Product Description: Anthropomorphism the projection of the human form onto the every aspect of the world closely relates to early modern notions of analogy and microcosm. What had been construed in Antiquity as a ready metaphor for the order of creation was reworked into a complex system relating the human body to the body of the world...read more

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Product Description: In the texts of Genesis 18 and 32, God appears to a patriarch in person and is referred to by the narrator as a man, both times by the Hebrew word sh. In both texts, God as sh is described in graphically human terms. This type of divine appearance is identified here as the  sh theophany...read more

'Inspires a deeper relationship with God by exploring how to be more like Him based on the references to God's anatomy in the Bible'--Provided by publisher.

Product Description: Five Bodies offers an introduction to some of the most urgent contemporary concerns within the sociology of the body. The book was first published in 1985 in the USA by Cornell University Press, and was nominated for the John Porter Award (sponsored by the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association)...read more

Product Description: A strikingly original work, Friends of Interpretable Objects re-anchors aesthetics in the object of attention even as it redefines the practice, processes, meaning, and uses of interpretation.Miguel Tamen's concern is to show how inanimate objects take on life through their interpretation--notably, in our own culture, as they are collected and housed in museums...read more

Product Description: By means of a discourse analysis in the tradition of Critical Linguistics this study traces and discusses anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism in the language used to describe our closest relatives, the monkeys and apes. As so-called ‘boundary animals’, the non-human primates have an impact on the way we regard humanity; they serve as model organisms for scenarios of human evolution...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Seeing a cat rubbing against a person, Charles Darwin described her as in an affectionate frame of mind; for Samuel Barnett, a behavioralist, the mental realm is beyond the grasp of scientists andbehavior must be described technically, as a physical action only. What difference does this difference make? In Eileen Crist's analysis of the language used to portray animal behavior, the difference is that in the reader's mind the very image of the cat's 'body' is transfigured...from an experiencing subject...into a vacant object. "Images of Animals" examines the literature of behavioral science, revealing how works with the common aim of documenting animal lives, habits, and instincts describe realities that are worlds apart. Whether the writer affirms the Cartesian verdict of an unbridgeable chasm between animals and humans or the Darwinian panorama of evolutionary continuity, the question of animal mind is ever present and problematic in behavioral thought. Comparing the naturalist writings of Charles Darwin, Jean Henri Fabre, and George and Elizabeth Peckham to works of classical ethology by Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen and of contemporary sociobiology, Crist demonstrates how words matter. She does not attempt to defend any of these constructions as a faithful representation of animal existence, but to show how each internally coherent view molds the reader's understanding of animals. Rejecting the notion that a neutral language exists, or can be constructed, which yields incontestably objective accounts of animal behavior, Crist argues that language is not instrumental in the depiction of animals and, in particular, it is never impartial with respect to the question of animal mind. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: An evaluation of the significance and usefulness of anthropomorphism and anecdotalism for understanding animals and humans. The 29 critical essays, written by historians, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, biologists, and primatologists, consider the debates between scientific and cultural analysis which fuels the question: Why anthropomorphize? These discussions suggest a number of reasons, pro and con, diving into the nature of anthropomorphism itself, and related topics in consciousness, cognition, and language...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Religion is universal human culture. No phenomenon is more widely shared or more intensely studied, yet there is no agreement on what religion is. Now, in Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie provides a provocative definition of religion in a bold and persuasive new theory. Guthrie says religion can best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism--that is, the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. Many writers see anthropomorphism as common or even universal in religion, but few think it is central. To Guthrie, however, it is fundamental. Religion, he writes, consists of seeing the world as humanlike. As Guthrie shows, people find a wide range of humanlike beings plausible: Gods, spirits, abominable snowmen, HAL the computer, Chiquita Banana. We find messages in random events such as earthquakes, weather, and traffic accidents. We say a fire "rages," a storm "wreaks vengeance," and waters "lie still." Guthrie says that our tendency to find human characteristics in the nonhuman world stems from a deep-seated perceptual strategy: in the face of pervasive (if mostly unconscious) uncertainty about what we see, we bet on the most meaningful interpretation we can. If we are in the woods and see a dark shape that might be a bear or a boulder, for example, it is good policy to think it is a bear. If we are mistaken, we lose little, and if we are right, we gain much. So, Guthrie writes, in scanning the world we always look for what most concerns us--livings things, and especially, human ones. Even animals watch for human attributes, as when birds avoid scarecrows. In short, we all follow the principle--better safe than sorry. Marshalling a wealth of evidence from anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, theology, advertising, literature, art, and animal behavior, Guthrie offers a fascinating array of examples to show how this perceptual strategy pervades secular life and how it characterizes religious experience. Challenging the very foundations of religion, Faces in the Clouds forces us to take a new look at this fundamental element of human life.

Product Description: A provocative new study of birds, humans, and the deepest prejudices of Western science--developed from six years of independent research by a behavioral scientist. In the spirit of the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Life of Dogs. Color photos.

Product Description: John Kennedy's thesis is that anthropomorphism is not necessarily dead, but is lurking under different disguises. In fact, it still affects research, but is often unintended and therefore it goes unrecognized. He provides ample documentary evidence of the way researchers unconsciously slip into anthropomorphism...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)