Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Anthropocentrism
/ˌænθrəpəˈsɛntrɪzəm/noun
The habit of treating human beings as the central fact of the universe and the measure of everything else.
The Greek roots
ἄνθρωπος
ánthrōpos
human being
κέντρον
kéntron
centre, sharp point
Literally: “human at the centre”
The story of the word
The word arrived in English in the nineteenth century, mostly in arguments about Darwin, where it named the position the new biology had just dislodged. Its second root is sharper than it looks: κέντρον first meant the goad used to drive oxen, then the fixed point of a compass, and only afterwards the middle of anything. Xenophanes had made the criticism itself long before the label existed, remarking that oxen would draw gods that looked like oxen.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
anthropologyphilanthropymisanthropeeccentric
In a sentence
Her whole objection to the plan was its quiet anthropocentrism: every species in the valley was valued by what it did for us.