Lambda the Ultimate

Or if we can coin phrases, how about "animatism" as a more conservative version of anthropomorphism, which sees things as not necessarily humanlike (anthropomorphic) but merely alive and active (animate)?

"Animism" is related not to our notion of "animate" but to the Latin word "anima" (soul), and refers to the belief that everything has a soul. Though of course that's the ultimate origin of "animate" as well.

Active objects are one kind of useful abstraction found in software. Many other kinds are also useful. For example, we also tend to think using rules and generalizations (as in Logic/Declerative programming).

So, as far as it goes, this is a nice idea (not very original I might add). But I think the conclusions you referred to are too extreme, and require much stronger substantiation.

By the way: Active objects are the norm in Erlang, so maybe some Erlang hackers would like to give their point of view.

Multi-Agent System: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence
Jacques Ferber Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman 1999

has a lot of anthropomorphic programming paradigms in it not only on the level of one being but at the level of a society of cooperating beings. Petri nets play an important role. The book would be more interesting if it included code. (Note: Ferber's uses Java as well as Jython (Projet WarBot))

> does it buy us anything?
> Is there a lesson here for language designers
>(if so, what is it), or this nonsense?

Familiarity with poetic metaphor would be useful for programmers reviewing each other's code and trying to express ideas or criticisms. A lot of software description in the design patterns movement already uses a lot of metaphor. Non-rigorous but *intuitive* software design methodologies must surely have a place, if only for the cognitive economy that they entail, but there are also rigorous mechanisms for describing metaphor in natural language. The linguist Lakoff's research group at Berkeley is at the forefront of this research. For more all-embracing metaphors that could be applied to your software system see:

George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. 230 pp. Book Review

A "poetic conceit " is the term used in the theory of poetry, tropes, and figurative use of language to refer to an *all embracing metaphor* like relating all the parts and actions of a human being to a software system or computer program. (see especially the poetry of John Donne).

Ojibwe is a very interesting (natural) language. Whereas the Germanic and Romantic languages classify (and have different syntaxes) on the basis of sex, in Ojibwe, it matters if an object is animate or inanimate, rather than its sex.

In some ways, Ojibwe reminds me of Smalltalk. I'm way to tired now to talk about it, I think I wrote something up about it. Which reminds me of the connection between animism and Smalltalk; that a Smalltalk image is just a world full of living, active objects interacting. A biosphere. I never thought about the word animism in my programming, but now that it's mentioned, I really do think that what I do when coding is just interacting in a subworld, an animist subworld. I am an object in the system just like the Transcript or the Tree or the OrderedCollection is. Having a visual environment I think also adds to this sensation.

I don't get the same feeling so much from other OO languages. Lisp to an extent, NewtonScript as well. But so many OO languages feel so static that it's almost like a vital part of the whole OO idea is lost.

If you're easily offended by any non-literal Christian religion discussion, please don't bother reading the below thoughts. I have no desire to start a religion flame war. :)

I wouldn't say that animism isn't only part of primitive religions. But then again, to most people in the Western world, anything that isn't Judeo-Christian is primitive. I wouldn't say that "intellectually" we've outgrown animism. In our culture, it's laughed at, yes, but that's because it's not the dominant religion. In other societies, they find that monotheistic religions are what they've intellectually and spiritually outgrown, to "discover" the advanced and incredible truth that everything is alive, connected and all part of one grand system. A lot of people come to that very conclusion even if they're not part of a culture which embraces animism.

In many ways, I think that the Judeo-Christian religions are quite a bit more primitive than animism. I'd also say that Judeo-Christian religions may be less primitive than animism in some areas. Above all, they're just different ways of thinking, it's not like there's this path of religions that illustrates the growth of our culture's intelligence. Some people seem to think it goes like this:

"Godless savages" -> Animism -> Polytheistic Ritual Religion -> Monotheistic Ritual -> Scientific (ha!) Atheism -> Transhumanism?

Of course, no one knows the absolute truth. Hell, no one even knows if there are any absolutes or even if they're possible. In this case, I think that the truth is that there are different ways of thinking. They most definately influence our wider culture and intellectual life, but the same amount of advancement is possible under animism as it is under Christianity. Animism would probably bring about more advancement than Christianity if the so-called Christians of today practicied the religion as it was written.