The Power of Metaphor
“Metaphor most brings about learning; for when he calls old age “stubble” he creates understanding and knowledge…” – Aristotle, Rhetoric.
Appreciation for the power of metaphor is ancient. Yet today tools newly available to cognitive scientists are revealing metaphors to be the underlying frame on which thought is formed. The Situationist reports on recent research in the field and concludes ”[m]etaphors aren’t just how we talk and write, they’re how we think”. And Situationist contributor John Bargh, professor at Yale, is quoted as saying “The abstract way we think is grounded in the concrete, bodily world much more than we thought.” Aristotle (and George Berkeley) must be smiling somewhere.
