What is anthropomorphism?
This page explains the notion of anthropomorphism, and introduces a range of examoples from various sources such as sicence books and science journalism.
I am aware this page has become unwieldy and am looking to reformat the information.
Anthropomorphism is the ascribing of human feelings, thinking, motives etc., to non-human entities. Anthropomorphism is a common feature of scientific discourse. It is sometimes used in teaching and science communication as a kind of figure of speech that is not meant to be taken literally. However, when learners use anthropomorphic language in science this may be a sign of alternative conceptions, as they may consider an anthropomorphic explanation to be scientifically valid.
(Read about 'Learners' anthropomorphic thinking')
(Read about 'alternative conceptions')
That is anthropomorphism may support 'pseudo-explanations': explanations that have the superficial form of scientific explanations, but which have no scientific merit.
Usually anthropomorphic references are not intended literally – rather they may be seen as a sub-class of metaphors. Other examples of metaphors in scientific writing and discourse may be found at:
Read about examples of scientific metaphors
Anthropomorphism in public discourse
Anthropomorphism is common in talk about science, such as new reports and documentaries. It may be adopted inadvertently, or may be a deliberate attempt to communicate science using anthropomorphism as technique for 'making the unfamiliar familiar'
(Read about 'Making the unfamiliar familiar')
As suggested above, many of these examples may be meant metaphorically, but taken literally imply inanimate objects can act as deliberate agents in the world.
Examples of anthropomorphism in public communication of science
Here are some examples of the use of anthropomorphism that I have noticed:
- The COVID-19 virus is often said to be a 'clever' or 'sneaky' virus. (Read 'So who's not a clever little virus then?')
Science topic:
Cells
- "cells know what they need to do…they will do what they know how to do best" (Dr Nitzan Gonen)
- Immune cells have preferences and make decisions
| Science topic | Anthropomorphic suggestion/implication | Anthropomorphic statement | Speaker/author |
| anaphylaxis | Immune cells have preferences | "So, anaphylaxis…is your immune cells will come into contact with something that they decide that they don't like the looks of, that they don't want to be a part of you, and then they will send out cell signals, usually histamine. … it's all dependent on what those cells decide to do in the moment." | Theresa MacPhail, medical anthropologist, speaking on 'Start the Week' |
| antibiotic resistance | Microbes are challenging antiobiotics | "…the microbes did not just accept defeat, they have been mounting their resistance and they are making a comeback" | Gaia Vince, presenter of BBC Inside Science |
| appetite regulation | Protein talks | "We discovered that GDF15 was being secreted from the liver, and then talking to the brain to tell the brain to reduce feeding." | Dr. Gregory Steinberg, professor, Department of Medicine, McMaster University, interviewed on the Nature podcast |
| asteroids | composition of asteroid Bennu wants to tell us something | "We'll look at its chemistry, and we will look in great detail at just what it is all made of, and what it is trying to tell us about the history of Bennu" | Prof. Sara Russell, Senior Research Lead, Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum interviewed on BBC Inside Science |
| bacteria | Thiomargarita magnifica's 'choice' of niche | RP: "So these are living in some kind of rotten mush, in the mangrove swamp…What is it that is so special that they have chosen this weird way of living?" … JMV "These bacteria, they are very happy with that nasty compound [H2S], because they can feed on it, they are able to extract energy, in the form of electrons [sic], from these chemical compounds, and use that energy to fix carbon dioxide." | Roland Pease, presenter of BBC Science in Action, interviewing Dr. Jean-Marie Volland, Scientist at the Laboratory for Research in Complex Systems |
| bacteria | Bacteria have preferences | "Some strains of bacteria prefer to live in tumours rather than normal tissue." | Dr Susan Woods, Senior research fellow, Gut Cancer Group, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, speaking on Ockham's Razor |
| bioluminescence | dinoflaggelates deliberately use light to avoid predation | "these are these single cell organisms which are producing light – essentially to try to drive off predators" | Christopher Lowe Lecturer in Marine Biology at Swansea University, talking on an episode of BBC In Our Time |
| biosphere | the biosphere can learn | "…earth's biogeochemical cycles where there is no waste, everything is repurposed and recycled at different timescales. And I always think of the example of phosphorus in nature. Phosphorus is an element which that's really important for the biosphere, but it is really scarce in rocks, and so the biosphere has learned to recycle it ferociously." | Prof. Marcia Bjornerud, Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies,Lawrence University, talking on BBC's Lights Out episode Lithified |
| black holes | Black holes can be are creative | "Beethoven wasn't the only one with dramatic flair 200 years ago–Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, may have also composed an intense flare as it consumed nearby material.'(This might be considered an attempt at punning.) | NASA – Tweet from @NASA |
| cells | Cells can enjoy interacting | "the cell …palpated at the cardiomyocyte… stroked it all the way round, and then it was, it seemed to like it a lot…[another cell] reared up and …rushed off…one like[d] it and the other one didn't" | Professor Sian Harding, Professor of Cardiac Pharmacology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London |
| cells | Cells can know things | "Any NK cell that finds itself shaking hands with a ULBP receptor knows it has found a stressed-out cell." | Catherine Carver. Immune. How your body defends and protects you [Read about this book] |
| cells | Cells can be placated/calmed | "Touching these receptors placates NK cells, inhibiting their killer ways. Stressed, infected cells display fewer of these normal receptors on their surface and in the absence of their calming presence the trigger-happy NK cells attack." | Catherine Carver. Immune. How your body defends and protects you [Read about this book] |
| cells | Cells try to repair themselves | "While our understanding of perforin is evolving, one theory is that it behaves like a Trojan horse. The cell responds to the initial hole-poking assault by trying to repair itself…At the same time that it pulls in the perforin holes, the cell unwittingly pulls in a family of protein-eating granzymes…" p.38 | Catherine Carver. Immune. How your body defends and protects you [Read about this book] |
| cells | NK cells can plan | "However, the gigantosome is more than just a pinched-off hole-riddled piece of membrane; its creation was all part of the NK cell's plan to kill the cell." | Catherine Carver. Immune. How your body defends and protects you [Read about this book] |
| cells | cells have interests | "…T regulatory cells… answer the question Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? who guards the guards? The T regulatory cells identify and suppress immune cells with an unhealthy interest in normal cells." | Catherine Carver. Immune. How your body defends and protects you [Read about this book] |
| chemical reactions | Molecules have preferences | "Two conformers of 2-formylphenylnitrene can undergo … different quantum tunnelling processes, leading to two different products… Despite the isomerisation having an extremely low energy barrier, the syn and the anti conformers prefer different, separate pathways: they rearrange into a 2,1-benzisoxazole and an imino-ketene, respectively." | Katrina Krämer, Senior science correspondent, writing in Chemistry World |
| chemical reactions | Molecules as active agent in reactions | "There are lots of different ways to get molecules to connect to each other, but the more complicated a molecule gets, the harder it is to control exactly where it will react, and the beauty of click chemistry…and bioorthogonal chemistry which is a cousin of click chemistry, these reactions have the special quality that they are so incredibly selective that the two reacting partners just ignore all the other functional groups even on really large molecules and even on large objects like human cells for example…they find each other, but also like they might like bounce around each other until the right two functional groups find each other, right, and they'll click, and all the rest of the stuff on the molecule just, you know, just along for the ride." | Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Professor of Chemistry at Stanford and Nobel Prize winner, interviewed on BBC's Science in Action |
| comets | comets' tails can be wanton | "In 1985, it [Halley] will swoop into the heart of the Solar System and deploy its wanton tail." | Nigel Calder The Comet is Coming! The feverish legacy of Mr Halley |
| comets | comets have social lives | "More often the comets become nothing more than statistics which help the professionals to study the social life of comets." | Nigel Calder The Comet is Coming! The feverish legacy of Mr Halley |
| cosmology | Dark matter has preferences | "it's the gravity of dark matter that likes to kind of bring everything together" | Professor Catherine Heymans, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, Astronomer Royal for Scotland |
| eDNA (environmental DNA) | The environment as a deliberate agent. | "The environment decides how long that D.N.A. survives and is stable." | Dr David Duffy, assistant professor of wildlife disease genomics, University of Florida, interviewed on BBC Inside Science |
| enzymes | Achetlycholine is patient | "Acetylcholinesterase … waits patiently and springs into action soon after a signal is passed…" | RCSB Protein Data Bank |
| fluids | Jets of water act deliberately | "To minimize surface tension, the jet tries to become a cylinder…" | Article in 'Physics World' |
| fracking | Underground methane attempts to get to the surface | "If you are a bubble of methane, and you are trying to get up to the surface, the easiest route might be the bore hole, rather than going through layers and layers of rock" | Professor Richard Davies, Energy Geosciences, Newcastle University (interviewed on BBC 'Inside Science') |
| genetic manipulation | Making requests of yeast | "And people have tried to make spider silk from yeast, getting yeast to generate – you put the genetic code of spider silk in, and you ask the yeast to generate the silk." | Dr Aarathi Prasad talking on an episode of BBC's Start the Week |
| gravity | Gravity has aims | "Gravity is constantly trying to make every structure collapse." | Structural engineer Roma Agrawal talking at the Royal Institution |
| HIV | virus is described as actively engaging in intentional action | "The AIDS virus subverts its host's cells. It forces them to make replicas of itself with an enzyme whose job it is to copy information from the invader's RNA into human DNA. Each new particle hides itself in a cloak of cell membrane into which it inserts a protein. This is the key to the infection as it fits into matched molecules on the surface of blood cells and opens the door to their interior." | Steve Jones, Almost Like a Whale: The origin of species updated |
| Homeobox genes | Making requests of D.N.A. segments | "And what we had to do was to separate those two strands, and then ask those separated strands to find the complementary sequence in the human genome that we had also separated into single stranded pieces. So, it was sort of like a magnet, sort of like asking that fly piece [of D.N.A.] to bind to the opposite strand in the human genome like a magnet." | Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, interviewed on 'The Life Scientific' |
| hormones | Adrenaline asks questions | "…and what that adrenaline is going to do, is, it is going to ask your heart to beat faster, it's going to ask your body for more oxygen…" | Dr. Andrew Baker, Hennepin County medical examiner |
| immune system | Viruses hide | "IgG3… is able to cross certain tissue barriers and go into those sites where viruses might actually try to go to and hide" | Prof. Onur Boyman, Director of the Department of Immunology at the University Hospital, Zurich |
| immune system | Immune cells try to do things, and can know things | "These cells usually rush to the site of an injury, or an infection, and they try to kill the pathogen, or seal up the pathogen…goes around sniffing other cells, basically touching them and trying to find out whether they have been altered in some way" | Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee – a medical oncologist at Columbia University |
| lithium | lithium can be happy | "Lithium is crucial for batteries because it is a highly reactive metal, it has an extra electron, and therefore it is happy to give that electron away, take it back again." | Jeremy Wrathall, Founder and CEO of Cornish Lithium, talking on BBC's Lights Out episode Lithified |
| life on mars | Microbes can think | "…Could anything have ever lived there [Mars] – and if so what could have lived there, and we are talking microbes here, not higher life, but these microbes have specific thoughts of where they want to live…" | Dr. Susanne P. Schwenzer, Senior Lecturer in Earth Science, Open University |
| medicinal chemistry | Radium copies calcium | "Radium mimics calcium in the body so it's naturally taken up by bone, and it kills cancer cells by emitting very high energy α-particles." | Rebecca Trager writing in Chemistry World |
| meteors | meteors and meteorites can be impetuous | "Comets are sometimes confused with their impetuous kin, the meteors and meteorites that dash into the Earth's upper air from outer space and either burn up as 'shooting stars' or reach the ground as incandescent lumps of iron, stone and tar." | Nigel Calder The Comet is Coming! The feverish legacy of Mr Halley |
| microbes | Microbes need good quality sleep. | "Microbes, like us, need a good night's sleep." | Tim Spector Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London speaking on BBC's Just One Thing – with Michael Mosley |
| memory formation | Neurones act purposefully | "…whenever cells were speaking to one another in the act of making memories, reaching out to one another across gaps between neurons to form the bridges that allow memory to exist…" | Lauren Slater, The Drugs that Changed our Minds. The history of psychiatry in ten treatments |
| monkey diets | Monkeys eat maggotty fruit for the protein | "So, suddenly the monkey's…squeaking the monkey equivalent of 'oh heck, what am I going to do, erm, I'm faced with all this fruit with no protein…" | Primatologist Adrian Barnett interviewed for a radio programme |
| natural selection | Moths think things through, and plan | ["…the common clothes moth is what is called synanthropic, it actually depends entirely on man, so you don't find it in the wild"] "yeah, so there must have been a point when they were feeding on something else, and they thought 'actually, here's a better life, clothes'…" | Marnie Chesterton, Radio producer / presenter [in conversation with Dr David Lees, Curator, Microlepidoptera, at the natural History Museum] |
| natural selection | Viruses act deliberately | "The virus has not gone away. It will attempt to survive by mutating" | Nadhim Zahawi UK Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for COVID Vaccine Deployment |
| natural selection | Viruses act deliberately | "…the delta variant escapes immunity a bit, it will infect some people who have been vaccinated, but the survival of the virus means that it is going to find ways of doing that in the future by throwing up new variants which do that." | Professor Andrew Pollard, Oxford Vaccines Group, University of Oxford |
| natural selection | Viruses act deliberately | "When you give the virus the opportunity to infect so many people, then of course it is going to try not only every possible mutation, but every possible combination of mutations, until it finds one that really helps it overcome our defences." | Dr Theodora Hatziioannou, Research Associate Professor, Laboratory of Retrovirology, The Rockefeller University (Radio interview) |
| natural selection | Bees decide to change diet | "These are more specialised bees that once they were vegetarian for a really long time and they actually decided to change their ways, there's all of this meat in the forest, why not take advantage?…so potentially this specialised group of bees realised that, and maybe there's enough competition on the flowers that they decided to switch…" | Dr Laura Figueroa NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biology, Department of Entomology, Cornell University / University of Massachusetts in Amhert (Radio interview) |
| Nature | Nature as a deliberate actor | "Nature doesn't waste energy trying to attack something it can't – put fungi on glass and it doesn't do anything." | Prof. Roger Rowell, professor of composite agricultural materials, University of Wisconsin-Madison, quoted in Chemistry World |
| neutrinos | Neutrinos are able to be shy | "they are very shy" | Prof. Andrew Pontzen Professor of Cosmology, UCL, talking on BBC Inside Science |
| neutrons | Neutrons have preferences | "Neutrons don't like to be compressed, at some point they resist it." | Prof. Carolin Crawford (University of Cambridge) talking on BC radio show 'In Our Time' |
| phase change in steels | metal structures have preferences | "…austenite…normally it exists only at very high temperatures, so over 900 degrees centigrade. If you cool the steel, or do things to it, then it will change… So austenite transforms from a high temperature to the body-centred cubic structure but some of it remains, it does not want to change." "…If you cool so rapidly that there is no possibility of a composition change, because, you know, normally it is not just iron, but it is a mixture of many different things, you cool it rapidly, so that there is no diffusion at all, no chaotic movement of atoms… it inherits the chemical composition of the high temperature phase. It does not like those atoms, foreign atoms, but it is forced to inherit them." | Professor Sir Harry Bhadeshia (Emeritus Tata Steel Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge; Professor of Metallurgy, Queen Mary University of London) interviewed on an episode of BBC's The Life Scientific |
| plants | Plant awareness | "When the plant realises that the external stresses are too great and that could be though very high temperatures, air temperatures, or it could be through water stress, i.e., there isn't sufficient water in the soil for the plant to take up, then the plant has to shut its stomata…" | Dr Nicola Cannon from the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester interviewed on BBC Inside Science |
| plants | Plants act deliberately | "…the plant allocates its resources to growing leaves on the sheltered side…" | Dr Stuart Farrimond, medical doctor and science writer, talking on on BBC's Inside Science |
| public health | Viruses have preferences | "Now that we are entering Autumn and Winter, something that COVID and other viruses, you know, usually like, the prime minister this week will be getting out our plans to manage COVID over the coming few months." | Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (UK Government) |
| Recycling | Plants have preferences | "Plants, in general, don't want to be degraded, they want to stay rigid and upright so fractionating is difficult." | Andy West, chief chemist at Bio-Sep, quoted in Chemistry World |
| reproductive strategy | Fish have hopes for the future | "So, fish have a strategy called broadcast spawning where they lay hundreds of thousands of eggs, each individual, and just let those drift and hope that some of them reach a suitable environment and survive." | Dr Nandini Ramesh, University of California, Berkely (interviewed on BBC 'Science in Action') |
| sand piles | Sand has a preferred slope | "the angle of repose, and this is the natural angle that the dry sand wants to be at to form a slope, it is somewhere on the order of 32 to 35 degrees." | Prof. Bruce Malamud (Wilson Chair of Hazard and Risk and Executive Director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University) interviewed on 'the Life Scientific') |
| seismology | The earth is trying to cool | "So, essentially the earth has one objective, it has had one objective for four and half billion years, and that's to cool down…it's trying to cool down." | Dr James Hammond (Reader in Geophysics at Birkbeck, University of London) |
| space exploration | spacecraft attempt things | "In the 50 years since Mariner 10 launched, only two other spacecraft have attempted the journey to Mercury." | Science News tweet |
| space exploration | a spacecraft that cannot figure out where it is can become utterly confused | "Not only did the scientists not want to risk damaging the orbiter with the impact of a fragment of high-velocity dust, but they also didn't want to risk flying Rosetta into a cloud of dusty debris that could potentially confuse its 'star-tracking' navigation system. Sun glinting off a piece of dust close to the orbiter can look uncannily like a far-off star. Rosetta uses the stars to figure out where it is located and if mistakes an errant piece of comet dust for a star then it will be utterly confused as to its location and could easily wander off into space or, worse, crash into the comet." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the Solar System |
| space exploration | a spacecraft can be intrepid | "By 9 July 2015 the lander had made seven intermittent contacts with Rosetta, but the communication links that were established were too short and unstable to allow for any commands to be uploaded and that was the last the scientists heard from the intrepid little lander. Philae was, once agin and for the final time, asleep on the comet, clinging on for dear life but having the ride of its life." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the Solar System |
| stars | a star can be petulant | Betelgeuse has "surprisingly petulant behaviour" | NASA website [discussed here] |
| stars | gravity acts deliberately | "gravity is still trying to pull that white dwarf to be even denser and even denser." | Prof. Mark Sullivan (Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southampton) talking on BBC radio show 'In Our Time' |
| stars | stars steal form each other | "…most stars in the universe don't live by themselves, … that white dwarf can steal material from its companion star." | Prof. Mark Sullivan (Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southampton) talking on BBC radio show 'In Our Time' |
| stars | stars steal form each other | "maybe those planets were stolen from another star that got too close" | Prof. Carolin Crawford (University of Cambridge) talking on BC radio show 'In Our Time' |
| surface tension | molecules have preferences, try to do things, and can be unhappy and nervous | "you see a little drop of water, a tiny drop, and the atoms [sic, molecules] attract each other, they like to be next to each other they want as many partners as they can get. Now the guys that are at the surface … they're trying to get in. And you can imagine…this teeming people, all moving very fast, all trying to have as many partners as possible and the guys at the edge are very unhappy and nervous and they keep pounding in, trying to get in…it's like that: because everybody is trying to get into the water." | Prof. Richard Fenyman talking on an episode of the BBC series 'BBC series Fun to Imagine' (This examples is discussed here.) |
| viruses | viruses have geographical knowledge | "The virus thinks, whatever the SNP may think, the virus thinks this is all one country, and that's the reality." | Boris Johnson (Former UK Prime Minister) giving evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry |
| weather | water wants to move | "In normal situations the wind is blowing across the Pacific, from South America towards Indonesia, and it piles up the warm water in the West Pacific. That piled-up warm water is wanting to move towards South America but it can't because the winds are pushing it there." | Dr Tim Stockdale, scientist at European Centre For Medium Range Weather Forecasts (interviewed on the BBC's 'Science in Action') |
| weather | convention currents have preferences | "…the deep convection in the atmosphere that powers the whole atmosphere circulation, that likes to be over the warmest water…." | Dr Tim Stockdale, scientist at European Centre For Medium Range Weather Forecasts (interviewed on the BBC's 'Science in Action') |
Anthropomorphism in scientists’ writing
| Science topic | Anthropomorphic suggestion/implication | Quote | Author |
| atomic nucleus | nuclei have intentions | "Right after a nonelastic collision with another particle, the atomic nucleus tries to get rid of its excitation energy in the simplest possible way" | Mario Bunge {physicist and philosopher of science} |
| band theory | Electrons actively seek energy levels | "When two bands overlap, some of the electrons that would otherwise seek states in the upper part of the lower band will find states of lower energy in the lower part of the upper band…" | Alan Holden ('The Nature of Solids') |
| bees | Bees build honeycombs as they do after due consideration of the best geometrical shape for the cells. | "Presumably because they know themselves to be entrusted with the task of bringing from the gods to the accomplished portion of mankind a share of ambrosia in this form [honey], they do not think it proper to pour it carelessly on ground or wood or any other ugly and irregular material… they make from them, for the reception of the honey, the vessels which we call honeycombs, (with cells) all equal, similar and contiguous to one another, and hexagonal in form. And that they have contrived this by virtue of a certain geometrical forethought we may infer in this way. They would necessarily think that the figures must be such as to be contiguous to one another, that is to say, to have their sides common, in order that no foreign matter could enter the interstices between them and so defile the purity of their produce. … for the bees would have none of the figures which are not uniform …. the bees by reason of their instinctive wisdom chose for the construction of the honeycomb the figure which has the most angles, because they conceived that it would contain more honey than either of the two others. Bees, then, know just this fact which is of service to themselves, that the hexagon is greater than the square and the triangle and will hold more honey for the same expenditure of material used in constructing the different figures." | Pappus of Alexandria |
| Birds of prey | A region of space is an active agent | "…a neutral zone insinuates itself between the nest and the hunting ground of many raptors…" | Jakob von Uexküll |
| Birds of prey | Songbirds make deliberate, strategic decisions | "The protected area is sought out by many songbirds as a nesting and incubation site where they can raise their young free of danger under the protection of the big predator." | Jakob von Uexküll |
| collapse of the wave function (quantum mechanics) | Nature 'outwits' us | "It is by way of probabilities, it turns out that Nature outwits our two-valued logic of 'being' and 'nothingness': for indeed, a probability is neither one nor the other, but does evidently occupy s middle ground…Nature contrives to outwit our simple logic: by this physically inexplicable 'collapse' into objective fact the probabilities of physics manifest their transcendence…" | Wolfgang Smith {mathematician, physicist, philosopher of science} [Examples of Nature being personified] |
| crystallisation | atoms lay themselves down | "Some small group of atoms coming together in the right sort of orderliness formed a seed on which successive layers of atoms laid themselves in the same sort of orderliness." | Alan Holden ('The Nature of Solids') |
| forces | Forces endeavour to free each other | "When God created the elements of which the earth is composed, He created certain wondrous forces, which are set free, and become evident when matter acts on matter. All the forces, with many differences, have much in common, and if one is free it will immediately endeavour to free its companions." | William Crookes |
| gravitation | Heavy bodies try to reach the earth | "For example, in the theory of gravitation we suppose an agent,–viz. force, or mechanical power,–to act on any material body which is placed in the presence of any other, and to urge the two mutually towards each other. This is a vera causa; for heavy bodies (that is, all bodies, but some more, some less,) tend to, or endeavour to reach, the earth, and require the exertion of force to counteract this endeavour, or to keep them up." | John Herschel |
| Le Châtelier principle | matter opposes changes, can be 'reluctant' | "This principle says that matter resists change: when it is forced to change, it opposes the force with all the means at its disposal. … When a gas is compressed, it is forced to occupy a smaller volume. It must comply, but it complies as reluctantly as it can." | Alan Holden ('The Nature of Solids') |
| magnetism | Lodestones feed on iron | "The loadstone is laid up in iron filings, not that iron is its food; as though loadstone were alive and needed feeding, as Cardan philosophizes… it seemed to Cardan and to Alexander Aphrodiseus, [iron is] attracted by the loadstone in order that it may feed on shreds of it." | William Gilbert dismissing ideas of earlier 'philosophizers' |
| magnetism | Iron strives to move | "If, for instance, a magnet attracts a piece of iron, we … imagine – after the manner of Faraday – that the magnet always calls into being something physically real in the space around it, that something being what we call a 'magnetic field'. In its turn this magnetic field operates on the piece of iron, so that the latter strives to move towards the magnet." | Albert Einstein. (Relativity. The special and the general theory.) |
| magnets | A magnet broken in half wants to be reunited | "…cut this into two equal parts… the parts B and C, which were before continuous, and are now divided…B attracts C, desirous to be united, and to be brought back into its pristine continuity…" | William Gilbert |
| mass defect in chemical reactions | atoms can be indifferent | "If atomic masses were strictly additive there would be be no stable compounds: every combination would result from a chance encounter of indifferent atoms and would therefore be unstable…" | Mario Bunge {physicist and philosopher of science} |
| mechanical systems | Systems seek to lose energy | "Any mechanical system, given a chance, will find a way to lose energy to its surroundings and fall into a condition in which it retains the lowest energy permitted to it." "The electron [in a hydrogen atom] can be excited by enough energy from outside into a permitted state with higher energy. But after it has been excited, it will quickly find some way to deliver the extra energy back to its environment and so to return to the permitted state with the lowest energy." | Alan Holden ('The Nature of Solids') |
| metallic structure | Electrons try to do things | "The electrons are all repelling one another and trying to stay out of one another's way." | Alan Holden ('The Nature of Solids') |
| Nature | Nature thinks and knows. (Read about personification of nature) | "Exactly when is a system big enough for nature to think it is infinite?" "…nature will evolve the system as the quantum statistical equation dictates. It will look at the forces and configurations and at the energies these give rise to, and will do what the equation requires when those energy obtain. Imagine that nature uses our methods of representation.It looks at the energies, writes down the operator that represents those energies, solves the quantum statistical equation, and finally produces the new state that the equation demands." | Nancy Cartwright |
| p-n junction | 'holes' seek to cross a p-n junction in a semiconductor | "Any less energetic holes attempting the ascent will slide back." | Alan Holden ('The Nature of Solids') |
| pair bonding in birds | Birds can have happy marriages | "In the Amsterdam Zoo, there was a pair of bitterns of which the male had 'fallen in love' with the zoo director. In order to allow the bitterns to mate, the director had to stay out of sight for quite some time. This had the positive result that the male bittern became accustomed to the female. This ended up in a happy marriage, and, as the female sat brooding over her eggs, the director dared to show his face once more. …When the male saw his former love companion again, he chased the female off the nest and seemed to signal by repeated bows that the director should take his proper place and carry on the business of incubation." | Jakob von Uexküll |
| sea urchins | Sea urchins reflect on their lives | "In the greenish depths of the sea, the sea-urchins lead a contemplative life, aloof from the problems of world and science." | Ludwig von Bertalanffy |
| spin pairing | Electrons actively control their spin | "In a helium atom, with two electrons, both the electrons will normally again be found in the permitted state of lowest energy. Since they are occupying the same state, those electrons will arrange their spins in opposite directions – one up and one down – as the exclusion principle describes…" | Alan Holden ('The Nature of Solids') |
Anthropomorphism in popular accounts of science
| Topic | Anthropomorphism | Quote | Source |
| asteroids and comets | asteroiods and comets act delibrately | "It is also a possibility that the asteroids and comets that collided with the Earth might have been destroyed, literally vaporised, during attempted delivery of their volatiles and organics because of high impact temperatures and pressures related to extreme collisional velocities." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| atomic bombs | atomic bombs can worry | "Fat Man was the code name for the plutonium bomb's design, which was bulbous because it needed to implode inward to work – something a uranium bomb didn't need to worry about." | Kit Chapman, Superheavy. Making and breaking the periodic table |
| atomic nuclei | nuclei behave deliberately | "[Witold] Nazarewicz and his colleagues are mapping out the shape a nucleus will twist itself into while trying to hold onto its protons." | Kit Chapman, Superheavy. Making and breaking the periodic ta |
| atoms | Atoms show allegiance [n.b., strictly this should refer to molecules] | "Specifically, Boltzmann and Maxwell pictured a volume of gas as an enormous number of tiny, hard masses speeding about and colliding with each other in mostly empty space. These atoms [sic] pleaded allegiance to the Newtonian laws of mechanics: they had velocities and directions, carried momentum and kinetic energy, bounced off one another in predictable ways, and so on." | Lindley, David – The Dream Universe. How fundamental physics lost its way |
| bacteria | Mycobacterium tuberculosis as a deliberate agent | "It is perfectly content to spend years in the human body, making itself inconspicuous as the infection slowly spreads, until it at last reveals itself to its human host." "…the bacterium, unaware of humanity's inherent inconstancy, persevered and was well suited for the lapse in attention." | Thomas Goetz. The Remedy. Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the quest to cure tuberculosis. |
| bacteria | Propionibacterium acne enjoys its food | "…like many of us, P. acnes [Propionibacterium acnes] is a lipophile, which is to say it adores consuming fat. The sebum on our skin is like a layer of buttery, greasy goodness that has P. acnes smacking its lips. However, when P. acnes turns up to dine it has some seriously bad table manners, which can include dribbling chemicals all over our faces… [non-human] animal sebum lacks the triglyceride fats that P. acnes loves to picnic on." | Catherine Carver Immune. How your body defends and protects you |
| cancer | cancerous cells are 'selfish' | "…cancerous cells break the rules and function selfishly, coordinating neither their reproduction nor their death with the needs of the individual in which they reside." | Neil Shubin, Some Assembly Required. Decoding four billion years of life, from ancient fossils to DNA |
| cancer | cancer cells act deliberately | "It is believed that tumour cells bobbing about in the bloodstream try to evade the immune system by coating themselves in platelets…" | Catherine Carver Immune. How your body defends and protects |
| cells | Cells have a view on communal living | "Cells, which had previously been aggressively independent individualists, discovered the advantages of communal life." | Andrew Scott, Vital Principles. The molecular mechanisms of life |
| cell death | Cells sacrifice themselves for a cause [Also teleological] | "By limiting their reproduction and dying at the right time, cells inside bodies sacrifice themselves for a higher good, the functioning of the body as a whole." | Neil Shubin, Some Assembly Required. Decoding four billion years of life, from ancient fossils to DNA |
| comets | comet behave deliberately | "What scientists are finding out is that IDPs [interplanetary dust particles] really are teaching them that that comets are doing their best to avoid adhering to the classic Solar System models." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| comets | comets grow up | "The results show that you can't judge one comet by another, even those that grew up in the same neighbourhood" | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| degassing | gas bubbles act delberately | "When you put the batter in the cake tine prior to baking, you can tap the tin on the counter top and all the gas bubbles work their way to the top of the batter and pop out." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| disease | Tuberculosis as a deliberate actor | "Tuberculosis was a cunning disease, coming on slowly, almost casually. At first it seemed innocuous, beginning with a cough: a cold, perhaps, or a touch of bad air. But then that cough turned malevolent, becoming stronger and more painful and extracting blood with each spasm." "It wreaked most of its toll in its pulmonary form, and it couldn't have chosen a better hiding place." | Thomas Goetz. (2013). The Remedy. Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the quest to cure tuberculosis. |
| Earth history | Earth acts deliberately | "Using the age-old analogy of a 24-hour clock that started ticking when the Earth formed and which reached midnight at the present day, it would show that humans only arrived at a few minutes before midnight. Most of those 24 hours passed prior to the appearance of humans, and the planet achieved a lot in that time. For starters, the Earth had to form from a cloud of dust and gas and establish itself as one of the most important objects in the solar system, one of the eight planetary bodies that owned its orbit around the Sun. It then had to create oceans and an atmosphere, and allow lifeforms to grow and thrive on and in it. Earth even had to recover many times from space objects repeatedly impacting its surface; it formed its own Moon; and it found a way to continually change its external appearance, destroying and re-forming its surface many times over, something that it continues to do at the present day, even if it isn't very obvious on the scale of human lifetimes." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| elements | elements [sic, actually atoms of the elements] try to achieve things | "Each element has one more electron than electron than the previous, and is eagerly trying to complete its outer shell." "As mentioned before, chemistry is all about the outer shells of electrons and elements trying to fill them." [This reflects a common alternative conception: the full outer shells explanatory principle.] | Kit Chapman, Superheavy. Making and breaking the periodic table |
| energy | Energy having intentions/aims | "By 1922 the 'Blue Radio' golf ball 'with radium salts in the centre' was available at John Wanamaker's New York department store. It's adverts explained the benefits of using radium in this unusual way: 'When the ball is hit, the radium salts in the plastic centre start a wave of momentum which gives a great resiliency. The ball literally is alive and the released energy actually fights to free itself'." | Reported in Lucy Jane Santos, (2020) Half lives. The unlikely story of radium. |
| entropy | planets (?) are greedy | "Planck…objected to Boltzmann that if his interpretation of entropy was correct, then the existence of the universe as we know it – in a state very far from equilibrium, with stars churning out energy into empty space, and some of its being greedily taken up on the surfaces of planets to fuel life -seemed very unlikely indeed." | Lindley, David – The Dream Universe. How fundamental physics lost its way |
| enzymes | Enzymes meet, capture | "Once an enzyme had met and captured the required starting materials …" | Andrew Scott, Vital Principles. The molecular mechanisms of life |
| fireflies | Fireflies commit crimes (murder and theft) | "In fact, lucibufagins are so useful that some rival species that can't produce them, such as Photuris frontalis, aren't above a little murder. Female Photuris fireflies mimic the flashes of Photinus females, only to eat any males of the rival species that come to mate with them. Once she's devoured her hapless suitor, the Photuris female transfers the prey's lucibufagin into her bloodstream, stealing the toxin for herself! | Article by Kit Chapman in Education in Chemistry |
| genes | Genes are alive, can have a purpose in life, and die | "Imagine two kinds of genes in the genome: some that have a function and make a protein, and others that just live to jump around and make copies of themselves." … "The only thing stopping these parasites is that if they get completely out of control, they would cause the death of their host, and over time they, too, will die." p.144 anthropo | Neil Shubin, Some Assembly Required. Decoding four billion years of life, from ancient fossils to DNA |
| HIV | virus is described as actively engaging in intentional action | "The AIDS virus subverts its host's cells. It forces them to make replicas of itself with an enzyme whose job it is to copy information from the invader's RNA into human DNA. Each new particle hides itself in a cloak of cell membrane into which it inserts a protein. This is the key to the infection as it fits into matched molecules on the surface of blood cells and opens the door to their interior." | Steve Jones, Almost Like a Whale: The origin of species updated |
| light | Light experiences happiness | "Light is travelling happily along in a straight line through the air." | Brian Clegg Light Years. The extraordinary story of mankind's fascination with light. |
| light | Photons know things | "A photon hitting the inside surface of a window somehow knows how thick the glass is and acts accordingly. There's something similar to entanglement happening here, a kind of action at a distance by which the photon knows how thick the glass is without passing through it…" | Brian Clegg Light Years. The extraordinary story of mankind's fascination with light. |
| nature | nature is lazy | "It is called the principle of least action or the principle of least time, but what it amounts to is that nature is lazy." | Brian Clegg – Light Years. The extraordinary story of mankind's fascination with light. |
| nature | nature can show concern | "The models are not completely inaccurate – they can account for the broad history of many of the small objects out there but perhaps nature is less concerned about the lines scientists have drawn, with some comets and asteroids not adhering neatly to the rules." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| nuclear fission | nuclei can be hungry and grab | "Neutron capture was happening at a rate never seen before on Earth. Hungry nuclei were grabbing neutrons and remaining stable, forming isotopes as rich in as uranium-255, 17 neutrons more than its most common variant, then beta-decaying into elements usually only present in merging neutron stars." | Kit Chapman, Superheavy. Making and breaking the periodic table |
| nuclear reactions | nuclei act deliberately | "…the element hunters were using a technique where the nucleus discarded neutrons to stave off fission." | Kit Chapman, Superheavy. Making and breaking the periodic table |
| organisms | Organisms are confederates of agents | "The war inside is between rogue selfish elements that want to proliferate wildly and the individual organism. With genes struggling to contain selfish elements, viruses continually invading, and trillions of cells working together to keep bodies functioning, multicellular bodies are a confederation of parts that arose at different times, sometimes in different places. These parts, some in conflict, some cooperating…." | Neil Shubin, Some Assembly Required. Decoding four billion years of life, from ancient fossils to DNA |
| planetary motion | Earth attempts to move in a straight line | "A planet like Earth tries to move in a straight line through space, but the gravity of the sun pulls that line around in a curve, making an ellipse over which the planet travels year by year." | Matthew Stanley: Einstein's War. How relativity triumphed amid the vicious nationalism of World War 1 |
| planets | planets can be greedy | "The asteroids missed out by not being in the right place to be absorbed into one of the growing balls of rock that became Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The benefit for the asteroids that escaped being gobbled up by a greedy planet is that their evolution was all but stopped just after their formation, meaning they preserve key information about an important phase of Solar System formation." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the Solar System |
| planets | planets jostle, gobble, establish themselves | "The time period of the planetesimals was one of 'survival of the fittest'. They had to jostle for an orbit in space and cataclysmic collisions were still common that, in some cases, completely blew them to pieces. Eventually the chief planetesimals gobbled up smaller ones as well as asteroids in their path, to grow into even larger objects. These became the rocky planets we see today. The planets established themselves as the leaders of the pack, gravitationally excavating their clean orbit around the Sun." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| quantum theory | Photons can make decisions | "Quantum theory says that a light photon can exist in a strange mixture of two possible states until it is measured – only then does it decide which it is going to be." | Brian Clegg – Light Years. The extraordinary story of mankind's fascination with light. |
| restoring forces | objects want to revert to balanced positions | "A weight will sit motionless on a spring at its balanced position, but tug it down a little the spring pulls back. Similarly, a curved violin string wants to go back to being a straight line. … It's fairly straightforward to write the differential equation that tells you how strongly any point on the drumskin wants to return to its neutral position." | Lindley, David – The Dream Universe. How fundamental physics lost its way |
| space exploration | a spacecraft can get lonely, hibernates and wakes | "The ESA Rosetta spacecraft had a lot resting on its wide, solar-panel, shoulders when it launched at the start of its mission to catch up with a comet in space. Firstly, it had a long and lonely journey into deep space to contend with, requiring it to enter hibernation for a number of years to save energy. There was no certainty it would wake again." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| space exploration | a spacecraft can be plucky | The three-tonne spacecraft was made up of the Rosetta orbiter, with its 14m (46ft) long solar-panel wings and 11 instruments, and the Philae lander which piggybacked on Rosetta with its own suite of instruments. This plucky spacecraft launched successfully from Kourou in French Guiana, South America, in March 2004 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| space dust | earth dust may pretend to be space dust | "Once scientists receive their samples they are always on the lookout for terrestrial particle that might be masquerading as space dust in their allocation. Sometimes the only way to tell them apart is by analysing the rock duct in detail, observing the structure of the particle, the minerals it contains and its chemical composition. Only then can a scientist make an informed decision on whether they have a piece of space dust or not." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the solar system |
| spleen | the spleen has talents | "The spleen is a multi-talented organ: it removes old red blood cells and plays a vital role in the immune system." | Catherine Carver Immune. How your body defends and protects you |
| superacids | HF has preferences | "…the world's strongest acid? No. That title falls to fluoroantimonic acid – a superacid mixture of antimony pentafluoride and hydrofluoric acid. You see, HF loves the idea of donating a fluorine to SbF5, and the resulting SbF6- anion is relatively stable." | Article by Ian Farrell in Education in Chemistry |
| substances | substances have desires | "…these cosmic rocks…might have delivered life's all important building blocks: proteins, amino acids and the essential solvent, water, needed for life to thrive. All that these life-giving ingredients desired was a calm, welcoming environment to bed down in; somewhere not too hot and not too cold." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the Solar System |
| tectonic plates | plates jostle, attempt | "The Earth's major jigsaw pieces, encompassing areas greater than 20 million km2 (7.7 million sq miles), are the tectonic plates that carry the landmasses. But unlike a normal jigsaw, these plates jostle for position as they attempt to seamlessly float on the Earth's somewhat squidgy underlying mantle." "When plates attempt to move past, or towards, one another they often get stuck, which can result in huge earthquakes when they eventually becomes unstuck. The San Andreas Fault in the western United States is one example of two plates attempting to glide past one another." | Natalie Starkey Catching Stardust. Comets, asteroids and the birth of the Solar System |
| units | A stubborn unit | "The calorie has been officially banned from commercial use as a unit since January 1st, 1975. In spite of this, the calorie is still holding on stubbornly and its replacement, the joule, is therefore having a hard time establishing itself." | Schwenk, E. My name is Becquerel. (Book issued by Hoechst Aktiengesellschaft) |
| viruses | viruses have skills | "…they harnessed the skills of a type of virus well versed in the dark arts of integrating into human DNA, a retrovirus." | Catherine Carver Immune. How your body defends and protects you |
