It's the wish, on the part of an academic discipline, to model itself on, or borrow from, or appropriate the terms and vocabulary and authority figures of another discipline. But in fact anthropomorphism has its uses. In history, say, or philosophy, just to cite two of the most recent and powerful phantasmic models for literary study. But discipline envy, of course, is really a very old story. A hundred years ago it was without question music that was the discipline of disciplines, the ideal, the ego ideal for the arts.
All art constantly aspires toward the condition of music.
Other writers and critics in this period agreed. The answer, of course, was that in good poetry, as in the other arts, we couldn't and shouldn't. Economists think they are Social Scientists. Social Scientists think they are Psychologists. Psychologists think they are Biologists.