Morphology, Metaphor and Category
Wednesday, June 18, 6-8 PM
Santa Fe Complex 632 Agua Fria
Ralph Chapman, Tiha von Ghyczy, Thomas P. Caudell, Steve Smith
Be there or be presumed to be isomorphic to a
square
The next Wednesday Blender will be a blend of Morphology, Metaphor and
Category. Ralph Chapman, Tiha von Ghyczy, Thomas P. Caudell, and Steve
Smith will discuss their own research interests and their applications
of Morphology, Metaphor and Category Theory in understanding complex
problem spaces.
In 1966, Fritz Zwicky proposed a generalized form of morphological
research now known as General Morphological Analysis:
"Attention has been called to the fact that the term
morphology has
long been used in many fields of science to designate research on
structural interrelations - for instance in anatomy, geology, botany
and biology. ... I have proposed to generalize and systematize the
concept of morphological research and include not only the study of the
shapes of geometrical, geological, biological, and generally material
structures, but also to study the more abstract structural
interrelations among phenomena, concepts, and ideas, whatever their
character might be." (Zwicky, 1966, p. 34)
In
'The Fruitful Flaws of Strategy Metaphors,' Tiha von
Ghyczy examines the power of both cognitive and rhetorical metaphors.
Such metaphors communicate and clarify complex ideas
using seemingly
disparate sources—and in so doing, spur creativity. In this piece, the
author contends that cognitive metaphors can be a particularly
effective means for generating innovative business strategies. Tiha von
Ghyczy believes that by focusing on something unfamiliar (that is, the
subject of the metaphor), a metaphor can spark creative thinking about
something familiar (the object of the metaphor).
In the 1980 '
Metaphors we Live by', George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson introduced conceptual metaphor as referring to the
understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain in terms of another,
and being pervasive in everyday life and thinking.
Steve Smith, founder of Los Alamos Visual Analytics (LAVA) and former
Visualization Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has nearly
30 years experience in helping scientists understand their data, models
and theories through immersive perceptualization. Steve will guide the
discussion of how the application of cognitive or conceptual metaphors
and the structure-function duality can be used to aid in the
exploration, discovery and analysis of complex problem spaces.
Ralph Chapman, a paleantologist by training and member of LAVA is the
former director of the National Museum of Natural History's Applied
Morphometrics Laboratory and the former director of the Idaho
Virtualization Laboratory and Instructor at the first NSF-funded
workshop on evolutionary morphometrics, will speak on morphology,
morphometrics and morphometrics.
Tiha von Ghyczy, a fellow at the Strategy Institute at the Boston
Consulting Group will describe the Strategy Institute's Strategy
Gallery, a collection of over 250 metaphors they have found useful for
gaining insight into complex business strategies. Tiha studied
philosophy and mathematics at the University of Amsterdam and earned
his M.B.A. from IMEDE (now IMD), in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Dr. Tom Caudell, the director of the High Performance Computing Center
at the University of New Mexico is an astrophysicist by training and a
pioneer in the development of augmented and virtual reality with
specific application to understanding complex information spaces and
processes. Dr. Caudell will discuss his work in the application of
Category Theory to the understanding of complex systems ranging from
decision and risk support systems to neural architectures.
The speakers will limit their formal presentations to 15 minutes each,
leaving time for contributions from the audience and lots of discussion.
