[FRIAM] tools, trollers, and language

[┣glen┫]

Thanks for asking.

Well, I still don't know what y'all mean when you say "metaphor" because the meaning seems to vary.  E.g. you say "a metaphor like 'layer'", indicating that 'layer' is the metaphor.  Yet you also say things like "onion metaphor", indicating that onions are the metaphor.  But, as I tried to say earlier, I don't regard onions as a metaphor.  They are simply a thing we can analyze using _either_ the concept of levels (strict ordering) or the concept of layers (more flexible organization).  So, the concept of metaphors isn't useful to me, there.

However, I do think a metaphor consists of 2 analogs (real things like rocks or onions) and the analogy between them.  So, I can see "metaphor" meaning a) just 2 analogs, b) just the relation/analogy, without the analogs, or with implicit/schematic analogs, or c) all 3: 2 analogs plus their relation(s).  So, if that's what you're asking for, I do like "exhibiting particulate deposition" as the relationship/analogy.  For the 2 analogs, we can choose, as I said: 1) coral deposition and, say, diffusion limited aggregation.

So, the metaphor would be DLA ⇔ coral.  And that analogy should help identify why "layer" is a more general analysis concept than "levels".


On 06/12/2017 08:23 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Explicating a metaphor like "layer" is  for me a serious and important art.  It starts, I think, by the metaphor maker identifying his absolute favorite example of a layer situation.  The situation that unequivocably instantiates "layers".  The next step will be to identify in the plainest way possible the crucial features of this example ... what makes it such a good example of "layers".  Then, and only then does it make sense to apply the metaphor to the situation we are trying to elucidate with it.  
> 
> It seems to me that the onion metaphor is not perhaps what everybody has in mind, because the layers of an onion are more or less independent of one another.   But I shouldn’t try to speak for you. 


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␦glen?