The Need For Metaphor: A Shift from Machine to Nature

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

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

Creative thought is often helped by mobilising metaphor and analogy—seeing one thing and thinking of another (a variant of the grafting process described above). Much of social change comes from shifts in metaphors. Do we see society as a war, a body or an organism; a building, a machine or a family?