nonhuman phenomena. In this way

nonhuman phenomena. In this way, anthropomorphic language incorporates human society in a web of ethical obligations that connect to the natural environment and, by imaginative extension, to the universe as a whole. Although the drive toward social connection is a general human trait, however, persons neither seek nor find satisfaction in a generalized sense of connection. Instead, satisfying social connections are sought and experienced in terms of the social norms and values of particular historical and cultural settings. Likewise, anthropomorphism, as an inferred social connection to the nonhuman, takes shape and becomes persuasive in terms of historically and culturally specific assumptions about society and social relations. This chapter will, therefore, step back from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” in order to describe how contemporary scholarship in social neuroscience and in the history of religions provides a fresh point of view on the workings of anthropomorphic perception and then test that interpretive model by reappraising Edwards’s famous sermon in its historical context. The Boundary of the Human The line between the human and the nonhuman is, perhaps, the most consequential presupposition that any society, group, or individual adopts about life in the world. The way various cultures draw this line, between “us” and “the other,” has shaped civilizations and their goals as well as the norms of personal conduct and identity. Although concepts of the human have a long and contentious philosophical history, people in their everyday lives show remarkable consensus in the features they use to define “human.” Central to this process of perceiving the human is a perception 104 Page of mind in other agents, including the presence of goal-directed agency, emotions such as anger, guilt, or pride, a capacity for self-awareness, and free will. As Nick Epley demonstrated in the preceding chapter, the perception of these distinctively human traits—“seeing invisible minds”—1is a psychological mechanism with tremendous influence on the way humans order and understand their social environment. Mind perception is such a powerful tool of inductive inference, however, that it regularly crosses the line it has itself drawn between the human and the nonhuman. Scholars from a wide array of disciplines have long observed humans’ anthropomorphic tendency to see nonhuman things or events as humanlike, imbuing the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman phenomena with human motivations, agency, and emotions. By perceiving the world in terms of human capacities and social relationships, anthropomorphism builds a complex system of analogies that uses knowledge of what it is like to be a person, in order to interpret the behavior of animals, the function of technological devices, the operation of complex social systems such as “the market,” or natural occurrences such as violent weather patterns or catastrophic events.” Hence, anthropomorphism, as a process of inference that not only draws but also crosses the line between the human and the nonhuman, has very substantial consequences for the human sense of connection to nonhuman animals, to larger ecological systems, and to the structure of the universe taken as a whole. Contemporary psychological research has created an intellectual space that opens the phenomenon of HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021350