Metaphor and Science

I'm not sure if this is a response or part of some Bohmian Dialogue but I'm prompted again to think of the relationship between ideas around conceptual metaphor and the status of scientific or mathematical ideas. It's pretty obvious that figurative thinking underpins almost all natural language, and this is probably indicative of the ubiquitous nature of figuration within abstract thought generally. It's also pretty obvious that scientific and mathematical expressions make certain truth claims about the world which are largely absent from other kinds of expressions. Does this mean therefore that mathematics and science is not metaphorical? A number of good studies suggest not; that something like metaphor is in operation at the most fundamental level of empirical processes. If there is any validity to these ideas and that all cognition, no matter how scientific, carries the mark of human poetry, then maybe we need a better distinction than one which divides the 'metaphorical' from the 'literal'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZrJp_TRK8

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-As-Metaphor-Roger-Jones/dp/0816619166 (Truly hilarious book cover)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Mathematics_Comes_From (Lakoff & Nunez book on Wikipedia)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• metaphor
• science
• empiricism
• mathematics
• math
• maths
• poetics
• figurative
• language
• linguistics
• cognition
• cognitive
• Roger
• Jones
• George
• Lakoff
• Rafael
• Nunez
• embodiment
• embodied

[hallcyon]

Ever read William Isaacs?

[conferencereport]

Yes, I'm pretty interested in the whole idea of dialogue and related themes, in Bohm, Buber, Polanyi etc.

[almafarag]

"the Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world"