Hacking Metaphors, Frames and Other Ideas
How to read this This will take about 18 minutes to read (at 230 words/min ) but the text is structured to make it easy to jump around and find the key points faster. I tend to go into more detail than most people find necessary. Two reasons to read : Explore a different perspective…
Read more →How hard is it to translate metaphor? Metaphor seems like it should be very difficult to translate. But I’d like to argue that what is difficult about translating it is not the metaphor part but rather how it is used. This makes it no different from any other aspect of language. But because it is…
Read more →On rereading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, I was struck by this passage in his foreword to the second edition: I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability…
Read more →TL;DR This is an exploration of the difference between wisdom and practical wisdom (phronesis) triggered by this quote from a talk by Ed Catmull : “Once one can articulate an important idea into a concise statement, then one can use this statement, and not have to have the fear of changing behavior.” The main lesson…
Read more →Note: This is a slightly edited version of a post that first appeared on Medium . It elaborates and exemplifies examples I gave in the more recent posts on metaphor and explanation and understanding . One of the less fortunate consequences of the popularity of the conceptual metaphor paradigm (which is also the one I…
Read more →This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it—or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if there were one person who read it with understanding and to whom it afforded pleasure. (opening sentence of the preface…
Read more →TL;DR This post outlines 5 levels or types of understanding to help us better to think about the role of metaphor in explanation : Associative understanding: Place a concept in context without any understanding. Dictionary understanding: Repeat definitions, give examples, and make basic connections. Inferential understanding: Make useful inferences based on knowledge about - but…
Read more →TL;DR There are at least 3 uses of metaphor in the educational process: 1. Invitation to enter; 2. An instrument to grasp knowledge with; 3. Catalyst to transform understanding. Many educators assume that 1 is enough but it rarely leads to any useful understanding. Explanation is a salient part of the educational process to such…
Read more →Butterfly effect and Schrödinger's cat are 2 very common ways of signalling one's belonging to the class of the scientifically literate. But they are almost always told wrong. They were both constructed as illustrations of paradoxes or counterintuitive findings in science. Their retelling always misses the crucial 'as if'. This is an example of metaphor…
Read more →I'm not sure how 'burning' these issues are as such but if they're not, I'd propose that they deserve to have some kindling or other accelerant thrown on them. 1. What is the interaction between automatic metaphor processing and deliberate metaphor application? Metaphors have always been an attractive subjects of study. But they have seen…
Read more →Innovation is the ‘in’ thing. Innovate or die is the buzz up and down the hive mind. Everybody is feeling like they must innovate all of the things all of the time. But is the incessant innovation the right mode of approaching this? We constantly spin up stories of the intrepid innovator and the change…
Read more →In some circles (rhetoric and analytics philosophy come to mind), much is made of the difference between metaphor and simile. (Rhetoricians pay attention to it because they like taxonomies of communicative devices and analytic philosophers spend time on it because of their commitment to a truth-theoretical account of meaning and naive assumptions about compositionality). It…
Read more →Frege’s trauma I found the following quote from Frege on the Language goes on holiday blog and it struck as the perfect starting point for this essay which has been written for a while now: “Frege (“Logic in Mathematics”): Definitions proper must be distinguished from elucidations [Erläuterungen]. In the first stages of any discipline we…
Read more →People often talk about music as if it were language. Leonard Bernstein even recorded a series of lectures applying Chomsky’s theory of generative grammar to music . Chomsky himself answered a question on this in a not very satisfying manner. Some people can get very exercised over this. But it seems to me that a…
Read more →Background Sometimes a rather obscure and complex analogy just clicks into place in one's mind and allows a slightly altered way of thinking that just makes so much sense it hurts. Like putting glasses on in the morning and the world suddenly snapping into shape. This happened to me this morning when reading the Notes…
Read more →Over on the excellent 'Genealogy of Religion' , Cris Campbell waved a friendly red rag in front of my eyes to make me incensed over exaggerated claims (some) anthropologists make about metaphors. I had expressed some doubts in previous comments but felt that perhaps this particular one deserves its own post. The book Cris refers…
Read more →The role of metaphor in science debate (Background) Recently, the LSE podcast an interesting panel on the subject of "Metaphors and Science" . It featured three speakers talking about the interface between metaphor and various 'scientific' disciplines (economics, physics and surgery). Unlike many such occasions, all speakers were actually very knowledgeable and thoughtful on the…
Read more →" when history is at its most obliging, the history-writer needs be at his most wary." ( China by John Keay ) I came across this nugget of wisdom when I was re-reading the Introduction to John Keay's history of China. And it struck me that in some way this quote could be a part…
Read more →I was reminded by this blog post on LousyLinguist that many people still see metaphor as an unproblematic homogeneous concept leading to much circular thinking about them. I wrote about that quite a few years ago in: Lukeš, D., 2005. Towards a classification of metaphor use in text: Issues in conceptual discourse analysis of a…
Read more →I am a gaming semi-literate! I was listening to the discussion of the latest BioShock game on the latest TWiT podcast when I realized that I am in fact game illiterate. I am hearing these stories and descriptions of experiences but I know I can't access them directly without a major investment in knowledge and…
Read more →Update Part of this post was incorporated into an article I wrote with Brian Kelly and Alistair McNaught that appeared in the December issue of Ariadne . As part of that work and feedback from Alistair and Brian, I expanded the final section from a simple list of bullets into a more detailed research programme…
Read more →[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240"] Professor Abhijit Banerjee (Photo credit: kalyan3)[/caption] "We have to use cliches," said professor Abhijit Banerjee at the start of his LSE lecture on Poor Economics . "The world is just too complicated." He continued. "Which is why it is all the more important, we choose the right cliches." [I'm paraphrasing here.]…
Read more →George Lakoff is known for saying that "metaphors can kill" and he's not wrong. But in that, metaphors are no different from any other language. The simple amoral imperative "Kill!" will do the job just as nicely. Nor are metaphors any better or worse at obfuscating than any other type of language. But they are…
Read more →Given how long I've been studying metaphor (at least since 1991 when I first encountered Lakoff and Johnson's work and full on since 2000) it is amazing that I have yet to attend a RaAM (Researching and Applying Metaphor) conference. I had an abstract accepted to one of the previous RaAMs but couldn't go. This…
Read more →I thought the moral compass metaphor has mostly left current political discourse but it just cropped up - this time pointing from left to right - as David Plouffe accused Mitt Romney of not having one . As I keep repeating, George Lakoff once said “Metaphors can kill.” And Moral Compass has certainly done its…
Read more →The online media are drawn to any "scientific" claims about the internet's influence on our nature as humans like flies to a pile of excrement. Sadly, in this metaphor, only the flies are figurative. The latest heap of manure to instigate an annoying buzzing cloud of commentary from Wired to the BBC, is an article…
Read more →I have forgotten a lot of things in my life. Names, faces, numbers, words, facts, events, quotes. Just like for anyone, forgetting is as much a part of my life as remembering. Memories short and long come and go. But only twice in my life have I seen a good memory die under suspicious circumstances…
Read more →Niall Ferguson wrote in The Guardian some time ago about how awful history education has become with these "new-fangled" 40-year-old methods like focusing on "history skills" that leads to kids leaving school knowing "unconnected fragments of Western history: Henry VIII and Hitler, with a small dose of Martin Luther King, Jr." but not who was…
Read more →In my thinking about things human, I often like to draw on the domain of second language learning as the source of analogies. The problem is that relatively few people in the English speaking world have experience with language learning to such an extent that they can actually map things onto it. In fact, in…
Read more →I have a distinct feeling of writing about this somewhere but can't find it, so here's the rant redux. The images on which our thinking and reasoning are based can sometimes exert a powerful force. There are many mechanisms we use to counter that force but sometimes it is very difficult. It seems particularly difficult…
Read more →This is a post that has been germinating for a long time. But it was most immediately inspired by Marshall Poe's article claiming that " The Internet Changes Nothing ". And as it turns out, I mostly agree. OK, this may sound a bit paradoxical. Twelve years ago, when I submitted my first column to…
Read more →I've been on a China kick lately ( reading and listening about its history and global position) and a crime public policy kick ( reading and listening to Mark Kleiman). I was struck when I heard Mark say in an interview that the US has more people in jail in absolute terms than China. So…
Read more →Over on the Language Log , Victor Mair puts to rest that all English expressions have to be tensed and thus prevent timeless poetry. He shares his translation of a 13th century Chinese poet thus: Autumn Thoughts by Ma Zhiyuan Withered wisteria, old tree, darkling crows – Little bridge over flowing water by someone's house…
Read more →Preamble I am an old atheist and a new agnostic. I don't believe in God in the old-fashioned Russellian way - if I don't believe in Krishna, Zeus, water sprites or the little teapot orbiting the Sun, I don't believe in God and the associated supernatual phenomena (monotheism my foot!). However, I am agnostic about…
Read more →A very common metaphor in the political discourse on war is that of doves (peaceniks) and hawks (war-mongers). It has been around at least since the cold war. But it stops at "doves=peaceful" and "hawks=aggressive". It completely ignores other properties of the animals, e.g. the fact that "hawks hunt and kill doves". I did a…
Read more →Some years ago in a book review , I made an off-the-cuff comment that thriller writers tend to be quite right-wing in their outlook whereas science fiction authors are much more progressive and leftist. This is obviously an undue generalisation (as most of such comments tend to be) but it felt intuitively right. Even then…
Read more →Note: This was intended to be a brief note. Instead it developed into a monster post that took me two weeks of stolen moments to write. It's very light on non-blog references but they exist. Nevertheless, it is still easy to find a number of oversimplifications, conflations, and other imperfections below. The general thrust of…
Read more →I have a number of pet peeves about how people use language. I am genuinely annoyed by the use of apostrophes before plural of numerals or acronyms like 50's or ABC's. But because I understand how language works, I keep my mouth shut. The usage has obviously moved on. I don't think, ABC's is wrong…
Read more →Acclaimed academics have policy agendas just like anybody else. And often they let them interfere with a straightforward critical analysis of their output. The monumental capacity for blindness of highly intelligent people is sometimes staggering. Metaphors and analogies (same thing for metaphor hacking) make thinkers particularly prone to mis-projection blindness . Edward Glaeser , a…
Read more →"Thanks" to experimental philosophy, we have a bit more evidence confirming, that what many people think about the special epistemological status of metaphor is bunk. We should also note that Gibbs' and Glucksberg's teams have been doing a lot of similar research with the same results since the late 1980s. This is how Joshua Knobe…
Read more →Dan Cohen has decided to "crowdsource" (a fascinating blend, by the way) the title of his next book with the following instructions. The title should be a couplet like “The X and the Y” where X can be “Highbrow Humanities” “Elite Academia” “The Ivory Tower” “Deep/High Thought” [insert your idea] and Y can be “Lowbrow…
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