Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring
naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity.
Connotations
Artificiality often carries with it the implication of being false, counterfeit, or deceptive. The philosopher
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
wrote in his ''
Rhetoric
Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
'':
However, artificiality does not necessarily have a negative
connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
A connotation is frequently described as either positive o ...
, as it may also reflect the ability of humans to replicate forms or functions arising in nature, as with an
artificial heart
An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in the case that a heart transplant (from a deceased human or, experi ...
or artificial intelligence. Political scientist and artificial intelligence expert Herbert A. Simon observes that "some artificial things are imitations of things in nature, and the imitation may use either the same basic materials as those in the natural object or quite different materials.
[Herbert A. Simon, ''The Sciences of the Artificial'' (1996), p. 4.] Simon distinguishes between the artificial and the synthetic, the former being an imitation of something found in nature (for example, an artificial sweetener which generates sweetness using a formula not found in nature), and the latter being a replication of something found in nature (for example, a sugar created in a laboratory that is chemically indistinguishable from a naturally occurring sugar).
Some philosophers have gone further and asserted that, in a Determinism, deterministic world, "everything is natural and nothing is artificial", because everything in the world (including everything made by humans) is a product of the physical laws of the world.
Distinguishing natural objects from artificial objects
It is generally possible for humans, and in some instances, for computers, to distinguish natural from artificial environments. The artificial environment tends to have more physical regularity both spatially and over time, with natural environments tending to have both irregular structures and structures that change over time.
[Herman Kaken, "Recognition of Natural and Artificial Environments by Computers: Commonalities and Differences", in Juval Portugali, ''Complex Artificial Environments'' (2006), p. 31-48.] However, on close observation it is possible to discern some mathematical structures and Patterns in nature, patterns in natural environments, which can then be replicated to create an artificial environment with a more natural appearance.
For example, by identifying and imitating natural means of pattern formation, some types of Finite state machine, automata have been used to generate organic-looking Texture (computer graphics), textures for more realistic Shader, shading of 3D modeling, 3D objects.
See also
*Cultural artifact
*Fake (disambiguation)
*Homo faber
*Simulation
*Synthetic (disambiguation)
*Tamagotchi
References
{{reflist
Culture
Artificial materials