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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoPlainText>Thanks, Lee, for "conceit". If it means what it says it means to anybody but you, I may have to reconsider my decade long use of term, metaphor. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Do I find myself in a rats' nest of category theorists? I had always thought that category was a rather <i>outré</i> field, that mathematicians were a little embarrassed to be interested in. An now suddenly they are as think on the ground as rabbits. Help me understand the teams, here, the … um … categories.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>N<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Nicholas S. Thompson<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Clark University<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>-----Original Message-----<br>From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com] On Behalf Of lrudolph@meganet.net<br>Sent: Friday, January 11, 2019 7:57 PM<br>To: friam@redfish.com<br>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction</p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Nick writes, in relevant part:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>> I am not sure what monads and monism have to do with each other, other <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>> than that they share a linguistic root. Honest. I have trouble <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>> seeing the connection.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>...<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>> I don't have much of a grip on MonADism. As I understand monads, they <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>> are irreduceable "atoms" of existence. They have no innards.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>The "monads" of category theory did not arise under that name, and they absolutely have "innards". Why Saunders MacLane renamed them (as I just learned by checking Wikipedia) that is probably known to many, but not to me; as an instance of the "working mathematician" to whom his book "Categories for the Working Mathematician" was purportedly addressed (J.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Frank Adams has a reference in one of his books to "Categories for the Idle Mathematician"), I have a long experience of observing category theorists' whimsy (e.g., Peter Freyd's "kittygory" for a "small category", Peter Johnstone's "pointless topology", etc., etc.), and I suspect that MacLane was mostly indulging in that rather than riffing on antique philosophy. Certainly the word is short and snappy, and that's sufficient to explain why it caught on.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>To the extent that it can be useful and accurate to describe some bit of mathematics (or a name for that bit of mathematics) by applying to it the term "metaphor" borrowed from rhetoric, it will almost always be MORE useful and MORE accurate (if harder for Nick to deal with) to apply to it another term borrowed from rhetoric, "conceit". Consulting Wikipedia, I find that "modern literary criticism", damn its collective eyes, has redefined that good old word for its own malign ends. What *I* mean by it is (I find by consulting the rather pre-modern Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics) a generalization away from literature of the "metaphysical conceit" (as contrasted with the "Petrarchian conceit"; and named for the Metaphysical Poets, not for William James's coterie): "An intricate [...] metaphor [...] in which the [...] qualities or functions of the described entity are presented by means of a vehicle which shares no physical features with the entity" (of course the "physical features"<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>business is not part of *my* meaning).<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>That is, a conceit is a metaphor that pays serious attention to the multi-level *structures* and *functions* involved on both sides of the trope. A simple metaphor need have no innards; a conceit can be jam-packed with them, but not arbitrarily jam-packed. (The part of the preceding sentence before the semi-colon is itself a pretty simple metaphor. The part after the semi-colon at least tends towards conceit. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>If I started to distinguish different kinds and functions of innards that bodies can have--bones, muscles, vital and less-vital organs, etc.--and likewise to distinguish different substructures that metaphors can have, along with functions that they perform in the service of metaphorical communication, and THEN set up a correspondence between the bodily innards and the metaphorical substructures that "respected" their respective functions...that would be a conceit. Which I don't intend to work on any further at the moment.)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>The category-theorists among us may think I'm describing morphisms etc.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>etc. If they do, then they're committing metaphor (or thinking that I am). If they go further, and try to make sense about rhetorical activities by applying category theory, then they're committing conceit.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Enough for now.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Lee<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>============================================================<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com"><span style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>archives back to 2003: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/"><span style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</span></a> by Dr. Strangelove<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>