we cut the world into pieces with words, distinctions, categories. analogy and metaphor sews things back together, reminds us of the inherent sameness of everything
we cut the world into pieces with words, distinctions, categories. analogy and metaphor sews things back together, reminds us of the inherent sameness of everything
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? Do we think in terms of journeys, or defence aga
... See moreGeoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible
The machines we need for making sense of this omnipresent, efflorescent and entangled world – where making sense is analogous, as Wittgenstein said of language, to joining in play – should not be more remote, more abstract, but more like the world.
James Bridle • Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence
‘Metaphor’ is simply the catch-all term for thinking about one thing in terms of another.
Alison Jones • Exploratory Writing: Everyday magic for life and work
The reason we’re able to relate ideas within different trains of thought is due, in part, to atomization, the practice of reducing ideas to their essential points.
Bob Doto • A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer
Metaphoric thinking is fundamental to our understanding of the world, because it is the only way in which understanding can reach outside the system of signs to life itself. It is what links language to life.