Botworld
The anthropologist Atran wrote a paper back in 1998, brought to my attention by the designer Mike Kuniavsky. In it, Atran finds that cultures all around the world classify things they meet into one of four general types.
They all have different rules of behaviour.
- humans: these are things that can speak, lie, plan, all that human stuff. Humans need to eat, sleep, and find shelter. Humans are smart.
- nonhuman animals: animals also need to eat, sleep, and find shelter. They’re goal directed. But they’re not smart.
- plants: plants we need to identify so we can eat them. But they can’t plan or act, and they’re not smart.
- nonliving things: rocks don’t do anything except obey gravity and chemistry.
This classification is a great habit of mind for evolution to give us.
But I don’t think it’s entirely up-to-date for the 21st century.
For instance, I can think of at least one more category.
[Sources: Folk Biology and the Anthropology of Science: Cognitive Universals and Cultural Particulars, S. Atran. My discovery of this paper was via Kuniavsky’s The Coming Age of Magic.]