Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behaviors to a god, animal, or object.

In science, anthropomorphism often takes shape in very subtle ways. It may be most prevalent in the way we teach science in classrooms or discuss science with the general public. As scientists, we need to be much more careful about our use of language to describe physical processes and objects. Anthropomorphising inanimate objects leads to pseudoscience — a growing problem in today's interconnected world.

Consider a statement like "An electron knows when another electron is nearby."

Electrons are inanimate objects that do not possess neurological components to know anything.

We might even restate this as "The electron senses when another electron is nearby." This is an anthropomorphism because the verb senses requires a perception of something by the (noun) sense or senses of the subject (the electron). Electrons don't have senses nor is an isolated electron a sensor.

If we are discussing an electron by itself (isolated) as a complete and total sensor, then this would be acceptable, However, in no device with which this author is aware, is an isolated electron considered a sensor. An electron does not sense anything about its environment, because it is not a sensor on its own. Let's be careful.

For the same reason, the electron does not detect anything. An isolated electron is not a detector without additional components that interact with the electron that interacts with its environment.

Taking care to precisely define what we mean when we describe physical quantities, objects, and interactions with each other, we begin to think more carefully about how the physical world works. This thinking will translate into a more productive teaching experience for yourself as well as a better quality learning experience for yourself and others.

Social Analogies

My doctoral advisor often discussed interactions in physical systems of things like electrons or photons in what I later called social analogies. He liked my characterization of his presentations as social analogies, because he was very good at conveying ideas to graduate students (if we'd only listen). More importantly, he did this because he found it useful to convey information to someone by appealing to their own experiences.

Given the fact that social analogies are potentially useful ways to convey ideas, perhaps one might question why I argue against the use of anthropomorphisms in science, especially when discussing things with the general public that relies on its own experiences to understand something new. The problem is that the general public doesn't have the context to know that electrons, for example, don't have the ability to be detectors or sensors on their own, that they don't have neurological consciousness to know things. Thus, when someone attempts to tell stories to the general public of things scientists have never stated, like about electrons that feel or know just like people do (implying that people can somehow also feel or know things like the presence of ghosts or "spiritual energies" and other magical things for which there is no evidence to suggest they exist) many people are willing to believe these pseudoscientific stories. Why? Because there are scientists who loosely use anthropomorphisms when describing their work to the general public. Hence, to many everyday people, this means "scientists have said that electrons feel the presence of other things, so why can't I feel the presence of such mystical things as a ghost of a loved one?"

Social analogies are part of a great strategy to convey ideas among individuals who know a priori that inanimate objects like electrons do not sense, detect, nor know other objects are nearby. That is, among people who already know what an electron is. That it is not a detector. It is not a sensor. It is not an object with any intellectual capacity to know anything. It is not like a human being in any way, shape, nor form beyond the mere analogies being drawn in the discussion as a simple way to convey an idea.

As an example, my doctoral advisor once explained that an electron that enters a device is like a "person of honor walking into a crowded theater and immediately moving into the empty seat reserved just for him." Neither he nor I would ever mistakenly believe electrons have any predefined social constructs signifying to all other electrons that it was an electron of honor nor that those other electrons would reserve a location in space for such an electron held in high esteem. This is instead the context of allegories like the book Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics by Robert Gilmore. Allegories are fun reads made only more exciting and fun for people who already know about the objects and phenomena of things described in the story.

My advisor offered this sort of social analogy to me to emphasize how important it is for someone who designs a device to do so in such a way that when an electron enters a certain part of the device, it will naturally go to a particular location that one designed as the lowest-energy location within that part of the device. The social analogy is used to draw attention to how important such a design choice is to the functionality of the device. The electron in question may be the most important one in that part of the device, but that's a construct I have chosen in the context of how the entire device will function. It says nothing about how the electrons themselves regard this new electron.

Thus, social analogies are very useful and constructive among people who are already familiar with the subject matter and want to learn more about how things work. But avoid their use with the general public so we may protect the public from pseudoscientific babble that has no basis in reality.

So How Do Electrons Interact with Each Other?

Now that I've explained that electrons have no capacity to know anything, nor detect anything, nor sense anything, you're no longer part of the general public. I could constructively start using social analogies with you to tell you about how electrons interact with each other, but I shouldn't have to. Let's have a go at this, shall we?

An electron has a physical property called charge. Because it has charge, based on many measurements over perhaps the last two centuries, we know the interaction of another object with a charge nearby will have a diminished interaction as the distance between them increases. Well, no. This isn't exactly what I want to explain. One charge doesn't actually interact with another charge. That's not quite what happens. One charge actually interacts with something between it and the other charge.

What is that something? We call it an electric field. Every charge has an electric field surrounding it in space. What is an electric field? The best argument we have today is that an electric field is made up of particles called photons. A charged particle like an electron emits photons whose half-lives are very short compared to other photons of light that you may have known about before. In fact, these photons decay, or fall apart, so quickly that many of them decay before reaching a second charge. This is why the interaction of a charge with an electric field surrounding another charge diminishes with distance. The farther apart two charges are in space, the fewer photons they exchange because an increasing number of the photons between them decay with distance. Thus, the electric force between them also decreases with distance.

This is how electrons interact with each other.

Now, we can start to put this into the form of equations. First, let's label one of the charges, $q$. Then, to represent the field of photons as an electric field, let's label it $E$. If we want to quantify how much of an interaction occurs between $q$ and $E$ we can think about multiplying these two quantities together. In a geometric sense, you can think of $q$ as being on the $y$-axis of a graph, and $E$ on the $x$-axis of the graph. As the strength of the electric increases (when the charge $q$ gets closer to the other charge, for example) the $x$-axis gets longer and longer. Similarly, if the magnitude of the charge $q$ is very large, the $y$-axis is very large. If the charge is increased in size, the $y$-axis gets longer and longer. So, if we multiply $q$ and $E$, the interaction between them increases just like the area of the graph. It happens to be that this area is called the electric force, and we label it $F$. Then, our equation is written

$$F=qE.$$

If you understand that, then I'd like to tell you about the way I like to think about the interaction of $q$ with the electric field.

I know the electric field increases and decreases in a uniform way with distance from the source of the field (another charge). At any point along that distance, the electric field has the same magnitude in say one direction as does in some other direction. Since electrons are very small, I can approximately say the electric field is identical in any direction in three-dimensional space around it. So the strength of the interaction, the electric force, $F$, is the same, for example at 10 meters away from the charge in one direction as it is 10 meters away from the charge in any other direction. I like to borrow a physical analogy from something you're familiar with: gravity. If you stood at the top of a perfectly round hill, you would have maximum potential energy. If you move away from the top of this perfectly round hill in any direction, you would have the same potential energy 10 meters away in every direction you go. The same concept applies to electrons within the electric field due to a charge. How can calculate the electric potential energy, though? Just as with vertical height in our gravity example, there is an electric potential associated with the electric field. It's magnitude increases as the electric field strength increases. And just like how we put the electric force in the form of a mathematical equation, we can put electric potential energy, let's label it $U$ (maybe because $E$ is already a label for electric field), in the form of a mathematical equation. This equation is

$$U=qV$$

where $V$ is the electric potential at any location within the electric field of the other charge. To understand this, think about what we discussed for the electric force, $F$, above.

Now we can say that the charge, $q$, of an electron interacts with the electric potential, $V$, associated with the electric field, $E$, surrounding another electron. Similarly, the other electron's charge interacts with the electric potential due to $q$. Thus, — and this is why I hesitated to leave my explanation of how two electrons interact with each other as it was — there are in fact, TWO interactions that occur between two electrons. When scientists discuss this, however, we typically combine both of these interactions into one because they are of identically equal magnitude. In fact, we call these mutual interactions for that reason.