[FRIAM] Model, Metaphor, Analogy

Sat Jun 10 21:44:34 EDT 2017

Steve, 

Notice that you use a metaphor, here to account for creative activity in
science.

, it was backed into while bumping around looking for something entirely
different

I can imagine you and I sitting down and describing a particular case in
which we found something while looking for something else and applying that
metaphor to a case of scientific discovery . to good effect. 

The thing about my man Peirce is that he was interested in describing
science as it was actually practiced by people who did it well.  He would
say that that sort of serendipity happens only to prepared minds, and he
gave those flashes of insight a name, "abduction."  It's quite similar in
many ways to metaphor making.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2017 3:22 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Model, Metaphor, Analogy

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_g97
806312210818

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