Rant on metaphors: WAS: The coat hook of the mind

[Nick Thompson]

Sorry,  Steve, and all,

 

I probably deserved

 

"Whereas "the wet edge of science" brings to mind ... ? A cooked noodle?"

 

The metaphor comes from painting a wall.  Too keep the paint smooth, you keep adding paint to the "wet edge".  Otherwise, you get a contour in your painted wall.  How 'bout,

 

Scientific Metaphor is  the cambium of the tree of knowledge.

 

BEGIN RANT>>>>>>>

 

I should be careful here, of course, because being giggly about metaphors would seem to contradict being serious about them. 

 

A good scientific metaphor will  have clear empirical implications which should be easily divided into three kinds. 

 

(1) A scientific metaphor will  imply some things that you already know to be false, and these should be clearly stipulated by the model maker.  For instance, in using the metaphor of natural selection, Darwin stipulated that there was no "breeder" to do the selection. 

 

(2) A scientific metaphor must have some implications that you already know to be true.  For instance, Darwin's natural selection theory of evolution implied and gave an explanation for the facts of evolution ... i.e., that all creatures arose from a single form  and changed over the ages to suit the circumstances under which they lived.   One of the interesting historical facts about the Victorian battles over Darwin's Theory (The Bishop Wilburforce, and all that) was that they were ostensibly fought over evolution (variation and descent of species) when the tough nasty atheistic part of Darwin's theory was actually the mechanism by which evolution came about, natural selection.   Insofar as evolution was concerned, Darwin could have been a deist.  His belief in natural selection prevented that. 

 

(3) It must have some implications that could by future observation be discovered true or false ....heuristic implications.  For instance, Darwin's theory implied a detailed continuity of forms in nature-- no hopeful monsters -- analogous to the historical continuity of the forms of pigeons then being bred in English pigeon coops.   It also implied that no trait should ever be discovered that was disadvantageous to its bearer.  This latter implication led to the group selection wars, which are, essentially, over the question of whether groups evolve and are the bearers of traits which arise from individual traits that are disadvantageous to their bearers.  Most famous, of course, were it's implications concerning island biogeography. 

 

This analysis which ultimately arises from the philosopher of science Mary Brenda Hesse should, if correct, apply to any scientific theory including those that FRIAMMERS love best... quantum theory, etc.  In other words, following Lakoff, ALL scientific theories are based in metaphors and their strengths and weaknesses arise from their implications, as described above. 

 

The bad reputation earned by metaphors in science is due not to their being metaphors but to the self-serving manipulation of their metaphorical implications.   Evolutionary Biologists have been incredibly sloppy in their use of mental terms as metaphors.  The most famous example is, of course, Dawkins' Selfish Gene.  Dawkins was passionate reductionist, believing that a full account of natural selection's effects could be given by describing the differential replication of genes.  But the term "selfish", which made him famous and sold him so many books, is inconsistent with that idea.  Genes do not make selfish choices; they ARE choices.  To make the metaphor work, we have to step up a level above the gene, and this Dawkins was stridently unwilling to do.  So his theory self destructs on the cover of the book in which he published it, because of a contradiction between what its metaphor  implies and what it already knows to be true.  Please see http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/nthompson/1-websitestuff/Texts/1995-1999/On_the_use_of_mental_terms_in_behavioral_ecology_and_sociobi.pdf

 

<<<<<< END OF RANT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

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

http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 5/6/2010 9:31:31 AM

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The coat hook of the mind

Nick said:

I take metaphors VERY seriously;  I think they are the wet edge of science.

But a metaphor is only as good as its heuristic power and i can't see what
this one implies.

To which Russ replied:

Whereas "the wet edge of science" brings to mind ... ? A cooked noodle?

I took it to mean "the whetted edge" for which the metaphorical source is perhaps more obviously apt (an edge deliberately or carefully kept sharp?) than "wet" which for me is interestingly allusory (makes me think of our general reference to brain-stuff as wet-ware?) but not as obviously useful.  Perhaps Nick has something more specific in mind?

I'm curious about how this group comes down on the topic of the utility of metaphor in general.  I find that most people are fairly strongly polarized on the topic and most have not given more than casual thought to it.

For myself, Lakoff and Johnson captured me 30 years ago with "Metaphors we Live By"  but I regularly encounter strong opposition to the idea that metaphor is central to our understanding and communication.

Some of this I attribute to the *very* lame use of overt metaphor in rhetoric by many.   On the other hand, I'm willing to accept the possibility that some people simply don't (think that they?) use analogy much in their understanding of the world around them.  I accept that metaphor is more obviously used in the understanding of, for example, human nature more than perhaps the physical world. 

I believe that Lakoff and Nunez make some very compelling arguements tying metaphor into Mathematics in their book "Where Mathematics Comes From".

Since there are many modelers here, I would promote the idea that the use of metaphor in everyday language is an informal act of building and using models.   Models built using familiar concepts and their inter-relations to understand less-familiar domains.  And of course it would be natural to ask if it is "turtles/models all the way down" and *that* is a truly interesting question.  Where *do* models, analogies, metaphors ground out?  In direct experience?  In atomic elements of intuitive understanding?

In response to Jochen's original quote of  Bergson:  "The brain is the coathook of the mind" is mildly useful to remind us (perhaps) that the stuff of the mind (ideas?) are merely things we use the structure (coat-hook) of the brain to hold them in place and provide some bit of arrangement.   It is not a deep or strong metaphor as I see it, but I find that metaphors originating in other languages, cultures, times often elude me until I've considered or discussed them with others.

In my question of whether and why not everyone accepts metaphors as important to understanding, it might be worth noting that if Bergman's metaphorical association of brain to coat-hook (and mind to coats, hats, scarves?) feels like a mnemonic device more than an explanatory device and in it's brevity  feels like more of a "quip" than an explanation.   In rhetoric, it seems we use many devices besides direct explanation to persuade... in fact, we often evade explanation altogether in favor of creating associations that support the cause of our rhetoric, independent of their validity.   Colorful and superficially apt associations seem to often be the stuff of rhetoric.  I believe we may have some scholars of rhetoric here who could correct me, as I am speaking mostly of the informal rhetoric used in everyday talk, in advertising, in politics.

To credit Jochen's original question, I would also say that Bergson's use of "coat hook" served to "hook" me into this conversation... while I understood "coat hook of the mind" fairly literally in the sense of what coat-hooks are designed for, I could not help but have the image of the "hookness" of a coat hook and the allusions to many other forms of hooks inform my thinking and feeling about the question at hand, causing many "threads" of my thinking to be "snagged" by the idea of "hooks" as well as images of a long shepherd's "hook" reaching out onto the stage of my vaudeville act here to pull me off the stage...

- Steve

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