Sorry, Steve, and all,
I probably deserved
"Whereas "the wet edge of science" brings to mind ... ? A cooked noodle?"
The metaphor comes from painting a wall. Too keep the paint smooth, you keep
adding paint to the "wet edge". Otherwise, you get a contour in your painted
wall. How 'bout,
Scientific Metaphor is the cambium of the tree of knowledge.
BEGIN RANT>>>>>>>
I should be careful here, of course, because being giggly about metaphors would
seem to contradict being serious about them.
A good scientific metaphor will have clear empirical implications which should
be easily divided into three kinds.
(1) A scientific metaphor will imply some things that you already know to be
false, and these should be clearly stipulated by the model maker. For
instance, in using the metaphor of natural selection, Darwin stipulated that
there was no "breeder" to do the selection.
(2) A scientific metaphor must have some implications that you already know to
be true. For instance, Darwin's natural selection theory of evolution implied
and gave an explanation for the facts of evolution ... i.e., that all creatures
arose from a single form and changed over the ages to suit the circumstances
under which they lived. One of the interesting historical facts about the
Victorian battles over Darwin's Theory (The Bishop Wilburforce, and all that)
was that they were ostensibly fought over evolution (variation and descent of
species) when the tough nasty atheistic part of Darwin's theory was actually
the mechanism by which evolution came about, natural selection. Insofar as
evolution was concerned, Darwin could have been a deist. His belief in natural
selection prevented that.
(3) It must have some implications that could by future observation be
discovered true or false ....heuristic implications. For instance, Darwin's
theory implied a detailed continuity of forms in nature-- no hopeful monsters
-- analogous to the historical continuity of the forms of pigeons then being
bred in English pigeon coops. It also implied that no trait should ever be
discovered that was disadvantageous to its bearer. This latter implication led
to the group selection wars, which are, essentially, over the question of
whether groups evolve and are the bearers of traits which arise from individual
traits that are disadvantageous to their bearers. Most famous, of course, were
it's implications concerning island biogeography.
This analysis which ultimately arises from the philosopher of science Mary
Brenda Hesse should, if correct, apply to any scientific theory including those
that FRIAMMERS love best... quantum theory, etc. In other words, following
Lakoff, ALL scientific theories are based in metaphors and their strengths and
weaknesses arise from their implications, as described above.
The bad reputation earned by metaphors in science is due not to their being
metaphors but to the self-serving manipulation of their metaphorical
implications. Evolutionary Biologists have been incredibly sloppy in their
use of mental terms as metaphors. The most famous example is, of course,
Dawkins' Selfish Gene. Dawkins was passionate reductionist, believing that a
full account of natural selection's effects could be given by describing the
differential replication of genes. But the term "selfish", which made him
famous and sold him so many books, is inconsistent with that idea. Genes do
not make selfish choices; they ARE choices. To make the metaphor work, we have
to step up a level above the gene, and this Dawkins was stridently unwilling to
do. So his theory self destructs on the cover of the book in which he
published it, because of a contradiction between what its metaphor implies and
what it already knows to be true. Please see
http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/nthompson/1-websitestuff/Texts/1995-1999/On_the_use_of_mental_terms_in_behavioral_ecology_and_sociobi.pdf
<<<<<< END OF RANT
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Smith
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 5/6/2010 9:31:31 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The coat hook of the mind
Nick said:
I take metaphors VERY seriously; I think they are the wet edge of science.
But a metaphor is only as good as its heuristic power and i can't see what
this one implies.
To which Russ replied:
Whereas "the wet edge of science" brings to mind ... ? A cooked noodle?
I took it to mean "the whetted edge" for which the metaphorical source is
perhaps more obviously apt (an edge deliberately or carefully kept sharp?) than
"wet" which for me is interestingly allusory (makes me think of our general
reference to brain-stuff as wet-ware?) but not as obviously useful. Perhaps
Nick has something more specific in mind?
I'm curious about how this group comes down on the topic of the utility of
metaphor in general. I find that most people are fairly strongly polarized on
the topic and most have not given more than casual thought to it.
For myself, Lakoff and Johnson captured me 30 years ago with "Metaphors we Live
By" but I regularly encounter strong opposition to the idea that metaphor is
central to our understanding and communication.
Some of this I attribute to the *very* lame use of overt metaphor in rhetoric
by many. On the other hand, I'm willing to accept the possibility that some
people simply don't (think that they?) use analogy much in their understanding
of the world around them. I accept that metaphor is more obviously used in the
understanding of, for example, human nature more than perhaps the physical
world.
I believe that Lakoff and Nunez make some very compelling arguements tying
metaphor into Mathematics in their book "Where Mathematics Comes From".
Since there are many modelers here, I would promote the idea that the use of
metaphor in everyday language is an informal act of building and using models.
Models built using familiar concepts and their inter-relations to understand
less-familiar domains. And of course it would be natural to ask if it is
"turtles/models all the way down" and *that* is a truly interesting question.
Where *do* models, analogies, metaphors ground out? In direct experience? In
atomic elements of intuitive understanding?
In response to Jochen's original quote of Bergson: "The brain is the coathook
of the mind" is mildly useful to remind us (perhaps) that the stuff of the mind
(ideas?) are merely things we use the structure (coat-hook) of the brain to
hold them in place and provide some bit of arrangement. It is not a deep or
strong metaphor as I see it, but I find that metaphors originating in other
languages, cultures, times often elude me until I've considered or discussed
them with others.
In my question of whether and why not everyone accepts metaphors as important
to understanding, it might be worth noting that if Bergman's metaphorical
association of brain to coat-hook (and mind to coats, hats, scarves?) feels
like a mnemonic device more than an explanatory device and in it's brevity
feels like more of a "quip" than an explanation. In rhetoric, it seems we use
many devices besides direct explanation to persuade... in fact, we often evade
explanation altogether in favor of creating associations that support the cause
of our rhetoric, independent of their validity. Colorful and superficially
apt associations seem to often be the stuff of rhetoric. I believe we may have
some scholars of rhetoric here who could correct me, as I am speaking mostly of
the informal rhetoric used in everyday talk, in advertising, in politics.
To credit Jochen's original question, I would also say that Bergson's use of
"coat hook" served to "hook" me into this conversation... while I understood
"coat hook of the mind" fairly literally in the sense of what coat-hooks are
designed for, I could not help but have the image of the "hookness" of a coat
hook and the allusions to many other forms of hooks inform my thinking and
feeling about the question at hand, causing many "threads" of my thinking to be
"snagged" by the idea of "hooks" as well as images of a long shepherd's "hook"
reaching out onto the stage of my vaudeville act here to pull me off the
stage...
- Steve
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