The Need For Metaphor: A Shift from Machine to Nature

The heart of metaphor is inference. Conceptual metaphor allows inferences in sensory-motor domains (e.g., domains of space and objects) to be used to draw inferences about other domains (e.g., domains of subjective judgment, with concepts like intimacy, emotions, justice, and so on). Because we reason in terms of metaphor, the metaphors we use det

According to Will Storr in The Science of Storytelling: “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 like love, joy, society, and economy. It’s simply not possible to comprehend these idea

itself. Images used as metaphors help to hold complex and disparate elements. Conflict and chaos are clarified, simplified, and unified with fitting metaphors, and thus, we should expect to find a distillation of useful metaphors at the core of the practice of the art of adaptive leadership.

We have to be careful of the metaphors we use to make meaning, because metaphors are the language of spirit, and that’s how we operate in our fields of existence either to increase or decrease connectedness within creation.