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, exper ...

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

. Political scientist and artificial intelligence expert

Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary ...

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.

, ''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 A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie () or low-calorie sweetener. Artificial sweeteners may b ...

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 Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...

created in a laboratory that is chemically indistinguishable from a naturally occurring sugar). Some philosophers have gone further and asserted that, in a

deterministic Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...

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 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 The science of pattern formation deals with the visible, ( statistically) orderly outcomes of self-organization and the common principles behind similar patterns in nature. In developmental biology, pattern formation refers to the generation of ...

, some types of

automata An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.Automaton – Definition and More ...

have been used to generate organic-looking textures for more realistic

shading Shading refers to the depiction of depth perception in 3D models (within the field of 3D computer graphics) or illustrations (in visual art) by varying the level of darkness. Shading tries to approximate local behavior of light on the object's ...

of 3D objects.

References

{{reflist Culture Artificial materials

Connotations

Distinguishing natural objects from artificial objects

See also

References