Re: [ SPAM ] Re: metaphor and talking across skill levels

Posted by Eric Charles-2 on Mar 10, 2015; 2:41pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/metaphor-and-talking-across-skill-levels-tp7586111p7586118.html

Steve said

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Science *does* pride itself in being "plain spoken" and I think that is for a good reason.   But that is not the same that saying that there is no place for metaphor in scientific discourse....
I believe that usual use of metaphor in scientific discourse is most effective for it's explanatory or persuasive power.  It helps us explain something we (the Scientist) already understands well to a layperson with limited background to draw on for understanding.  

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I suspect Nick would argue that this creates a false impression that the scientist isn't in essentially the same situation as the lay person relative to metaphor. Yes, it is certainly true that the scientist often invokes metaphors with a lay person which they might not invoke with another scientist, but metaphors are still used with the other scientist. In the latter context, far from being a simplified summary of what we already know, the metaphors are crucial for the generation of hypotheses that guide future research.

I have a possibly naive view that most scientists can do this while still keeping track of what is speculative metaphor vs. description. That said, in psychology, much trouble is caused by people constantly forgetting what is metaphorical. B. F. Skinner's most important critique of hypothetical constructs in psychology went something like this:

Hypothetical constructs seem crucial for advancement in both hard and soft sciences. However, psychology has a somewhat unique problem, in which the next generation of psychologists always seems to forget they are hypothetical. This problem is so consistent, and has such dire consequences, that we would be better off handicapping ourselves by giving them up.  

On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 6:22 PM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

I feel like I'm stating the obvious.... but ya never know.

Symmetry means the application of a measure produces the same result both before and after a transformation.  The word "symmetry" is meaningless without reference to a particular transformation and a particular measure.  If metaphor is a transformation (mapping) from one thing to another, then it will (or won't) exhibit symmetry under any particular transformation.  Symmetry can be softened to similarity (or any number of concepts of equivalence), which (I think) is much more relevant to the traditional use of the word "metaphor".  If you do soften it, though, your error accumulates and we probably lose commutativity, associativity, transitivity, etc.  (And is a well-behaved metaphor really considered a good metaphor?  Or is it merely a tautology?  Embrace Error!)

I think what makes (some) scientists plain speaking is when they talk about what they actually _did_ rather than what they intended to do, what they wanted to do, what random nonsense was bouncing around in their head when they did what they did, etc.  Metaphor seems to play a role in all the latter, but not much in the former.  What you actually do is not metaphorical, despite the mental gymnastics you engaged in to arrive at doing what you did.


On 03/09/2015 12:52 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Historically, I have had terrible trouble with the way some folks employ “symmetry” on this list. Steve G. and I used to get into tangles about this.  I get that crystals have “symmetry”, but beyond that, I am struggling to understand what you mean.  Perhaps you might explicate for those of us who have a hard time not thinking of symmetry as just “being the same on the right as on the left, etc.”

On 03/09/2015 12:22 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:

Speaking of metaphors: recently I thought that metaphors and poems are a bit like the gems of language. As you know gems are rare and valuable and have often a highly symmetrical structure. The rhymes in poems mirror the symmetries of words, while metaphors and analogies mirror the (timeless) symmetries of ideas.

Take for example the metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY. I think this is one of the metaphors in "Metaphors We Live By" from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. It indicates certain similarities and symmetries in the ideas behind the concepts for "life" and "journey". There is a beginning and an end connected by long winding path, etc. So basically metaphors are all about symmetries which let you describe one idea in terms of another.

--
glen ep ropella -- <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">971-255-2847

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