Metaphor and Approximation

This is a follow up on metaphor and it explores the role of approximation, which is itself a word derived metaphorically from Latin, meaning to come near.

Please see the link:
http://www.anus.com/zine/db/friedrich_nietzsche/friedrich_nietzsche-on_truth_...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• metaphor
• approximation
• paradigmatic
• substitution
• language
• thought
• symbolism
• metonymy
• mathematics

[prhughes0]

3.6 is an approximation or abbreviation of 3.66... (3.7 would be more conventionally rounded) for some practical purpose. If 3.6 is a metaphor for for 3.66..., then one-ounce-oblate-spheroidal-pu­re-white-fine-grained-marble-p­ebble is a metaphor for "60,234,567,890,987,654,321,01­2 atoms (plus or minus as time goes by)", itself only a numbering, ignoring the ongoing drama of states and interactions within and between all those atoms.

If approximation and abbreviation are metaphor, everything is.

[Professoranton]

Yes. The question is over the particular metaphors and the consequences of these

[azrienoch]

Part of the problem is the idea that metaphor is approximation. It's not. When we use Newtonian physics to plan trajectories, we're using approximate language. It's metaphorical too, but not in the same sense. In metaphor, you are bringing a rule to the phoros. "In" and "out" are good examples. When we say "in the conversation," we are bringing the rule of "in" in a literal sense to a non-literal application. It's the same rule, just applied elsewhere, not an approximation.

[Professoranton]

Thanks so much for the insights. I guess I agree quite heartily and wish I would have included that in the video!

[soulfetcher]

Ernest Becker would see this as part of our death denying strategy. For my denial strategy to work must be right. Literality closes the discussion - I will defend it because it chases off my death fear. This I think is why fundamentalists will not - cannot - accept the metaphorical nature of scripture even though they are records of essentially ineffable insights.

This inability to accept the ubiquity if metaphor in abstract conceptualization is a cause of so much strife in our world.

[soulfetcher]

Interesting question Corey - why is literality privileged over metaphor. I suspect it might touch on a topic you have brought up before - our dislike of ambiguity. We are hardwired for answers, and try to pin down metaphorical to literal. Literal is easier as it brings closure- and we can go back to sleep. Metaphor is forever open, and demands reinterpreting - no sleeping :)

[prhughes0]

The question is how wide you set the border(s) between metaphor and non-. If *metaphor* refers to a possibility within language, a figure of speech (as my dictionary says it does), then it is metaphorical to consider language itself to be metaphorical. Beware the infinite regress.

In such cases, approximation is useful.

In fact, an analog system (like most of brain function) is inherently approximate. Non-approximation (digitization) seems to require a lot of brain power to approximate on it..

[jogayot]

and as for godel: he certainly showed that there is no ground/literal level in math. if there is it's arbitrary, and in abstracto can be metafied as far as prime names of our terms last, or rather thrown upon us by ontology of the arithmetic. and if physics starts where math ends, it's steeped in metaphor, too, points? lines? vectors? perhaps if one (after years of practice) cuts through the metaphors someday one may come upon insight of new intution in pure reason.

[jogayot]

oy, about the first part... another sort of arrogance of the 21st century man. you think there was no biology, chemistry, sociology, study of literature before 19th century when physics finally stumbled on electromagentism and thermodynamics? (cont.)

[prhughes0]

Atoms are much less like solar systems than we usually think, but solar systems are easier to imagine, and we try to use that imaginary model to understand atoms. Our minds use images we understand (things going around other things, for example).

i would say, despite the similarity we see, that the world looks quite different on different (subatomic, atomic, molecular, biochemical, organic, bodily, societal, planetary, solar, galactic, and cosmic) levels.

Inquiring minds are not stupid.

best,

p

[prhughes0]

Maturity, referring to branches of inquiry, might be measured by the number and sizes of the sub-branches they have spawned, and the fruits they have borne.

What about Gödel? i'm curious.