[FRIAM] Model, Metaphor, Analogy
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Sat Jun 10 16:29:03 EDT 2017
And invoking the term "twist", he added a bit of Möbius Strip
connotation! It did feel ingenious to me as well.
As an odd aside, I'm designing a "feathered serpent" bas-relief design
for the rocket mass heater I built last year in my sunroom... I hadn't
considered adding the Ourobousian nature to it! The following is not my
design, just one of many illustrative examples of the Tewa version:
Does a feathered serpent need to be more like a tapeworm to go
Ourobourosianally Möbius?
- Sieve
On 6/10/17 1:35 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> I had never heard the word ouroboros
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros> before Dave used it. Thanks
> for the term. But even though I had never heard the term, the
> ouroboros was the image that came to mind when I first learned recursion!
>
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2017 at 12:22 PM Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>
> Dave -
>
> Thanks for weighing in here, my own studies have not been so
> formal nor probably as deep. I have to admit to not knowing that
> cognitive anthropology was a subject, just as Nick introduced me
> to evolutionary psychology as it's own field!
>
> I appreciate your introduction of /epiphor/, /paraphor/ and /dead
> metaphor/. I began a discursion here (which I fortunately
> deleted) which lead me to read some MacCormac and more to the
> point Philip Wheelwright on the modern, technical usage of
> /epiphor/ and /diaphor/, from the Greek/Aristotelian /epiphoria/
> and /diaphoria. /I particularly find your coining of /paraphor/,
> as I think this is as common in our modern discourse/thinking as
> "confirmation bias".
>
> I also like your point that the "Scientific Method" is more
> metaphor than reality, or more to the point, a narrative device to
> show how a discovery "might have been made" when more often than
> not, it was backed into while bumping around looking for something
> entirely different, and often involving a "flash of insight"
> before then being laboriously wrung out and demonstrated using the
> somewhat more "engineering" oriented methods of the "Scientific
> Method" to move from motivated hypothesis to strongly validated
> theory.
>
> I don't know if you regularly attend WedTech, but this depth/topic
> of discussion might motivate me to make the long trek into town...
>
> - Steve
>
> On 6/10/17 9:36 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>> long long ago, my master's thesis in computer science and my phd
>> dissertation in cognitive anthropology dealt extensively with the
>> issue of metaphor and model, specifically in the area of
>> artificial intelligence and cognitive models of "mind." the very
>> first academic papers I published dealt with this issue (They
>> were in AI MAgazine, the 'journal of record' in the field at the
>> time.
>>
>> My own musings were deeply informed by the work of Earl R.
>> MacCormac: /A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor/ and /Metaphor and
>> Myth in Science and Religion./
>>
>> MacCormac argues that metaphor 'evolves' from "epiphor" the first
>> suggestion that something is like something else to either "dead
>> metaphor" or "lexical term" depending on the extent to which
>> referents suggested by the first 'something' are confirmed to
>> correlate to similar referents in the second "something." E.G. an
>> atom is like a solar system suggests that a nucleus is like the
>> sun and electrons are like planets plus orbits are at specific
>> intervals and electrons can be moved from one orbit to another by
>> adding energy (acceleration) just like any other satellite. As
>> referents like this were confirmed the epiphor became a
>> productive metaphor and a model, i.e. the Bohr model. Eventually,
>> our increasing knowledge of atoms and particle/waves made it
>> clear that the model/metaphor was 'wrong' in nearly every respect
>> and the metaphor died. Its use in beginning chemistry suggests
>> that it is still a useful tool for metaphorical thinking;
>> modified to "what might you infer/reason, if you looked at an
>> atom _as if_ it were a tiny solar system."
>>
>> In the case of AI, the joint epiphors — the computer is like a
>> mind, the mind is like a computer — should have rapidly become
>> dead metaphors. Instead they became models "physical symbol
>> system" and most in the community insisted that they were lexical
>> terms (notably Pylyshyn, Newell, and Simon). To explain this, I
>> added the idea of a "paraphor" to MacCormac's evolutionary
>> sequence — a metaphor so ingrained in a paradigm that those
>> thinking with that paradigm cannot perceive the obvious failures
>> of the metaphor.
>>
>> MacCormac's second book argues for the pervasiveness of the use
>> and misuse of metaphor and its relationship to models
>> (mathematical and iillustrative) in both science and religion.
>> The "Scientific Method," the process of doing science, is itself
>> a metaphor (at best) that should have become a dead metaphor as
>> there is abundant evidence that 'science' is not done 'that way'
>> but only after the fact as if it had been done that way. In an
>> Ouroborosian twist, even MacCormac;s theory of metaphor is itself
>> a metaphor.
>>
>> If this thread attracts interest, I think the work of MacCormac
>> would provide a rich mine of potential ideas and a framework for
>> the discussion. Unfortunately, it mostly seems to be behind pay
>> walls — the books and JSTOR or its ilk.
>>
>> dave west
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 9, 2017, at 03:11 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>> I meant to spawn a fresh proto-thread here, sorry.
>>>
>>>> Given that we have been splitting hairs on terminology, I
>>>> wanted to at least OPEN the topic that has been grazed over and
>>>> over, and that is the distinction between Model, Metaphor, and
>>>> Analogy.
>>>>
>>>> I specifically mean
>>>>
>>>> 1. Mathematical Model
>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_model>
>>>> 2. Conceptual Metaphor
>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor>
>>>> 3. Formal Analogy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy>
>>>>
>>>> I don't know if this narrows it down enough to discuss but I
>>>> think these three terms have been bandied about loosely and
>>>> widely enough lately to deserve a little more explication?
>>>>
>>>> I could rattle on for pages about my own
>>>> usage/opinions/distinctions but trust that would just pollute a
>>>> thread before it had a chance to start, if start it can.
>>>>
>>>> A brief Google Search gave me THIS reference which looks
>>>> promising, but as usual, I'm not willing to go past a paywall
>>>> or beg a colleague/institution for access (I know LANL's
>>>> reference library will probably get this for me if I go in there!).
>>>>
>>>> http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631221081_chunk_g97806312210818
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>>> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> to unsubscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20170610/31bf03c2/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: hornedserpent3.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 13809 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20170610/31bf03c2/attachment.jpg>
More information about the Friam
mailing list