Why PHP uses static methods in object context?

To call a static method, you don't use:

$foobar = new FooBar;
$foobar->foo()

You call

FooBar::foo();

The PHP manual says...

Declaring class properties or methods as static makes them accessible without needing an instantiation of the class. A property declared as static can not be accessed with an instantiated class object (though a static method can).

This is why you are able to call the method on an instance, even though that is not what you intended to do.

Whether or not you call a static method statically or on an instance, you cannot access $this in a static method.

http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.static.php

You can check to see if you are in a static context, although I would question whether this is overkill...

class Foobar
{
  public static function foo()
  {
    $backtrace = debug_backtrace();
    if ($backtrace[1]['type'] == '::') {
      exit('foo');
    }
  }
}

One additional note - I believe that the method is always executed in a static context, even if it is called on an instance. I'm happy to be corrected on this if I'm wrong though.

Since PHP is quite a forgiving language you could prevent this default behavior by overloading __callStatic and maybe use reflections to validate the method scope.

http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.overloading.php#object.call

http://php.net/ReflectionClass