How changing the metaphors we use can change the way we think | Aeon Essays

We automatically think in metaphors. We talk of ideas as illuminating and bright, fizzing and incisive, or flat and dull. We see our world in spatial terms—rising and falling, moving forward or back. We speak metaphorically, too—we ‘ride’ bicycles, though not cars; we ‘harness’ ideas to a new purpose; we let our imaginations ‘take flight’. Biologic

Neuroscientists are building a powerful case that metaphor is far more important to human cognition than has ever been imagined. Many argue it’s the fundamental way that brains understand abstract concepts, such as love, joy, society and economy. It’s simply not possible to comprehend these ideas in any useful sense, then, without attaching them to

New metaphors are capable of creating new understandings and, therefore, new realities. This should be obvious in the case of poetic metaphor, where language is the medium through which new conceptual metaphors are created.