#athropomorphism

It must be admitted that the traditional anthropocentric universe has begun to fade under the careful scrutiny of people who are not sentimentalists or who do not childishly seek security in baseless assumptions. A physicist, or a philosopher such as Whitehead, would have to admit that comfortable old concepts such as the distinction of subject and object, or that of agent and act, metaphysical entities such as souls and selves, or even more fundamental notions such as the absoluteness of time and space, are untenable in the light of objective and serious inquiry. The Western world is alive with new ideas, but so far these ideas have not trickled down to the mass consciousness. Most people still have a deep faith in solid substances and believe that their feelings, ideas, and even their own bodies belong to, or inhere in, some mysterious but seemingly irrefutable substance called a self.