IS: Does Complexity have a circularity problem WAS: Any non-biological complex systems?

[Nick Thompson]

THIS MAY BE MOOT, BY NOW; GOT STUCK IN MY OUTBOX.

Glen,

I like the idea of turning these discussions into publications, although I doubt that I have the firepower.  Let's just keep that as a thought.

Explicating a metaphor like "layer" is  for me a serious and important art.  It starts, I think, by the metaphor maker identifying his absolute favorite example of a layer situation.  The situation that unequivocably instantiates "layers".  The next step will be to identify in the plainest way possible the crucial features of this example ... what makes it such a good example of "layers".  Then, and only then does it make sense to apply the metaphor to the situation we are trying to elucidate with it.  

It seems to me that the onion metaphor is not perhaps what everybody has in mind, because the layers of an onion are more or less independent of one another.   But I shouldn’t try to speak for you.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2017 4:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

We quickly polluted that thread, too.  But it drives home the point that an email list is _not_ a (good) collaborative production tool.

Aha! I haven't heard from Cliff since my work for the PSL<https://www.psl.nmsu.edu/>.  He supposedly works up at PNNL.  Thanks for that article.

Yes, I took Owen to be calling Russ' post a trolling post.  But "troll" is like "complex", meaningless out of context.

I'm completely baffled why "layer" isn't understood ... makes me think I must be wrong in some deep way.  But for whatever it's worth, I believe I understand and _agree_ with Nick's circularity criticism of mechanistic explanations for complexity, mostly because of a publication I'm helping develop that tries to classify several different senses of the word "mechanistic".  The 1st attempt was rejected by the journal, though. 8^(  But repeating Nick's point back in my own words obviously won't help, here.

Yes, I'm willing to help cobble together these posts into a document.  But, clearly, I can't be any kind of primary.  If y'all don't even understand what I mean by the word "layer", then whatever I composed would be alien to the other participants.  One idea might be to use a "mind mapping" tool and fill in the bubbles with verbatim snippets of people's posts ... that might help avoid the bias introduced by the secretary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software I also don't care that much about the meaning of "complex".  So, my only motivation for helping is because y'all tolerate my idiocy.


On 06/08/2017 12:52 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> I admit to being over my depth, at least in attention, if not in ability to parse out your dense text, and more to the point, the entire thread(s) which gives me more sympathy with Nick who would like a tool to help organize, neaten up, trim, etc. these very complex ( in the more common meaning of the term) discussions. My experience with you is that you always say what you mean and mean what you say, so I don't doubt that there is gold in that mine... just my ability to float the overburden and other minerals away with Philosopher's Mercury (PhHg) in a timely manner.
>
> I DO think Nick is asking for help from the rest of us in said parsing...   to begin, I can parse HIS first definition of "layer" is as a "laying hen"... a chicken (or duck?) who is actively laying eggs.   A total red-herring to mix metaphors here on a forum facilitated by another kind of RedFish altogether... a "fish of a different color" as it were, to keep up with the metaphor (aphorism?) mixology.
>
> I DON'T think Owen was referring to you when he said: "troll", I think he was being ironical by suggesting Russ himself was being a troll.  But I could be wrong.   Owen may not even remember to whom his bell "trolled" in that moment?  In any case, I don't find your contribution/interaction here to be particularly troll-like.  Yes, you can be deliberately provocative, but more in the sense of Socrates who got colored as a "gadfly" (before there were trolls in the lexicon?).   Stay away from the Hemlock, OK?
>
> I'm trying to sort this (simple?) question of the meaning (connotations) of layering you use, as I have my own reserved use of the term in "complex, layered metaphors" or alternately "layered, complex metaphors"... but that is *mostly* an aside.   I believe your onion analogy is Nick's "stratum" but I *think* with the added concept that each "direction" (theta/phi from onion-center) as a different "dimension".   Your subsequent text suggests a high-dimensional venn diagram.   My own work in visualization of  Partially Ordered Sets (in the Gene Ontology) may begin to address some of this, but I suspect not.
>
>    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4935.pdf
>
> I may continue to dig into this minefield of rich ore and interesting veins, but it has gotten beyond (even) me as a multiple attender who thrives on this kind of complexity (with limits apparently!).
>
> I think I heard you suggest that YOU would volunteer to pull in the various drawstrings on this multidimensional bag forming of a half-dozen or more branching threads...  I'll see if I can find that and ask some more pointed questions that might help that happen?
>
> I truly appreciate Nick's role (as another Socrates?) teasing at our language to try to get it more plain or perhaps more specific or perhaps more concise?  Is there some kind of conservation law in these dimensions?

--
☣ glen

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[gepr]

Thanks for asking.

Well, I still don't know what y'all mean when you say "metaphor" because the meaning seems to vary.  E.g. you say "a metaphor like 'layer'", indicating that 'layer' is the metaphor.  Yet you also say things like "onion metaphor", indicating that onions are the metaphor.  But, as I tried to say earlier, I don't regard onions as a metaphor.  They are simply a thing we can analyze using _either_ the concept of levels (strict ordering) or the concept of layers (more flexible organization).  So, the concept of metaphors isn't useful to me, there.

However, I do think a metaphor consists of 2 analogs (real things like rocks or onions) and the analogy between them.  So, I can see "metaphor" meaning a) just 2 analogs, b) just the relation/analogy, without the analogs, or with implicit/schematic analogs, or c) all 3: 2 analogs plus their relation(s).  So, if that's what you're asking for, I do like "exhibiting particulate deposition" as the relationship/analogy.  For the 2 analogs, we can choose, as I said: 1) coral deposition and, say, diffusion limited aggregation.

So, the metaphor would be DLA ⇔ coral.  And that analogy should help identify why "layer" is a more general analysis concept than "levels".


On 06/12/2017 08:23 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Explicating a metaphor like "layer" is  for me a serious and important art.  It starts, I think, by the metaphor maker identifying his absolute favorite example of a layer situation.  The situation that unequivocably instantiates "layers".  The next step will be to identify in the plainest way possible the crucial features of this example ... what makes it such a good example of "layers".  Then, and only then does it make sense to apply the metaphor to the situation we are trying to elucidate with it.  
>
> It seems to me that the onion metaphor is not perhaps what everybody has in mind, because the layers of an onion are more or less independent of one another.   But I shouldn’t try to speak for you.


--
␦glen?

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[gepr]

And as I tried to imply in my note about "lamina" being a biased term, DLA is a schematic analog, meaning using the term "DLA" unadorned with context, leaves many variables unbound, one of which is whether it's a parallel or serial implementation.

On 06/12/2017 08:36 AM, ┣glen┫ wrote:
> So, the metaphor would be DLA ⇔ coral.  And that analogy should help identify why "layer" is a more general analysis concept than "levels".

--
☣ glen

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[Steve Smith]

FWIW

In my parlance (I think well informed by formal usage),  A conceptual metaphor has a source and a target domain.  The target domain is the domain one is trying to understand/explain by comparison to the source domain.   The source domain is considered the image donor.  We use the familiar source to help us reason about the more abstract or unfamiliar target.

In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the source domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of layer.  Other source domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

I'm not sure if this is a rabbit hole we fell down when we began to try to sort levels from layers.  I think the distinction is critical to the discussion (which is now nearly lost in this forest of trees of levels and layers?) but is not the discussion itself.   We digress within our digressions.

Jenny and Dave and I are discussing amongst ourselves a live in-person "salon" of sorts to be held at Jenny's (in Santa Fe) on the the general topic of Models, Metaphors, and Analogy.    Jenny and I have elected Dave to try to lead this, Jenny is providing chairs and shade.   I'm pulsing the locals for interest in participating... I'm only sorry Nick and Roger and Glen are so far away right now.   Got any (other) locals interested in chatting face to face on these topics?   Wimberly?  Guerin?   I'm feeling the same juice as some our impromptu meetups BEFORE FriAM became a formal deal!   We could sure use Mike Agar about now!

Do any of you old men (or women) of this august body have a copy of Wheelwright's 1962 "Metaphor and Reality" you are ready to give up?  I'm missing my copy... not sure where it got off to!  Did I maybe miss finding one in your stash when you left SFe, REC?

- Steve

On 6/12/17 9:36 AM, ┣glen┫ wrote:

Thanks for asking.

Well, I still don't know what y'all mean when you say "metaphor" because the meaning seems to vary.  E.g. you say "a metaphor like 'layer'", indicating that 'layer' is the metaphor.  Yet you also say things like "onion metaphor", indicating that onions are the metaphor.  But, as I tried to say earlier, I don't regard onions as a metaphor.  They are simply a thing we can analyze using _either_ the concept of levels (strict ordering) or the concept of layers (more flexible organization).  So, the concept of metaphors isn't useful to me, there.

However, I do think a metaphor consists of 2 analogs (real things like rocks or onions) and the analogy between them.  So, I can see "metaphor" meaning a) just 2 analogs, b) just the relation/analogy, without the analogs, or with implicit/schematic analogs, or c) all 3: 2 analogs plus their relation(s).  So, if that's what you're asking for, I do like "exhibiting particulate deposition" as the relationship/analogy.  For the 2 analogs, we can choose, as I said: 1) coral deposition and, say, diffusion limited aggregation.

So, the metaphor would be DLA ⇔ coral.  And that analogy should help identify why "layer" is a more general analysis concept than "levels".


On 06/12/2017 08:23 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Explicating a metaphor like "layer" is  for me a serious and important art.  It starts, I think, by the metaphor maker identifying his absolute favorite example of a layer situation.  The situation that unequivocably instantiates "layers".  The next step will be to identify in the plainest way possible the crucial features of this example ... what makes it such a good example of "layers".  Then, and only then does it make sense to apply the metaphor to the situation we are trying to elucidate with it.  

It seems to me that the onion metaphor is not perhaps what everybody has in mind, because the layers of an onion are more or less independent of one another.   But I shouldn’t try to speak for you. 

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[gepr]

Just to clarify, no, that's not at all what I did.  I did not propose onion as a source and layer as a target.  That completely misses my point.  An onion is a thing that can be sliced up, thought about, analyzed, by various different methods.  No metaphor involved.  This tendency to see metaphors everywhere is a strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)


On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

--
☣ glen

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[Steve Smith]

Glen -

I always appreciate your corrections.  You are naturally the only one
who really knows what you meant when you brought it up.  I thought I
remembered that you invoked the onion and it's layers to try to explain
your distinction between levels and layers and the utility of the same
in the discussion of Complexity Science.

I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush
small ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a
blender for various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't
think why we would have been talking about an onion if not as the source
domain for a metaphor.   Why were we talking about an onion?  I remember
a discursion into or near the embryological implications of how onions
form their layers?

- Steve



On 6/12/17 10:45 AM, glen ☣ wrote:
> Just to clarify, no, that's not at all what I did.  I did not propose onion as a source and layer as a target.  That completely misses my point.  An onion is a thing that can be sliced up, thought about, analyzed, by various different methods.  No metaphor involved.  This tendency to see metaphors everywhere is a strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)
>
>
> On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.


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[gepr]

It is nice to see another person admit to their premature registration!  Thanks.  I brought up an onion as an example of a thing that, when analyzed with levels produces a different result than when analyzed with layers.

You have to admit that slicing an onion produces different results than prying off its layers one by one.  Rigth?

On 06/12/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I always appreciate your corrections.  You are naturally the only one who really knows what you meant when you brought it up.  I thought I remembered that you invoked the onion and it's layers to try to explain your distinction between levels and layers and the utility of the same in the discussion of Complexity Science.
>
> I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush small ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a blender for various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't think why we would have been talking about an onion if not as the source domain for a metaphor.   Why were we talking about an onion?  I remember a discursion into or near the embryological implications of how onions form their layers?

--
☣ glen

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[Steve Smith]

BTW

I am (mostly) of the opinion (school of thought) that follows Lakoff and
Johnson's premises from "Metaphors we Live by" (1980) where most
language and thought involves metaphor.  I think Lakoff revisits this
strongly from another direction with Nunez in "Where Mathematics Comes
From/the Embodiment of Mind".

Previous to and outside of this school of thought, many/most seem think
of metaphor as no more than a flowery linguistic construct mostly
reserved for poetry and other imagistic writing?

Can you (Glen) state your position on the utility or place of metaphor
in your world-view?  We might (once again) be bashing around in
different wings of  Borges' "Library of Babel" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel )

- Sieve


On 6/12/17 11:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

> Glen -
>
> I always appreciate your corrections.  You are naturally the only one
> who really knows what you meant when you brought it up.  I thought I
> remembered that you invoked the onion and it's layers to try to
> explain your distinction between levels and layers and the utility of
> the same in the discussion of Complexity Science.
>
> I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush
> small ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a
> blender for various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't
> think why we would have been talking about an onion if not as the
> source domain for a metaphor.   Why were we talking about an onion?  I
> remember a discursion into or near the embryological implications of
> how onions form their layers?
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
> On 6/12/17 10:45 AM, glen ☣ wrote:
>> Just to clarify, no, that's not at all what I did.  I did not propose
>> onion as a source and layer as a target.  That completely misses my
>> point.  An onion is a thing that can be sliced up, thought about,
>> analyzed, by various different methods.  No metaphor involved.  This
>> tendency to see metaphors everywhere is a strange disease we're
>> inflicted with. 8^)
>>
>>
>> On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/
>>> domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and
>>> abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains
>>> (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer
>>> conceptual parallax on this.
>
>
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>

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[Steve Smith]

Glen -
> It is nice to see another person admit to their premature registration!  Thanks.
I took it as a simple 'mis-registration'.  I'll think about "premature"
a little more...
>    I brought up an onion as an example of a thing that, when analyzed with levels produces a different result than when analyzed with layers.
I think I get your point.  I admit to being guilty with you as some of
my professors in college were of marking you down for not "showing all
the steps" in a derivation.  I know you to be able to skip a level of
abstraction (take it for granted) without being explicit (to my
apprehension anyway).    They eventually quit giving me F's for that
antisocialism and began to give me A's for the implied skill in not
HAVING to be so explicit when there was plenty of room to fill in the
blanks conceptually if one tried.
> You have to admit that slicing an onion produces different results than prying off its layers one by one.  Rigth?j
and do I read you correctly that a sliced onion exhibits the abstraction
of levels (outside-in?) and their juxtaposed contrast each with the next
or the many with one or the few, while the peeled onion exhibits layers
(each one coherent in itself and only exposing, at most the next layer
and/or the remaining (sub) whole?

And in the immortal words of someone else here years ago "but will it
blend?" :
      http://www.willitblend.com/

Odd that some use "ideasthesia" and "conceptual blending" in similar
ways to "conceptual metaphor".     So "blending" itself is a
metaphor...   recursion up the moibeus ourobourousian tailpipe?  Or is
it down the rabbit hole?  Or is that more a literary allusion than a
metaphor?   Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall!  Thank you Grace
Slick!  I'm waiting for "Jefferson Wormhole" to form and transport us to
another universe.  Metaphorically speaking of course!

- Sneeze
>
> On 06/12/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> I always appreciate your corrections.  You are naturally the only one who really knows what you meant when you brought it up.  I thought I remembered that you invoked the onion and it's layers to try to explain your distinction between levels and layers and the utility of the same in the discussion of Complexity Science.
>>
>> I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush small ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a blender for various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't think why we would have been talking about an onion if not as the source domain for a metaphor.   Why were we talking about an onion?  I remember a discursion into or near the embryological implications of how onions form their layers?


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[gepr]

On 06/12/2017 10:24 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I took it as a simple 'mis-registration'.  I'll think about "premature" a little more...

Cf Brian Cantwell Smith in: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/philosophy-of-mental-representation-9780198250524?cc=us&lang=en&

> I think I get your point.  I admit to being guilty with you as some of my professors in college were of marking you down for not "showing all the steps" in a derivation.  I know you to be able to skip a level of abstraction (take it for granted) without being explicit (to my apprehension anyway).    They eventually quit giving me F's for that antisocialism and began to give me A's for the implied skill in not HAVING to be so explicit when there was plenty of room to fill in the blanks conceptually if one tried.

Yes, and I accept all the fault.  My academic friends are always on me about my non sequiturs.  Even one old boss of mine (forcefully) suggested it is the speaker's responsibility to speak so that the listener can understand.  I did and do think that's bvllsh!t.  It is the listener's responsibility to make some effort to listen with empathy, rather than _leap_ to whatever conclusion is most convenient for them.  But, hey, I got poor grades and still struggle to make a living.  So what do I know?

> and do I read you correctly that a sliced onion exhibits the abstraction of levels (outside-in?) and their juxtaposed contrast each with the next or the many with one or the few, while the peeled onion exhibits layers (each one coherent in itself and only exposing, at most the next layer and/or the remaining (sub) whole?

If we first admit there's a difference in the result, then we can move on to whether there is an analysis method that is more _natural_ to the object being analyzed.  EricS, in particular, used the phrase

     DES> there is a natural sense of a system’s own delimitation

An onion is an example where layer is a more natural procedure of separation than level.  And if we can ever get around to agreement on that point, then we can move on to analogies between things that are more natural to layer than level.


On 06/12/2017 10:10 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:> BTW
> Can you (Glen) state your position on the utility or place of metaphor in your world-view?  We might (once again) be bashing around in different wings of  Borges' "Library of Babel" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel )

I was very put off by the reliance on "metaphors everywhere" in both Philosophy in the Flesh and Where Mathematics Comes From.  I think it leads to exactly the type of muddled thinking we've seen in this thread.

That said, being a simulant, I rely fundamentally on the spectrum of weak ⇔ strong analogy (both quant. and qual.).  So, I'm down with any power metaphors might bring us.  But as with everything, I'm a skeptic.


--
☣ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

But Glen, if the onion was not a metaphor, then what was it?  How did it become relevant?  A mongoose and a rutabaga are also things that can be "sliced up, analysed..." etc, but you did not mention those.  You did not offer a rutabaga model of complexity; you offered an onion one.  Is there some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from complexity to onions?

I am thinking about your worry that we over-deploy the notion of metaphor.  How about the following rule of thumb:  M is a metaphor for T when our understandings of M ae offered as potential understandings of T.  So, a metaphor can always be cashed out as follows:  What does the metaphor-maker understand about M that s/he takes to be relevant to our understanding of T.  

One of the fierce debates that we have had in my group over the years has been over the question of who gets to say what the implications of a metaphor ARE.  "My love is like a red, red rose" could imply that she is frail, ephemeral, sweet smelling, gaudy, thorny, or all of the above.  Who gets to say which of these entailments applies.  For those of us who think that metaphor-making is at the core of scientific thought, the question is an important one.   We all of us agree that a metaphor-maker is entitled to disclaim some of the implications of his/her metaphor; but to what extent is s/he entitled to cherry-pick.  And we all agree that once a metaphor-maker has specified which entailments are essential to his understanding of his metaphor, he is stuck with them.  A proper scientific metaphor must be falsifiable.  

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 12:45 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

Just to clarify, no, that's not at all what I did.  I did not propose onion as a source and layer as a target.  That completely misses my point.  An onion is a thing that can be sliced up, thought about, analyzed, by various different methods.  No metaphor involved.  This tendency to see metaphors everywhere is a strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)


On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

--
☣ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

At the risk of being dumb, I would say that when we peal an onion we get
layers;  when we slice an onion, we get cross-sections;  is there any way we
can get a "level" out of an onion?  

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 1:25 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...


Glen -
> It is nice to see another person admit to their premature registration!
Thanks.
I took it as a simple 'mis-registration'.  I'll think about "premature"
a little more...
>    I brought up an onion as an example of a thing that, when analyzed with
levels produces a different result than when analyzed with layers.
I think I get your point.  I admit to being guilty with you as some of my
professors in college were of marking you down for not "showing all the
steps" in a derivation.  I know you to be able to skip a level of
abstraction (take it for granted) without being explicit (to my
apprehension anyway).    They eventually quit giving me F's for that
antisocialism and began to give me A's for the implied skill in not HAVING
to be so explicit when there was plenty of room to fill in the blanks
conceptually if one tried.
> You have to admit that slicing an onion produces different results
> than prying off its layers one by one.  Rigth?j
and do I read you correctly that a sliced onion exhibits the abstraction of
levels (outside-in?) and their juxtaposed contrast each with the next or the
many with one or the few, while the peeled onion exhibits layers (each one
coherent in itself and only exposing, at most the next layer and/or the
remaining (sub) whole?

And in the immortal words of someone else here years ago "but will it
blend?" :
      http://www.willitblend.com/

Odd that some use "ideasthesia" and "conceptual blending" in similar
ways to "conceptual metaphor".     So "blending" itself is a
metaphor...   recursion up the moibeus ourobourousian tailpipe?  Or is
it down the rabbit hole?  Or is that more a literary allusion than a
metaphor?   Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall!  Thank you Grace
Slick!  I'm waiting for "Jefferson Wormhole" to form and transport us to
another universe.  Metaphorically speaking of course!

- Sneeze
>
> On 06/12/2017 10:01 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> I always appreciate your corrections.  You are naturally the only one who
really knows what you meant when you brought it up.  I thought I remembered
that you invoked the onion and it's layers to try to explain your
distinction between levels and layers and the utility of the same in the
discussion of Complexity Science.
>>
>> I know how to slice onions with a knife, I've even been known to crush
small ones like a garlic clove,  and have even run them through a blender
for various culinary purposes, but in this discussion, I can't think why we
would have been talking about an onion if not as the source domain for a
metaphor.   Why were we talking about an onion?  I remember a discursion
into or near the embryological implications of how onions form their layers?


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[gepr]

Hm.  I guess I'll say it at least one more time.  I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.  You're using Goebbles on me, aren't you?  Here:

I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.
I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.
I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.
I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.

8^)

On 06/12/2017 10:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> But Glen, if the onion was not a metaphor, then what was it?  How did it become relevant?  A mongoose and a rutabaga are also things that can be "sliced up, analysed..." etc, but you did not mention those.  You did not offer a rutabaga model of complexity; you offered an onion one.  Is there some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from complexity to onions?


--
☣ glen

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[Steve Smith]

Nick -

To try to offer my own understanding of Glen's position/assertion... I
(like you) believe that his mere *invocation* of an onion in this
context had a metaphorical quality to it, but his *emphasis* was in
investigating the natural delimiters (?EricS term?) of a specific
example of an object which might be analyzed in terms of "layer" or
"level" where he claimed (and asked us to acknowledge?) that there is a
distinct difference and the former is much more apt than the latter.  
Of course, I could be wrong (again) and Glen may well make that point if
it is important!

Your analysis of metaphor more in figurative, romantic speech/poesy
(Love/Rose) is good and parallels what Glen was maundering most recently
(again, GEPR correct me if I misapprehended!) regarding the
responsibility of the speaker and the listener.  As a poet and lover of
poetry and poems and poesy and ring around the rosy myself,  I think it
is good and important that in those modes, that there be multiple
entendres galore (and what is the French for multiple apprehensions to
complement entendres?).   The good and juicy stuff lies in the various
(mis)interpretations of the original intent, up to and including
subconscious intents not acknowledged by the figurative writer.

I think there is a significant difference between figurative speech
inside and outside of scientific thought.   Perhaps there could/should
be a more rigorous boundary put between the two... the former being more
what is colloquially thought of as metaphor and the latter being more
what is thought of as "formal analogy".

I based most of my career on helping literal thinkers access their
intuitions through the use of complex metaphors.  I think that was
important.   I also saw metaphors used very effectively for
communicating complex scientific ideas to a lay audience.

Glen is unfortunately accurate (in my experience) that it is also easy
to use metaphor to obscure and/or muddle discussions.   I think there
was some of that afoot with our attempts to get at "what is complexity"
(the root of this branching labyrinth of topics?) but I also believe
that Glen (and many others in this group) may be a bit allergic to the
abuses of metaphorical language.

You can beat a dead metaphor, but you can't lead it to water.

- Steve


On 6/12/17 11:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> But Glen, if the onion was not a metaphor, then what was it?  How did it become relevant?  A mongoose and a rutabaga are also things that can be "sliced up, analysed..." etc, but you did not mention those.  You did not offer a rutabaga model of complexity; you offered an onion one.  Is there some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from complexity to onions?
>
> I am thinking about your worry that we over-deploy the notion of metaphor.  How about the following rule of thumb:  M is a metaphor for T when our understandings of M ae offered as potential understandings of T.  So, a metaphor can always be cashed out as follows:  What does the metaphor-maker understand about M that s/he takes to be relevant to our understanding of T.
>
> One of the fierce debates that we have had in my group over the years has been over the question of who gets to say what the implications of a metaphor ARE.  "My love is like a red, red rose" could imply that she is frail, ephemeral, sweet smelling, gaudy, thorny, or all of the above.  Who gets to say which of these entailments applies.  For those of us who think that metaphor-making is at the core of scientific thought, the question is an important one.   We all of us agree that a metaphor-maker is entitled to disclaim some of the implications of his/her metaphor; but to what extent is s/he entitled to cherry-pick.  And we all agree that once a metaphor-maker has specified which entailments are essential to his understanding of his metaphor, he is stuck with them.  A proper scientific metaphor must be falsifiable.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
> Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 12:45 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language
>
> Just to clarify, no, that's not at all what I did.  I did not propose onion as a source and layer as a target.  That completely misses my point.  An onion is a thing that can be sliced up, thought about, analyzed, by various different methods.  No metaphor involved.  This tendency to see metaphors everywhere is a strange disease we're inflicted with. 8^)
>
>
> On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.
> --
> ☣ glen
>
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>
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[gepr]

Yes, an onion _does_ submit to a partial order if you use polar coordinates.

On 06/12/2017 10:52 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> At the risk of being dumb, I would say that when we peal an onion we get
> layers;  when we slice an onion, we get cross-sections;  is there any way we
> can get a "level" out of an onion?  


--
☣ glen

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[Nick Thompson]

Steve,

 

This is helpful.  See below.

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 12:40 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

 

FWIW

In my parlance (I think well informed by formal usage),  A conceptual metaphor has a source and a target domain.  The target domain is the domain one is trying to understand/explain by comparison to the source domain.   The source domain is considered the image donor.  We use the familiar source to help us reason about the more abstract or unfamiliar target.

[NST==>I like “source” and “target”.  Let’s use these terms here on out.  “Domain” is probably unnecessary, and might lead to hand-waving.  I still hate “conceptual metaphor” as introducing potential for confusion.  Anytime you say “This thing is a That” you are invoking a conception – a “grasping-together”.   <==nst]

In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the source domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of layer.  Other source domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

[NST==>See how you suddenly got wobbly when you started using the word “domain”?  “Domain” is another metaphor and would require its own specification.  <==nst]

I'm not sure if this is a rabbit hole

[NST==>Another metaphor, often used in such discussions (eg Owen’s “Troll” troll. ) to disparage attempts to clarify what a group of people is actually talking about.  <==nst]

we fell down when we began to try to sort levels from layers.  I think the distinction is critical to the discussion (which is now nearly lost in this forest of trees of levels and layers?) but is not the discussion itself.   We digress within our digressions.

Jenny and Dave and I are discussing amongst ourselves a live in-person "salon" of sorts to be held at Jenny's (in Santa Fe) on the the general topic of Models, Metaphors, and Analogy.    Jenny and I have elected Dave to try to lead this, Jenny is providing chairs and shade.   I'm pulsing the locals for interest in participating... I'm only sorry Nick and Roger and Glen are so far away right now.   Got any (other) locals interested in chatting face to face on these topics?   Wimberly?  Guerin?  

[NST==>Oh, Gosh!  That I should miss this.  I would hope that at some point you would have a look my article on the confusions arising from the application of the natural selection metaphor to groups.  It’s a testy, difficult argument, with an unexpected and interesting result.  I wouldn’t expect anybody to load it entirely, but I do think it’s a good example of how tidying up metaphors can lead to a better understanding of issues.  Given that so many potentially absent people are interested, I would recommend organizing the conversation around a list.  If you haven’t done this by the time I get back in October, I could promise to organize a “seminar” of the “city university of santa Fe” on “scientific metaphors: their uses; their perils”.  We would meet regularly for a couple of hours.  There would be readings.   <==nst]

 I'm feeling the same juice as some our impromptu meetups BEFORE FriAM became a formal deal!   We could sure use Mike Agar about now![NST==>Of course Steve and Frank. They might or might not, be interested. As you know, one man’s passion is another man’s bullshit.    Jon Zingale, for sure.  Jenny’s partner would contribute a lot from his understanding of Peirce’s abduction, which is closely but ambiguously related to metaphor making. Jim Gattiker is a great seminar participant … mind like a steel trap … but don’t know whether this would interest him.  Sean Mood is another great seminar participant.   <==nst]

Do any of you old men (or women) of this august body have a copy of Wheelwright's 1962 "Metaphor and Reality" you are ready to give up?  I'm missing my copy... not sure where it got off to!  Did I maybe miss finding one in your stash when you left SFe, REC?

- Steve

On 6/12/17 9:36 AM, ┣glen┫ wrote:

Thanks for asking.

Well, I still don't know what y'all mean when you say "metaphor" because the meaning seems to vary.  E.g. you say "a metaphor like 'layer'", indicating that 'layer' is the metaphor.  Yet you also say things like "onion metaphor", indicating that onions are the metaphor.  But, as I tried to say earlier, I don't regard onions as a metaphor.  They are simply a thing we can analyze using _either_ the concept of levels (strict ordering) or the concept of layers (more flexible organization).  So, the concept of metaphors isn't useful to me, there.

However, I do think a metaphor consists of 2 analogs (real things like rocks or onions) and the analogy between them.  So, I can see "metaphor" meaning a) just 2 analogs, b) just the relation/analogy, without the analogs, or with implicit/schematic analogs, or c) all 3: 2 analogs plus their relation(s).  So, if that's what you're asking for, I do like "exhibiting particulate deposition" as the relationship/analogy.  For the 2 analogs, we can choose, as I said: 1) coral deposition and, say, diffusion limited aggregation.

So, the metaphor would be DLA ⇔ coral.  And that analogy should help identify why "layer" is a more general analysis concept than "levels".

On 06/12/2017 08:23 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Explicating a metaphor like "layer" is  for me a serious and important art.  It starts, I think, by the metaphor maker identifying his absolute favorite example of a layer situation.  The situation that unequivocably instantiates "layers".  The next step will be to identify in the plainest way possible the crucial features of this example ... what makes it such a good example of "layers".  Then, and only then does it make sense to apply the metaphor to the situation we are trying to elucidate with it.  

It seems to me that the onion metaphor is not perhaps what everybody has in mind, because the layers of an onion are more or less independent of one another.   But I shouldn’t try to speak for you. 

 

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[Nick Thompson]

Look, Glen.  I may be old.  I may be stupid.  I may be distracted.  I am certainly out of my depth.  This discussion, which fascinates me, is happening at a very inopportune  time for me, so I am admittedly not able to invest as much attention on it as it deserves and I would like.  And the discussion is going very fast, with answers falling all over other answers.   But I am NOT ill-willed or guileful.   And I am certainly not Goebbels. Good LORD!   Try, whatever evidence to the contrary I may seem to present, to assume that I am basically an honest person, and that we share an interest in getting somewhere.  AND -- the hard part -- I recognize that if we ARE to get anywhere, everybody's thinking -- including my own -- is going to have to change.

 

OK.  So, with all that in mind.  Say again, would you please, what the onion was doing in the discussion.  Just to recap from my point of view, I think the slice of an onion is a cross section.  The notion of a cross-section plays an important role in Holt's Concept of Consciousness, which describes anybody's consciousness as a cross section cut through the world by that person's behavior.  My consciousness is just those features of the world to which I respond.  When we slice an onion the structure revealed says something about BOTH the onion and about us, the slicer.  The cross section differs not only from onion to onion but because of how it was sliced.

 

Now NONE of this has anything to do with what I mean by "levels" , which invokes an organizational metaphor.  I mean, hierarchical levels.  I suspect it will be almost impossible to talk about complexity without a language that includes hierarchical levels.  Remember, we got into this because I offered a definition of a complex system as a system made up of other systems.  So, on my account, an onion IS a complex system because it is a system of plants, each wrapped around another. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 1:55 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

 

 

Hm.  I guess I'll say it at least one more time.  I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.  You're using Goebbles on me, aren't you?  Here:

 

I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.

I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.

I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.

I did NOT offer an onion as a model of complexity.

 

8^)

 

On 06/12/2017 10:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> But Glen, if the onion was not a metaphor, then what was it?  How did it become relevant?  A mongoose and a rutabaga are also things that can be "sliced up, analysed..." etc, but you did not mention those.  You did not offer a rutabaga model of complexity; you offered an onion one.  Is there some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from complexity to onions?

 

 

--

☣ glen

 

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[Nick Thompson]

Steve,

 

You wrote:

 

I think there is a significant difference between figurative speech

inside and outside of scientific thought.   Perhaps there could/should

be a more rigorous boundary put between the two... the former being more what is colloquially thought of as metaphor and the latter being more what is thought of as "formal analogy".

 

Isn’t this the very boundary we are exploring?   I would assert that, to the extent that we fail to explore it, we drain the life blood of science and deprive poetry of its precision.

 

Nick

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 2:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

 

Nick -

 

To try to offer my own understanding of Glen's position/assertion... I (like you) believe that his mere *invocation* of an onion in this context had a metaphorical quality to it, but his *emphasis* was in investigating the natural delimiters (?EricS term?) of a specific example of an object which might be analyzed in terms of "layer" or "level" where he claimed (and asked us to acknowledge?) that there is a

distinct difference and the former is much more apt than the latter.  

Of course, I could be wrong (again) and Glen may well make that point if it is important!

 

Your analysis of metaphor more in figurative, romantic speech/poesy

(Love/Rose) is good and parallels what Glen was maundering most recently (again, GEPR correct me if I misapprehended!) regarding the responsibility of the speaker and the listener.  As a poet and lover of poetry and poems and poesy and ring around the rosy myself,  I think it is good and important that in those modes, that there be multiple entendres galore (and what is the French for multiple apprehensions to

complement entendres?).   The good and juicy stuff lies in the various

(mis)interpretations of the original intent, up to and including subconscious intents not acknowledged by the figurative writer.

 

I think there is a significant difference between figurative speech

inside and outside of scientific thought.   Perhaps there could/should

be a more rigorous boundary put between the two... the former being more what is colloquially thought of as metaphor and the latter being more what is thought of as "formal analogy".

 

I based most of my career on helping literal thinkers access their intuitions through the use of complex metaphors.  I think that was

important.   I also saw metaphors used very effectively for

communicating complex scientific ideas to a lay audience.

 

Glen is unfortunately accurate (in my experience) that it is also easy

to use metaphor to obscure and/or muddle discussions.   I think there

was some of that afoot with our attempts to get at "what is complexity"

(the root of this branching labyrinth of topics?) but I also believe that Glen (and many others in this group) may be a bit allergic to the abuses of metaphorical language.

 

You can beat a dead metaphor, but you can't lead it to water.

 

- Steve

 

 

On 6/12/17 11:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> But Glen, if the onion was not a metaphor, then what was it?  How did it become relevant?  A mongoose and a rutabaga are also things that can be "sliced up, analysed..." etc, but you did not mention those.  You did not offer a rutabaga model of complexity; you offered an onion one.  Is there some OTHER  "process of mind" other than metaphor-making that gets you from complexity to onions?

> 

> I am thinking about your worry that we over-deploy the notion of metaphor.  How about the following rule of thumb:  M is a metaphor for T when our understandings of M ae offered as potential understandings of T.  So, a metaphor can always be cashed out as follows:  What does the metaphor-maker understand about M that s/he takes to be relevant to our understanding of T.

> 

> One of the fierce debates that we have had in my group over the years has been over the question of who gets to say what the implications of a metaphor ARE.  "My love is like a red, red rose" could imply that she is frail, ephemeral, sweet smelling, gaudy, thorny, or all of the above.  Who gets to say which of these entailments applies.  For those of us who think that metaphor-making is at the core of scientific thought, the question is an important one.   We all of us agree that a metaphor-maker is entitled to disclaim some of the implications of his/her metaphor; but to what extent is s/he entitled to cherry-pick.  And we all agree that once a metaphor-maker has specified which entailments are essential to his understanding of his metaphor, he is stuck with them.  A proper scientific metaphor must be falsifiable.

> 

> Nick

> 

> Nicholas S. Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University

> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

> 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ?

> Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 12:45 PM

> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

> <[hidden email]>

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

> 

> Just to clarify, no, that's not at all what I did.  I did not propose

> onion as a source and layer as a target.  That completely misses my

> point.  An onion is a thing that can be sliced up, thought about,

> analyzed, by various different methods.  No metaphor involved.  This

> tendency to see metaphors everywhere is a strange disease we're

> inflicted with. 8^)

> 

> 

> On 06/12/2017 09:39 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

>> In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the /source/ domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of /layer/.  Other /source/ domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

> --

> ☣ glen

> 

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> 

> 

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> 

 

 

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[gepr]

Sorry.  I didn't mean anything nefarious with the "repeat a lie often enough" thing.

I introduced an onion as an example of a thing, in the real world, that you can look at in terms of levels or layers.  And looking at it in terms of layers produces something different (and presumably more "natural") than looking at it in terms of levels.



On 06/12/2017 12:17 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Look, Glen.  I may be old.  I may be stupid.  I may be distracted.  I am certainly out of my depth.  This discussion, which fascinates me, is happening at a very inopportune  time for me, so I am admittedly not able to invest as much attention on it as it deserves and I would like.  And the discussion is going very fast, with answers falling all over other answers.   But I am NOT ill-willed or guileful.   And I am certainly not Goebbels. Good LORD!   Try, whatever evidence to the contrary I may seem to present, to assume that I am basically an honest person, and that we share an interest in getting somewhere.  AND -- the hard part -- I recognize that if we ARE to get anywhere, everybody's thinking -- including my own -- is going to have to change.
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> OK.  So, with all that in mind.  Say again, would you please, what the onion was doing in the discussion.  Just to recap from my point of view, I think the slice of an onion is a cross section.  The notion of a cross-section plays an important role in Holt's Concept of Consciousness, which describes anybody's consciousness as a cross section cut through the world by that person's behavior.  My consciousness is just those features of the world to which I respond.  When we slice an onion the structure revealed says something about BOTH the onion and about us, the slicer.  The cross section differs not only from onion to onion but because of how it was sliced.
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> Now NONE of this has anything to do with what I mean by "levels" , which invokes an organizational metaphor.  I mean, hierarchical levels.  I suspect it will be almost impossible to talk about complexity without a language that includes hierarchical levels.  Remember, we got into this because I offered a definition of a complex system as a system made up of other systems.  So, on my account, an onion IS a complex system because it is a system of plants, each wrapped around another.  

--
☣ glen

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[Steve Smith]

NST -

[NST==>I like “source” and “target”.  Let’s use these terms here on out.  “Domain” is probably unnecessary, and might lead to hand-waving.  I still hate “conceptual metaphor” as introducing potential for confusion.  Anytime you say “This thing is a That” you are invoking a conception – a “grasping-together”.   <==nst]

I wish I could stop splitting hairs with you, but it seems built into this discussion (another metaphor, really?)!  I understand "domain" to modify "source" and "target" to make it clear that what is being discussed/considered/reasoned/intuited upon may be bigger than a single "thing".  Perhaps the over-used onion needn't be referred to as more than a source (or target) but if I were invoking a garden or landscape  *source* it is important that I'm talking about the whole ensemble of likely/possible gardens or landscapes.  With onions, it seems easier to imagine a singular canonical onion (unless your field of study is the inner life of Alliums).   in fact when the humble Onion was first invoked, I immediately abstracted (in my mind) to "bulb" with a nice big fat juicy vidalia onion as the prototype of the moment for my consideration, but including a wide range of bulbs, some more edible than others.   We could certainly use "source" and "target" as shorthand if we accept that the object of each is something more general/abstract than a specific object.

If I read your gripe with "conceptual metaphor" correctly, it is that "conception" already suggests ("grasping together") the metaphor?   I use "conceptual metaphor" to specifically imply that the "target" (domain) is in a more conceptual/abstract realm than literal/concrete.   the "source" (domain) may also be relatively abstract but I think for utility is in some sense "closer to literal, or concrete" than the target.   From Lakoff/Nunez, ultimately these layered/stacked metaphors ground out in human perceptions... things we apprehend directly with our senses...  

"The price of nonsense in America has risen in 2017" - Rising is from the conceptual domain of directionality which has affiliation with the domain of simple geometry, and perhaps is apprehended more directly perceptually by a human by our inner ear and other measures of the gravity gradient.   I don't know if YOU feel an empty spot in your gut when "the bottom of the stock market drops out", or a sense of "elation" when the local housing bubble "elevates the value of your family home" or not, I think many do.

In the example at hand,  Glen invoked "an Onion" as the source domain in a metaphor to try to understand the more general and abstract target domain of layer.  Other source domains (deposition layers, skin, geology) were offered as well to offer conceptual parallax on this.

[NST==>See how you suddenly got wobbly when you started using the word “domain”?  “Domain” is another metaphor and would require its own specification.  <==nst]

"Domain" is almost certainly a "borrow word" from another <ahem> domain, that perhaps of political/economic/military control/influence.  But then so seems "source" (as in a spring is the source of a creek) and "target" (keep your eye on the target and your aim steady!).    I think that very little of our language is not metaphorical, even if our awareness of it as such is numbed by common usage.   "numbed", "usage", "awareness" (perceptual v. conceptual?)

I'm not sure if this is a rabbit hole

[NST==>Another metaphor, often used in such discussions (eg Owen’s “Troll” troll. ) to disparage attempts to clarify what a group of people is actually talking about.  <==nst]

Being one of those who is chasing this rabbit, I'm not sure I am intending to disparage anything... more likely give us an out if we realize we are discussing something of lesser interest/relevance and losing sight of the topic we were originally more interested in?   As you can tell I am game for (overly so?) discussing the meaning and implications of the language we use, I'm just wondering if this is the branch of the branching discussion we are most interested in?

we fell down when we began to try to sort levels from layers.  I think the distinction is critical to the discussion (which is now nearly lost in this forest of trees of levels and layers?) but is not the discussion itself.   We digress within our digressions.

Jenny and Dave and I are discussing amongst ourselves a live in-person "salon" of sorts to be held at Jenny's (in Santa Fe) on the the general topic of Models, Metaphors, and Analogy.    Jenny and I have elected Dave to try to lead this, Jenny is providing chairs and shade.   I'm pulsing the locals for interest in participating... I'm only sorry Nick and Roger and Glen are so far away right now.   Got any (other) locals interested in chatting face to face on these topics?   Wimberly?  Guerin?  

[NST==>Oh, Gosh!  That I should miss this.  I would hope that at some point you would have a look my article on the confusions arising from the application of the natural selection metaphor to groups.  It’s a testy, difficult argument, with an unexpected and interesting result.  I wouldn’t expect anybody to load it entirely, but I do think it’s a good example of how tidying up metaphors can lead to a better understanding of issues.

I will give that a go, you have referenced it before and I expect it might be a good test case for some of our other testiness here <grin>.   I'm all for tidying metaphors where it is useful.

 Given that so many potentially absent people are interested, I would recommend organizing the conversation around a list.  If you haven’t done this by the time I get back in October, I could promise to organize a “seminar” of the “city university of santa Fe” on “scientific metaphors: their uses; their perils”.  We would meet regularly for a couple of hours.  There would be readings.   <==nst]

I think that doing so in October might still be very interesting/useful.   The point, of course, is to move it offline to a more committed and embodied and less asynchronous setting to see how it unfolds differently.

 I'm feeling the same juice as some our impromptu meetups BEFORE FriAM became a formal deal!   We could sure use Mike Agar about now![NST==>Of course Steve and Frank. They might or might not, be interested. As you know, one man’s passion is another man’s bullshit.    Jon Zingale, for sure.  Jenny’s partner would contribute a lot from his understanding of Peirce’s abduction, which is closely but ambiguously related to metaphor making. Jim Gattiker is a great seminar participant … mind like a steel trap … but don’t know whether this would interest him.  Sean Mood is another great seminar participant.   <==nst]

Great suggestions, we'll see if any of them bite!

Metaphorically (and aphorismically) yours,
 - Steve

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