Ray wrote:
> Mike Spencer might say I'm mixing metaphors but I don't think so.
> [snip]
> Think of the emotional energy behind an automobile accident that has
> wiped out all but one lane of a six lane highway.
Maybe I can clear this up and get myself off the hook here. Or not.
In the 17th c. Newton and Leibniz (inter alia) were debating over vis
viva, the something-or-other peculiar to moving objects. Whatever it
was, it seemed to be measurable and conserved. Fast forward a century
or more and it seems that it *wasn't* conserved: some gets lost
somehow. But wait! Heat appears where vis viva vanishes.
Eventually, we settle down on the the concept of energy. Kinetic
energy, heat, chemical bond energy, electromagnetic radiation,
gravitational potential energy.
Before the 17th c., motion, emotion, life, growth, thought, gravity,
light, vision and what have you were all difficult problems as likely
to be explained by astrology or the direct intervention of God as by
physical priciple. Metaphor and analogy might be taken to be actual
explanations of a physical effect.
Now my mother used to say things like, "I woke up this morning full of
energy." Ray talks of emotional energy. Keith says, "...without
additional energy, any system gradually dissipates energy merely by
its activity," -- *Any* system, by inference even symbolic or abstract
ones. The McGuffin generates the driving energy for the drama. Taking
the concept that has emerged, 350 years onward from the beginnings of
the Royal Society, as canonical, these are metaphorical usages. My
mother never understood that.
Now I personally avoid using the word "energy" to decsribe how I feel
or the emotional effects of music or relationships in a data
structure. But I don't have trouble with metaphorical usages. What I
have trouble with is stirring the metaphors and and the physics
together and then looking for clarity in the result. Such confusion
-- in its etymological sense of melting together -- may lead to novel
thoughts or insights but is more ikely to lead to confusion in the
quotidian sense.
Metaphor has impact. Spider Robinson once said that an essential skill
or the author is to be able to elicit from the reader a "Hey! I know
about that!" response. Metaphor is great for that. It's so good and
so deeply a part of natural language that the PoMos can get away (at
least when people are paying them a richly deserved Very Superficial
Attention) with saying, "Everything is metaphor". And they're wrong.
Well, this is wandering way off topic. I've been meaning to read
Lakoff & Johnson for years. But I don't think they say that
everything is metaphor.
> ...John Warfield after we had hit the wall during...
So how do we apply JW's systems approach to re-uniting the workplace,
the human needs that the workplace supplies and the now-uncoupled
corporatist/financial/government system that no longer serves its
purpose?
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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