Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism, meaning "human," and "morphē" is the attribution of human form, character, or attributes to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domesticated animals.
Etymology
Anthropomorphism and anthropomorphization derive from the verb form anthropomorphize, itself derived from the Greek ánthrōpos and morphē. It is first attested in 1753, originally in reference to the heresy of applying a human form to the Christian God.Examples in prehistory
From the beginnings of human behavioral modernity in the Upper Paleolithic, about 40,000 years ago, examples of zoomorphic works of art occur that may represent the earliest known evidence of anthropomorphism. One of the oldest known is an ivory sculpture, the Löwenmensch figurine, Germany, a human-shaped figurine with the head of a lioness or lion, determined to be about 32,000 years old.It is not possible to say what these prehistoric artworks represent. A more recent example is The Sorcerer, an enigmatic cave painting from the Trois-Frères Cave, Ariège, France: the figure's significance is unknown, but it is usually interpreted as some kind of great spirit or master of the animals. In either case there is an element of anthropomorphism.
This anthropomorphic art has been linked by archaeologist Steven Mithen with the emergence of more systematic hunting practices in the Upper Palaeolithic. He proposes that these are the product of a change in the architecture of the human mind,, where anthropomorphism allowed hunters to identify empathetically with hunted animals and better predict their movements.
In religion and mythology
In religion and mythology, anthropomorphism is the perception of a divine being or beings in human form, or the recognition of human qualities in these beings.Ancient mythologies frequently represented the divine as deities with human forms and qualities. They resemble human beings not only in appearance and personality; they exhibited many human behaviors that were used to explain natural phenomena, creation, and historical events. The deities fell in love, married, had children, fought battles, wielded weapons, and rode horses and chariots. They feasted on special foods, and sometimes required sacrifices of food, beverage, and sacred objects to be made by human beings. Some anthropomorphic deities represented specific human concepts, such as love, war, fertility, beauty, or the seasons. Anthropomorphic deities exhibited human qualities such as beauty, wisdom, and power, and sometimes human weaknesses such as greed, hatred, jealousy, and uncontrollable anger. Greek deities such as Zeus and Apollo often were depicted in human form exhibiting both commendable and despicable human traits. Anthropomorphism in this case is, more specifically, anthropotheism.
From the perspective of adherents to religions in which humans were created in the form of the divine, the phenomenon may be considered theomorphism, or the giving of divine qualities to humans.
Anthropomorphism has cropped up as a Christian heresy, particularly prominently with Audianism in third-century Syria, but also fourth-century Egypt and tenth-century Italy. This often was based on a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation myth: "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them".
Hindus do not reject the concept of a deity in the abstract unmanifested, but note practical problems. The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 12, Verse 5, states that it is much more difficult for people to focus on a deity that is unmanifested than one with form, remarking on the usage of anthropomorphic icons that adherents can perceive with their senses.
Criticism
Some religions, scholars, and philosophers objected to anthropomorphic deities. The earliest known criticism was that of the Greek philosopher Xenophanes who observed that people model their gods after themselves. He argued against the conception of deities as fundamentally anthropomorphic:Xenophanes said that "the greatest god" resembles man "neither in form nor in mind".
Both Judaism and Islam reject an anthropomorphic deity, believing that God is beyond human comprehension. Judaism's rejection of an anthropomorphic deity began with the prophets, who explicitly rejected any likeness of God to humans. Their rejection grew further after the Islamic Golden Age in the tenth century, which Maimonides codified in the twelfth century, in his thirteen principles of Jewish faith.
In the Ismaili interpretation of Islam, assigning attributes to God as well as negating any attributes from God both qualify as anthropomorphism and are rejected, as God cannot be understood by either assigning attributes to Him or taking them away. The 10th-century Ismaili philosopher Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani suggested the method of double negation; for example: "God is not existent" followed by "God is not non-existent". This glorifies God from any understanding or human comprehension.
In secular thought, one of the most notable criticisms began in 1600 with Francis Bacon, who argued against Aristotle's teleology, which declared that everything behaves as it does in order to achieve some end, in order to fulfill itself. Bacon pointed out that achieving ends is a human activity and to attribute it to nature misconstrues it as humanlike. Modern criticisms followed Bacon's ideas such as critiques of Baruch Spinoza and David Hume. The latter, for instance, embedded his arguments in his wider criticism of human religions and specifically demonstrated in what he cited as their "inconsistence" where, on one hand, the Deity is painted in the most sublime colors but, on the other, is degraded to nearly human levels by giving him human infirmities, passions, and prejudices. In Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie proposes that all religions are anthropomorphisms that originate in the brain's tendency to detect the presence or vestiges of other humans in natural phenomena.
Some scholars argue that anthropomorphism overestimates the similarity of humans and nonhumans and therefore could not yield accurate accounts.
In literature
Religious texts
There are various examples of personification in both the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testaments, as well as in the texts of some other religions.Fables
Anthropomorphism, also referred to as personification, is a well-established literary device from ancient times. The story of "The Hawk and the Nightingale" in Hesiod's Works and Days preceded Aesop's fables by centuries. Collections of linked fables from India, the Jataka Tales and Panchatantra, also employ anthropomorphized animals to illustrate principles of life. Many of the stereotypes of animals that are recognized today, such as the wily fox and the proud lion, can be found in these collections. Aesop's anthropomorphisms were so familiar by the first century CE that they colored the thinking of at least one philosopher:Apollonius noted that the fable was created to teach wisdom through fictions that are meant to be taken as fictions, contrasting them favorably with the poets' stories of the deities that are sometimes taken literally. Aesop, "by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events". The same consciousness of the fable as fiction is to be found in other examples across the world, one example being a traditional Ashanti way of beginning tales of the anthropomorphic trickster-spider Anansi: "We do not really mean, we do not really mean that what we are about to say is true. A story, a story; let it come, let it go."
Fairy tales
Anthropomorphic motifs have been common in fairy tales from the earliest ancient examples set in a mythological context to the great collections of the Brothers Grimm and Perrault. The Tale of Two Brothers features several talking cows and in Cupid and Psyche Zephyrus, the west wind, carries Psyche away. Later an ant feels sorry for her and helps her in her quest.Modern literature
Building on the popularity of fables and fairy tales, children's literature began to emerge in the nineteenth century with works such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi and The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, all employing anthropomorphic elements. This continued in the twentieth century with many of the most popular titles having anthropomorphic characters, examples being The Tale of Peter Rabbit and later books by Beatrix Potter; The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame ; Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne; and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the subsequent books in The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis.In many of these stories the animals can be seen as representing facets of human personality and character. As John Rowe Townsend remarks, discussing The Jungle Book in which the boy Mowgli must rely on his new friends the bear Baloo and the black panther Bagheera, "The world of the jungle is in fact both itself and our world as well". A notable work aimed at an adult audience is George Orwell's Animal Farm, in which all the main characters are anthropomorphic animals. Non-animal examples include Rev. W. Awdry's Railway Series stories featuring Thomas the Tank Engine and other anthropomorphic locomotives. Author Jilly Cooper has been criticised for over-use of the attribution in her novel Mount!
The fantasy genre developed from mythological, fairy tale, and Romance motifs sometimes have anthropomorphic animals as characters. The best-selling examples of the genre are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, both by J. R. R. Tolkien, books peopled with talking creatures such as ravens, spiders, and the dragon Smaug and a multitude of anthropomorphic goblins and elves. John D. Rateliff calls this the "Doctor Dolittle Theme" in his book The History of the Hobbit and Tolkien saw this anthropomorphism as closely linked to the emergence of human language and myth: "...The first men to talk of 'trees and stars' saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings... To them the whole of creation was 'myth-woven and elf-patterned'."
Richard Adams developed a distinctive take on anthropomorphic writing in the 1970s: his debut novel, Watership Down, featured rabbits that could talkwith their own distinctive language and mythologyand included a police-state warren, Efrafa. Despite this, Adams attempted to ensure his characters' behavior mirrored that of wild rabbits, engaging in fighting, copulating and defecating, drawing on Ronald Lockley's study The Private Life of the Rabbit as research. Adams returned to anthropomorphic storytelling in his later novels The Plague Dogs and Traveller.
By the 21st century, the children's picture book market had expanded massively. Perhaps a majority of picture books have some kind of anthropomorphism, with popular examples being The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson.
Anthropomorphism in literature and other media led to a sub-culture known as furry fandom, which promotes and creates stories and artwork involving anthropomorphic animals, and the examination and interpretation of humanity through anthropomorphism. This can often be shortened in searches as "anthro", used by some as an alternative term to "furry".
Anthropomorphic characters have also been a staple of the comic book genre. The most prominent one was Neil Gaiman's the Sandman which had a huge impact on how characters that are physical embodiments are written in the fantasy genre. Other examples also include the mature Hellblazer, Fables and its spin-off series Jack of Fables, which was unique for having anthropomorphic representation of literary techniques and genres. Various Japanese manga and anime have used anthropomorphism as the basis of their story. Examples include Squid Girl, Hetalia: Axis Powers, Upotte!!, Arpeggio of Blue Steel and Kancolle.