reification

Definitions

1. The consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living.
   countable, uncountable
2. The consideration of a human being as an impersonal object.
   countable, uncountable
3. A process that makes a computable/addressable object out of a non-computable/addressable one; or a concrete class out of a generic one.
   countable, uncountable
4. The transformation of a natural-language statement into a form in which its actions and events are quantifiable variables.
   countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“The reification of art and religion, a symptom of their historical obsolescence, takes the form⟳ of their instrumentalization, their reduction to a mere use⟳ value. At this point⟳ they become⟳ ‘cultural goods’, writes Adorno, and ‘are no longer taken quite seriously by anybody.’”

“Computer scientists found out how functional reification is in programming languages: they call⟳ it ‘object-oriented programming’ […].”

“Reification swaps out a political problem for a scientific or technical one; it’s how, for example, the effects of unregulated tech oligopolies become⟳ “social media addiction,” how climate catastrophe caused by corporate greed becomes a “heat wave⟳” — and, by the way, how the effect of struggles between labor and corporations combines with high energy prices to become⟳ “inflation.””

“Contrary to Java, C++ and C# implement generics via reification, meaning that each specific version of a generic class, like⟳ List<String> is converted into a concrete class, either at compile time (C++) or at runtime (C#).”

CEFR level