Is Science Smarter Than You?

The bigfoot phenomenon is a classic cryptozoologic debate between scientists and researchers.  It always boils down to what a witness sees verses what scientists tells them they are seeing.  Scanning through the Monsterquest program on the History channel there are many episodes about bigfoot with each region calling it a different name.  bigfoot, sasquatch, hairy man, grass man, skunk ape, all talk about the same creature.  On one particular episode about bigfoot in New York State a Professor of Anthropology Dr. Phillips Stevens Jr. at the University of Buffalo said all the bigfoot sighting are proof that humans have a ingrained need to see humanoid creatures in nature and called it anthropomorphism.


I am a skeptic and don’t know that I believe in the existence of bigfoot but even I not only found this ridiculous but insulting.  Anthropomorphism is a form of storytelling that depicts animals, plants, and even forces of nature in a human form for the purpose of the story such as the north wind blowing out breath with a human face.  It is not a psychological delusion that overwrites what a person is witnessing.  To state that the witnesses are all seeing hairy humanoids out of a psychological need to fill a subconscious human psychosis to see such things is ludicrous.


I can understand under certain light and weather conditions a bear can be mistaken for a sasquatch.  I’m certain misidentification account for a large amount of sightings.  But I do not think the sasquatch is a hallucination created by the witnesses unknown desire to see a humanoid creature in nature.  That blanket statement to me sounds very pompous and I hate it when groups use statements like these to lift themselves above the masses and their “simple” minds.

- C

Definition of Anthropomorphism