Wow, Steve. Wow! Hes sompin! n
Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2017 4:29 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Model, Metaphor, Analogy And invoking the term "twist", he added a bit of Möbius Strip connotation! It did feel ingenious to me as well. As an odd aside, I'm designing a "feathered serpent" bas-relief design for the rocket mass heater I built last year in my sunroom... I hadn't considered adding the Ourobousian nature to it! The following is not my design, just one of many illustrative examples of the Tewa version: Does a feathered serpent need to be more like a tapeworm to go Ourobourosianally Möbius? - Sieve On 6/10/17 1:35 PM, Russ Abbott wrote: I had never heard the word ouroboros <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros> before Dave used it. Thanks for the term. But even though I had never heard the term, the ouroboros was the image that came to mind when I first learned recursion! On Sat, Jun 10, 2017 at 12:22 PM Steven A Smith <sasm...@swcp.com <mailto:sasm...@swcp.com> > wrote: Dave - Thanks for weighing in here, my own studies have not been so formal nor probably as deep. I have to admit to not knowing that cognitive anthropology was a subject, just as Nick introduced me to evolutionary psychology as it's own field! I appreciate your introduction of epiphor, paraphor and dead metaphor. I began a discursion here (which I fortunately deleted) which lead me to read some MacCormac and more to the point Philip Wheelwright on the modern, technical usage of epiphor and diaphor, from the Greek/Aristotelian epiphoria and diaphoria. I particularly find your coining of paraphor, as I think this is as common in our modern discourse/thinking as "confirmation bias". I also like your point that the "Scientific Method" is more metaphor than reality, or more to the point, a narrative device to show how a discovery "might have been made" when more often than not, it was backed into while bumping around looking for something entirely different, and often involving a "flash of insight" before then being laboriously wrung out and demonstrated using the somewhat more "engineering" oriented methods of the "Scientific Method" to move from motivated hypothesis to strongly validated theory. I don't know if you regularly attend WedTech, but this depth/topic of discussion might motivate me to make the long trek into town... - Steve On 6/10/17 9:36 AM, Prof David West wrote: long long ago, my master's thesis in computer science and my phd dissertation in cognitive anthropology dealt extensively with the issue of metaphor and model, specifically in the area of artificial intelligence and cognitive models of "mind." the very first academic papers I published dealt with this issue (They were in AI MAgazine, the 'journal of record' in the field at the time. My own musings were deeply informed by the work of Earl R. MacCormac: A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and Metaphor and Myth in Science and Religion. MacCormac argues that metaphor 'evolves' from "epiphor" the first suggestion that something is like something else to either "dead metaphor" or "lexical term" depending on the extent to which referents suggested by the first 'something' are confirmed to correlate to similar referents in the second "something." E.G. an atom is like a solar system suggests that a nucleus is like the sun and electrons are like planets plus orbits are at specific intervals and electrons can be moved from one orbit to another by adding energy (acceleration) just like any other satellite. As referents like this were confirmed the epiphor became a productive metaphor and a model, i.e. the Bohr model. Eventually, our increasing knowledge of atoms and particle/waves made it clear that the model/metaphor was 'wrong' in nearly every respect and the metaphor died. Its use in beginning chemistry suggests that it is still a useful tool for metaphorical thinking; modified to "what might you infer/reason, if you looked at an atom as if it were a tiny solar system." In the case of AI, the joint epiphors the computer is like a mind, the mind is like a computer should have rapidly become dead metaphors. Instead they became models "physical symbol system" and most in the community insisted that they were lexical terms (notably Pylyshyn, Newell, and Simon). To explain this, I added the idea of a "paraphor" to MacCormac's evolutionary sequence a metaphor so ingrained in a paradigm that those thinking with that paradigm cannot perceive the obvious failures of the metaphor. MacCormac's second book argues for the pervasiveness of the use and misuse of metaphor and its relationship to models (mathematical and iillustrative) in both science and religion. The "Scientific Method," the process of doing science, is itself a metaphor (at best) that should have become a dead metaphor as there is abundant evidence that 'science' is not done 'that way' but only after the fact as if it had been done that way. In an Ouroborosian twist, even MacCormac;s theory of metaphor is itself a metaphor. If this thread attracts interest, I think the work of MacCormac would provide a rich mine of potential ideas and a framework for the discussion. Unfortunately, it mostly seems to be behind pay walls the books and JSTOR or its ilk. dave west On Fri, Jun 9, 2017, at 03:11 PM, Steven A Smith wrote: I meant to spawn a fresh proto-thread here, sorry. Given that we have been splitting hairs on terminology, I wanted to at least OPEN the topic that has been grazed over and over, and that is the distinction between Model, Metaphor, and Analogy. I specifically mean 1. Mathematical Model <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_model> 2. Conceptual Metaphor <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor> 3. Formal Analogy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy> I don't know if this narrows it down enough to discuss but I think these three terms have been bandied about loosely and widely enough lately to deserve a little more explication? I could rattle on for pages about my own usage/opinions/distinctions but trust that would just pollute a thread before it had a chance to start, if start it can. A brief Google Search gave me THIS reference which looks promising, but as usual, I'm not willing to go past a paywall or beg a colleague/institution for access (I know LANL's reference library will probably get this for me if I go in there!). http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631221081_chunk_g97 806312210818 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
