deeper we go into the
past, the more likely we are to find anthropomor-
phisms; and the nearer we come to our era, the less
anthropomorphic our theories become. We also know
that the deeper we go into the past, the more likely
we are to find erroneous views, or at least, views we
consider erroneous today. For this historical reason, we
may claim that by and large, anthropomorphism is
“out.” The question which this approach raises, of
course, is “Is there some fundamental defect in anthro-
pomorphism?”
This leads us to the third point. We know certainly
that some
anthropomorphisms are based on false as-
sumptions (or at least on views which are unacceptable
to
us)—indeed often one false assumption may generate
quite a few
analogies. We speak pejoratively of an-
thropomorphic analogies which present no problems
to us because
they depend on unacceptable assump-
tions.
The most prominent example is anthro-
pocentrism, namely, the idea that the universe is cre-
ated for the benefit of man and, therefore, may be
judged from the viewpoint of its utility to man. For
instance, the essence
of wood, Aristotle suggests in his
Physics, is that it is floatable and combustible, for
the
obvious reason that the most important functions that
wood played
in the ancient world were in its use as
material for ship-building and as
fuel. One may won-
der, were Aristotle living
today, whether he would
make the essence of wood reside in its capability
of
becoming printing paper. A similar criticism of Aris-
totle is actually to be found in the late
Renaissance
and the seventeenth century; for instance, in the works
of
Robert Boyle, who suggested the following observa-
tion: for many people the essence of ice is that it is
meltable
into water, and thus, in essence, is water;
whereas, for doctors, who use
ice for lowering temper-
atures, the
essence of water may be that it is freezable
into ice.
The criticism made thus far of anthropocentrism, is,
of course, not decisive. It is quite possible to claim
that
though it is an error to judge wood, and ice, on
the basis of their use to
mankind at present, we should
judge the essence of wood or ice from the
viewpoint
of mankind throughout the whole of human history.
Perhaps it
is very difficult to find out the total possible
uses of wood or ice to
mankind from its beginning to
its end; but anthropocentrists might claim
that this is
what science should be about—that science is
more
difficult than Aristotle thought, precisely because sci-
entific knowledge grows by attempting to
find out the
uses of different natural things for mankind through
all
the ages. It looks as if this generalized anthropo-
centrism is merely an intellectual exercise, but one
may
interpret instrumentalism in science as just that. In-
strumentalists, however, will object.
Somehow, the
evidence that anthropocentrism happened to be paro-
chial in the past was taken as evidence
that anthro-
pocentrism in any form
must be parochial; and paro-
chialism, of
course, must be rejected.
We come, finally, to the fourth and last point
about anthropomorphism.
Anthropomorphism may be
viewed (rightly or wrongly) as a version of the
paro-
chialism that Sir Francis Bacon
designated as the Idols
of the Tribe and of the Cave. Parochialism is the
pro-
jection of our present knowledge of
our limited envi-
ronment into the whole
universe. Parochialism is also
the idea the worm in the apple has, that the
whole
world is an apple. And, of course, anthropomorphism
may be
viewed as a version of parochialism in the sense
that we are very close to
ourselves, and having some
notions of our human traits, we generalize and
project
them into the universe at large.
So we seem to have arrived at the final condem-
nation of anthropomorphism. Somehow, we all con-
demn parochialism and we have the feeling that,
viewed historically, science on the whole aims to break
down parochial
barriers, to give us a better view of
the universe, rather than to
reinforce the views into
which we are born or which are due to
space-time
accidents of birth, and so forth. And in as much as
anthropomorphism is historically parochial, or has its
roots historically
in parochial philosophy, this fact itself
leaves no doubt that
anthropomorphism runs against
the spirit of science, and that as such, it
condemns
itself.
On the other hand, there is, no doubt, quite a differ-
ent aspect or positive value of anthropomorphism in
the history
of science, which cannot be condemned as
parochialism, viz., the human uses
of science. To take
very simple and obvious examples, scientists have de-
vised many sorts of machines that imitate
human oper-
ations. This, at least in part,
is a technological matter
of purely practical significance, interest, or
value. We
possible with impunity; we try to dump them on ma-
chines. Thus engineers will apply science to the de-
signing of machines to perform as accurately as possible
as many human functions as possible. One might say
all this technology is devoid of intellectual value. But
this is only partly true. There is much to be gained
scientifically in the theories of servo-mechanisms and
“thinking machines” as they are half-jokingly called:
we do want to embody part of our views of our func-
tions and of our thought-processes in the observable
operations of models, and thus form generalizations in
a more scientific and interesting manner. What we
learn from these mechanical models may then be used
in research—say in biology.
Whether we try to apply our knowledge of machines
to humans, or our
knowledge of humans to machines,
there is in each case an
intellectual—even philo-
sophic—interest. We can give examples of both cases,
and
show thereby that there are certain interactions
between the human sciences
and nonhuman sciences,
as well as between sciences and technologies,
which
are very stimulating, very suggestive, intellectually
very
fruitful—and thereby justifiable. Take examples
of the
applications of scientific knowledge of the inani-
mate world to the animate world, to humans in partic-
ular. Not only have scientists claimed in a
succession
of hypotheses that the eye is the camera obscura, that
the
eye is a (lensed) camera, but also that the eye is
a television camera of
some sort. These are various
physiological views of the function of the
eyes. We
also attempt the opposite when we apply the theories
that
were first created for explaining human phenom-
ena to the explanation of nonhuman phenomena; there
is no reason to
discard such hypotheses just because
of their anthropomorphic origin. To
give a simple
example, and a very well-known one indeed, Darwin
was
influenced by Malthus. Malthus wrote on economic
competition and struggle
for food in limiting popula-
tion growth, and
Darwin wrote on the origin of species
and of biological ecology; nobody
ever dreamt of
censuring Darwin just because he was indebted to
Malthus.
To give another simple example, perhaps more in-
tricate but more important in history, there is nothing
more
evidently anthropomorphic than the ideas of
attraction and repulsion, of
love and hate. The intro-
duction of the
ideas of love and hate into physics by
the Stoics, and in modern times by
William Gilbert
in his De magnete (1600) and
by Sir Isaac Newton,
is certainly not in itself condemnable. There is
even
something very interesting in the further development
of the
theory of love and hate, or attraction and repul-
sion, in the history of physics. When attraction and
repulsion appear together in Newton's Principia (1687),
they are put together as a theory of force, and
the
idea of force was considered at that time to be highly
animistic.
Newton was criticized for his animism and
for his occult qualities. He
insists in his Opticks (1704)
that his theories are
proper rather than ad hoc
expla-
nations, and true (because they
provide precise predic-
tions), so that one
ought not complain about them even
if they may need further explanation to
fit them into
Cartesian philosophy.
Newton's theory of force was abstract—at least as
compared to
ideas of force we employ when we speak
of applying force to break through
locked doors,
etc.—the force of the muscles, the actions of the
mus-
cles, the disposition of the muscles to
act. James Clerk
Maxwell, in his Treatise on Electricity
and Magnetism
(1873), compared Faraday's tubes of force to
muscles.
The tubes of force by which Faraday operated, how-
ever abstract they were, had two qualities. They tend
to shorten and to become wider, in a manner very
similar to that of a tube
of a muscle. So one can
condone the criticism, launched against Faraday by
the
Newtonians of the day, that his theory was very dis-
tinctly anthropomorphic and less abstract than the
Newtonian theory. Indeed, those in the Newtonian
camp (who were indulgent
towards Faraday), such as
John Tyndall and H. L. F. von Helmholtz, stressed
the
fact that they had no quarrel with Faraday's use of
those concrete
images because of his “want of mathe-
matical culture”: people who were better versed in
mathematics than Faraday, it follows, need not use his
anthropomorphic
analogy. This is why historically
Maxwell's work was so important: he
translated Fara-
day's images into a
mathematical language; even
Tyndall was very impressed.
There is correspondence between Faraday and
Tyndall published in the Philosophical Magazine (1856),
where Tyndall says to
Faraday that he cannot imagine
how space, empty space, that is, can have
all these
strange properties he ascribes to it, as it pulsates with
tensions and strains. Faraday answers Tyndall by de-
claring him to be unimaginative, and in need of a more
developed
intuition.
In the history of science misplaced concreteness may
have all sorts of
different manifestations. We may fill
space with a material
“ether” which will accommodate
strains and stresses.
We may suggest that the world
is simple because we prefer simplicity, or
economy of
thought. We may suggest that science should be math-
ematical since reality is mathematical
(Galileo: “The
Book of Nature is written in geometrical
characters.”).
We may suggest as a speculation that the world
is
composed of fragmentary units of “atomic facts”
be-
cause we state our information about the
world in
guage is perhaps one of the most significant manifesta-
tions of anthropomorphism insofar as it imputes to
reality the limitations of our mode of representing it.
It was crystallized in the twentieth century in the early
work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus-Philosophicus,
1922), and, for a while, was also held by Bertrand
Russell.
Is anthropomorphism still alive? One aspect of an-
thropomorphism is parochialism, and it is typical of
parochialism that its holders don't consider themselves
parochial. That is
to say, we never know how parochial
we are. We only know how parochial our
predecessors
were in comparison with us. It is quite possible that
we
still hold various versions of anthropomorphism that
may be rejected by our
successors if they are to get
rid of our errors and parochial limitations.
In spite of this caution, it is possible to explain a
few facts about the
historical development of science
as it moves away from anthropomorphism.
Examples
have been given of interaction between ideas in the
social
sciences and those in biology and physics. What
is condemnable about
anthropomorphism is mainly its
parochialism. Now it is very hard to draw a
very clear
line between parochial and nonparochial anthropo-
morphisms, because the main
feature of anthro-
pomorphism is its
use of analogy from human phenom-
ena to
nonhuman phenomena and the idea of analogy
is often very vague. Let us go
back to the theory of
space, pulsating with stresses and strains, which
is
common to Faraday's view and to Einstein's in his
theory of
relativity. It is very easy to suggest that
however abstract the idea of
pulsating space is in
comparison with the theory of the pulsating ether
in
space, there still is an analogy between Einstein's space
and any
piece of elastic material such as plain rubber.
In other words, however
abstract our scientific ideas
are, we can draw analogies between them and
more
concrete ideas, and so we can claim that our ideas are
always
lamentably concrete and parochial, that we are
still rooted in our
space-time environment, in local
contingent conditions, whether
physiological, biologi-
cal, or social.
Although from time to time we may find analogies
that are stimulating,
exciting, and interesting, the sub-
stance of
scientific progress cannot be based on anal-
ogies to the given, but rather on novel ideas, on ever
increasing
abstractions. This explains the situation that
was alluded to early in this
discussion: historically, the
more we go into the distant past, the more we
see
anthropomorphism in more stark-naked versions. The
progress of
science is a progress from the more imme-
diate, from the more parochial, to the more abstract,
to the more
general. And this very increase of gen
erality and abstraction moves us away from anthro-
pomorphism.
It is exactly this characteristic that explains why even
our views of human
nature, whether psychological,
anthropological, sociological, economical,
or any other,
are increasingly less anthropomorphic, increasingly
more
abstract. There are very well-known, clamorous
protests about making the
science of men so abstract
as to dehumanize it; for example, it is said
that econo-
mists have defiled economics by
the invention of that
monster, the economic man. There is, perhaps,
some
truth in such claims, but there is also a Luddite attitude
lurking in them, to destroy what seems to threaten us.
Once we realize that
anthropomorphism often takes
the familiar and the comfortably acceptable to
be true,
we see that anthropomorphism may be objectionable
even in the
social sciences. Still, it is hard to speak
against anthropomorphism in
human sciences; we do
better to speak against parochialism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For Aristotle's anthropomorphism, see his Physics, ed.
and
trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1930), Book II, Ch. 8. The locus
classicus of the critique of
anthropomorphism is Bacon's
doctrine of the Idols, in Novum Organum, Book I (Aphorisms
XXXVII-LXVIII), and in Novum Organum, in Works, eds.
R. L. Ellis, J. Spedding, and D. D.
Heath, 14 vols. (London,
1857-74). But Novum
Organum, Book II is notoriously
anthropomorphic with its
“thin” and “thick” essences
(cf.
I. B. Cohen, below). See also B. Spinoza, Ethics, IV, and
Treatise on the Correction of the Understanding
(London,
1910); and John Locke, An Essay Concerning
Human Un-
derstanding, 5th
ed. (London, 1706). References to animism,
the discussion of the
nineteenth-century anthropologists'
attitude towards it, and the
indication as to the Baconian
character of this attitude, are in E . E . Evans-Pritchard,
Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford, 1965); esp.
references
in the Index: Art, Animism, Fetishism, and Ghost
Theory.
The locus classicus of the
critique of anthropomorphism and
parochialism is found in Galileo's Dialogue on the Great
World Systems, trans.
Thomas Salusbury, ed. G. de San-
tillana
(Chicago, 1953), esp. the First Day. See, however,
the discussion of
the abstract and the concrete in the Second
Day and Santillana's
reference (p. 221) to The Assayer, from
which
the quotation about “geometrical characters” is
taken. Also compare Galileo on abstractness with J. C.
Maxwell on the
same topic (and on Faraday) in his Treatise
on
Electricity and Magnetism, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1904;
New
York, 1954), paragraphs 529, 541, and 546ff. See also
Maxwell's
comparison of Faraday's fields to muscles in “On
Action at a
Distance,” Proceedings of the Royal Institu-
tion of Great Britain,
7, reprinted in Scientific Papers, ed.
W. O.
Niven (Cambridge, 1890; reprint New York, 1965), II,
311-23; the
analogy on 320-21. Cf. John Tyndall's Faraday
as a
Discoverer (London, 1870), and Helmholtz' Preface to
the
German edition of that book, translated in Nature, 2
Philosophy of Science, 31, 4 (1964). For the Faraday-Tyndall
correspondence, see Tyndall, “On the Existence of a Mag-
netic Medium in Space,” Philosophical Magazine, 9 (1855),
205-09; and M. Faraday, “Magnetic Remarks,” ibid.,
253-55. For Newton's discussion of the attack on his theory
as postulating occult qualities, see I. B. Cohen, Franklin
and Newton... (Philadelphia, 1956), Ch. IV, and last sec-
tions of Ch. VI. Finally, for the role of language as a veil
between man and nature, thus making some measure of
parochialism inevitable, see Bertrand Russell's essay, “Mys-
ticism and Logic,” in his Mysticism and Logic (London,
1910); and Karl R. Popper, “Why Are the Calculi of Logic
and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality?” especially the last
section, and his “Language and the Body-Mind Problem,”
both in his Conjectures and Refutations (London and New
York, 1963). See in this connection Bacon's Novum Organum
(Aphorisms LIX-LX) on the Idols of the Market Place; and
Max Black, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca, 1962), the essays
on “Benjamin Lee Whorf” and on “Models.”
JOSEPH AGASSI
[See also Abstraction; Analogy; Baconianism;Relativity;Stoicism.]
Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||