In truth, one cannot, it seems, oppose mechanism and…

In truth, one cannot, it seems, oppose mechanism and finalism, one cannot oppose mechanism and anthropomorphism, for if the functioning of a machine is…

— Georges Canguilhem

We are victims of the post-Enlightenment view that the world functions like a sophisticated machine, to be understood like a textbook engineering problem and…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“The river loved to tell everybody (everybody being the sky, the wind, the few trees that grew around there, birds, deer and even the…

— Richard Brautigan

“At least descriptive psychology is probably, taken as a whole, a form of anthropomorphism, a nibbling at our own limits.”

— Franz Kafka

Talk of belief in these animals is not some kind of anthropomorphism. We simply cannot explain the kinds of problem solving and behavioral sophistication…

— Hilary Kornblith

“The problem is not that dolphins are dumber than we thought, but that our anthropomorphism inevitably makes it hard to understand an intelligence other…

— Carl Zimmer

“A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed. 'Hobbits!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have…

— J.R.R. Tolkien

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“Homo economicus was surreptitiously taken as the emblem and analogue for all living beings. A mechanistic anthropomorphism has gained currency. Bacteria are imagined to…

— Ivan Illich

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

— Anonymous

“For any anthropomorphism we use to describe our dogs, we can ask two questions: One, is there a natural behavior this action might have…

— Alexandra Horowitz

Loving dogs is a question of anthropomorphism. We become attached to dogs because of the feelings we project on them.

— Pierre Berge

Anthropocentrism gave rise to boredom, and when anthropomorphism was replaced by technocentrism, boredom became even more profound.

— Anonymous

We know from the truths of evolution and ecology that we are all related and interdependent. Anthropomorphism (crediting animals with human emotions and traits)…

— Michael Fox

“Then there's the pillar statue in the semi-subterranean temple at Tiahuanaco [Bolivia]. Like the Totem Pole of Göbekli Tepe, it is anthropomorphic. Like the…

— Graham Hancock