Document: SAR-3-28-32

The plants and animals like us: Anthropomorphism as a tool for communicating ecological ideas.

TONT, S.A.*

Middle East Technical University, Ankara 06531 Turkey ¹

Abstract:
Anthropomorphism, attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to plants, animals and inanimate objects, is a literary device used by a number of well known authors. On the literary front Joseph Conrad's reminiscences of ships and Herman Melville's philosophical musings about the whale are stellar examples of this technique. In ecology, one of the most notorious practitioners of anthropomorphism has been Linneaus whose descriptions of plant life probably would have been censored in a today's high-school ecology text, eg. "Twenty males or more in the same bed with a female", "Her beauty is preserved only so long as she remains a virgin", etc. Anthropomorphism, often bordering on pretentious metaphor, has been a pervasive feature of Victorian natural history writing. However, if dispensed in right dosage and applied sparingly as one finds in the natural history essays of Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold anthropomorphism can be a powerful tool for communicating important ecological concepts and ideas. From a psychological point of view anthropomorphism can be viewed as a charming defiance against a purely mechanistic-materialistic view of nature.

Keywords:

This abstract is being presented at: 4:00 PM in session:
Oral Session #29: Communicating Ecology.