A metaphor too is a kind of map; it may be all you have when you are first encountering a new territory shrouded in mist.

The eerie certainty we have of existing as separate creatures in a world full of things that are not us, our ability to create abstract symbolic representations of our mental states and use language to communicate these interior states of mind—all

Since analogies don’t come to us fully formed, we must tinker with and reformulate domain representations in order to establish workable mappings. Such re-representation and restructuring is a creative process that forces us to reconceptualize domains in a search for coherence.73 Playing with analogy and building analogs is a deeply creative, clari

That process gives an identity. In making a distinction, some representation is required, whether simply mental, or more concretely as with gesture, speech, artistic portrayal, or writing. For instance, naming both makes a distinction and creates a representation. Naming, classification, and abstraction are processes of boundary drawing; they are r

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.