anthropomorphism

=Anthropomorphism=

toc Read here about the term "anthropomorphism" and how it relates to the study of scale.

=Overview= The scale research programme is at its heart anthropomorphic, in that we seek the human meaning of both the information that we reap from superscales, and the meaning or character of our action in those scales, both in relation to controlling that action and having such action conform with our intentions.

=Usage= We use the term anthropomorphic not in a negative sense of humanizing deities, animating or personifying objects, but in the positive sense of comprehending phenomena on a human scale, using the vast preconscious capabilities of the human brain.

=Criticism Of Research By Calling It Anthropomorphic= Often a teleological issue. Dawkins’ “selfish gene” is criticized: the contention that genes can have interests or be selfish is anthropomorphic. G. H. von Wright (1906–2003) stated that what gives a sequence of events the character of causal connection is “the possibility of subjecting cause-factors to experimental test by interfering with the ‘natural’ course of events” (Encyc Ideas, causality). Since manipulation is a distinctively human action, he concluded that the causal relation is dependent upon the concept of human action. But his views were taken to be too anthropomorphic. Michel Foucault argued the opposite, that phenomena both physical and cultural are now construed in such a way as to completely displace any anthropomorphic centrality; in other words, the human subject, though events pass through him and have meaning for him by way of institutional and conventional practices, is not the autonomous being that Hegelian metaphysics had posited; he is instead the outcome of cultural forces and processes not only beyond his control, but beyond his knowledge. (Encyc ideas, Literary Criticism).

=Links= Read about Vitruvius and Vitruvian Man.

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