??? left a long comment on whether it might be possible to discuss evolutionary processes without resort to metaphor. I decided to inflict my response on the front page of 3B rather than leave it in comments. And yeah, it’s pretty much as wonky as it sounds.
I wonder if biology, or at least some sub-discipline within biology, could ever get to the point where metaphor is no longer used, even when explaining the science to someone unfamiliar with the field?Metaphor has been thrown out in some pursuits, with out apology. I think mathematics is the prime example, closely followed by modern physics.
Mathematics is sort of weird in this sense. From one direction, it could be argued that mathematics is precisely the attempt to say the kinds of things that can be said without metaphor, but on the other hand, it could also be argued that mathematics is nothing but metaphor, a pile of abstractions that stands in for possible concrete relations.
The difference probably depends on how Platonically real one takes the objects of mathematics to be.
At this point, we can probably say that in the brain mathematics is necessarily metaphorical since that’s how the brain works, i.e. whatever mathematics itself “is”, what mathematicians work with is metaphor.
I suppose one could try to reconcile some of this by saying that mathematics is an attempt to strip metaphor of what usually makes metaphor imprecise and unreliable — especially those aspects arising from the nature of human language. Sort of a metaphor where all the moving parts have been accounted for.
I’m a bit puzzled as to why you say that the more usual kind of metaphor is not used to describe mathematics and fundamental physics “even when explaining the science to someone unfamiliar with the field”. As far as I’m aware, a significant part of the effort of those who write non-technical treatments of such subjects is to devise metaphors that are robust enough to convey many of the complications of the science without reference to the full, formal systematization use by the scientists themselves.
In modern quantum physics the origin of electromagnetic radiation are emission events, when an electron changes from a high energy state to a lower energy state (although there are also such changes that do not emit radiation). There is an equation that defines the probability of an emission event, in a defined field over a defined amount of time. But that is it, no metaphor, nothing intuitive there – just a probability equation.
It’s not so much that there’s no metaphor there, it’s more that physicists have long been stumped over what an accurate metaphor might be. Quantum mechanics just doesn’t work like we expect macroscopic objects to work, and many physicists have long held that eschewing metaphor is the only way to understand what we can understand about QM. Nevertheless, the metaphors are still there. The Schrödinger equation involves a “wave function”. However, this function describes the dynamics of a probability distribution. A response to this that I recall reading somewhere is, “What’s waving?”
Jump to the future–> What is the driving force of evolution? If you want to know what ‘drives’ evolution, you are screwed. It just happens, and here is the probability equation – end of story, nothing more to think about.
The thing is, evolution is pretty much a classical process. In principle, all the forces can be sorted out. It’s just that there are vast numbers of the them and individually they are usually very weak. With QM there’s a point beyond where even in principle we appear to be stuck with probability.
However, the metaphors of evolutionary biology can have a predictive force, even without an exact quantitative formula. While the adaptationist paradigm seems to have had its virtues over-hyped, I don’t think anyone has ever denied that it has provided useful heuristics for some of the characteristics organisms might be expected to have under specified conditions.
In general, I don’t think metaphor per se is the problem. As I understand it, metaphor is the main engine of how the human mind thinks and provides both the strengths and flaws of human reasoning. So we’re “stuck” with metaphor, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s only bad if one expects the human mind to conform to some kind of ideal of pure reason (which has never shown much sign of happening…).
I don’t think I’m really saying much more than was in the Lewontin quote from my earlier post. Perhaps, it could be summarized: it’s not necessary (or perhaps even possible) to avoid metaphor, but rather the struggle is to be vigilant about the uses to which metaphor is put.
(Again, an epilogue as introduction: I’ve had a bottle of wine, I have no idea as to what I am typing. Just some random thoughts to follow – I think (yikes!)).
I don’t know what ‘wonky’ is? That said, it is certainly a fun word.
A thought: In my opinion the most fun word in English is ‘banana’. Maybe it is the Chimpanzee in me, but by God I LOVE ‘banana’! (I consider myself to be more-or-less to be 95% chimp). For Psycheout – “God bless the Wolof Peoples”.
On the question of Platonicity of mathematics I am clearly…(o.k. see below, after some distractions…)
Our brains have evolved to do many-a-thing for our well being. One major task that seems to have been selected for is to re-create reality for us. Reality is ‘out there somewhere’ – we only have access to it through our various sensation receptors. The accuracy of our re-created realities are open for debate.
I am of the opinion that we, as Humans, are plagued with what I generally call imagination. Other creatures can sense the coming earthquake, and we cannot. We ascribe a ‘sixth’ sense to animals – I think this is silly. Rather than a sixth sense for all other critters, I would suggest that we are so continuously lost in our imaginations that our brains are not paying careful enough attention to reality – i.e. our environments. Other creatures don’t have a sixth sense, rather we just aren’t paying very careful attention – and thus impair the acuity of our five senses.
Ahh – metaphor and metonymy.
When Odysseus set sail on the Calypso he journeyed a long way, for a long time. During his odyssey he had to make many repairs to his ship. By the the time he returned home he had, in fact, replaced every single piece of wood. The question is: Is the ship still the Calypso?
Metaphorically we answer ‘no’, because the ship has physically been replaced. Metonymically we answer ‘yes’ because the ship has functioned as his ship, the Calypso.
Mathematics clearly can be both metaphorical and metanymical. But, we seem (here on the blog) to be searching for something beyond these two divisions. What are we searching for? Hard to describe…
The process of evolution has pushed our minds to accept only one or the other answer to our conundrum about the Calypso. However, perhaps the future shall demand that our minds accept both the metaphorical and metanymical answer, without contradiction.
There are brilliant people currently among us that ALREADY have the ability to do this!
Here is an example:
Let us talk about Timbaland. Although many of his raps focus on
producing music, I think some of his lyrics give us a glimpse as to where
within Timbaland his musical brilliance germinates. Creative talent often
comes from the ability to use one of our many natural faculties in a
non-intuitive way and apply it to a different realm of thought.
For example, take the following lyric from ‘Cop That Sh*t’, “So, up jumps
da’ boogie, let the record work. (Uh huh)” This line is focused on the
kinetic, not the auditory. The sounds are kinetic – they are jumping, and
the description of the sounds – da’ boogie – are kinetic. And then he
implores the vinyl record itself to toil and work – sweating and burning
energy to jump and boogie.
I wonder if he has the ability to visually and kinetically compose and
produce his music? His lyrics suggest he thinks of music in some abstract
visual way. In addition, if you watch him in the videos, I think his
movements are more akin to what I imagine ‘kinetic composition’ to be,
rather than choreographed dancing. With these two talents combined, I think
Timbaland is just brilliant!
O.k., I’m drunk, time for bed.
As I sign off – i recognize my post does not do justice to Plover’s post. I must rectify this in the future.
When you said “I’ve had a bottle of wine” was that a metaphor or a metonymy?
Good lord! Wow, note to self: never blog drunk! What a train wreck.
mt: It was both møøsaphor and møøsonymy, without contradiction.
So, you’re anti-metaphor as well?
So, you’re anti-metaphor as well?
(Gad, I’m not that incomprehensible, am I?)
My point was more that metaphors are like oxygen: liking them or not is kind of moot since the brain (in a jar or otherwise) is going to use them anyway. Also, the post only addresses topics where metaphor is traditionally considered to be a hindrance (and more or less opposes that view).
You’re not that incomprehensible, I was just giving you some grief.
I was also thinking you had evolved past the need for metaphors.
This is for you, plover.
Perhaps the title should have been “Are mosquito cookies more real than chundermuffins?”
I was just giving you some grief
Well that much was obvious…
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to make sure I’m making sense though.
What a train wreck.
But you might be on to something. Odysseus would have totally been home years earlier if he’d only had “the ability to visually and kinetically compose and produce his
music” ship’s course. The dude was just ignoring the Calypso beat.I’m having difficulty understanding all this. Perhaps you could describe it by using something else as an example.
“The dude was just ignoring the Calypso beat.”
That’s the problem with most people.
Well, I’m drunk again, so why not respond a bit?
In a set of lectures in 1905 Max Planck spent the first three sessions defining what the word temperature means. This is because the word is used metaphorically in our everyday language in many different ways, but in physics the word is really just a symbol – a symbol for an absolute set of rules. The word in physics has no metaphorical, everyday value, it only represents a shorthand for a whole set of rules, expressed as mathematical equations.
I think for mathematicians this is the same with numbers. We use numbers everyday as metaphor – three apples, three red cars, etc. But I think mathematicians think of the number 3 as a symbol, a symbol that is constrained in what is, and what it can be, by a strict set of rules. 3 is the number that follows 2 and precedes 4 in the whole number set in a decimal numbering system, or 3 is a prime number, etc., etc. The number 3 is a symbol that represents something in number theory, geometry, calculus, etc.
So, I don’t agree that 3 is metaphorical for a practitioner of maths, rather it is a symbol constrained and defined by a great many rules.
I think this same thinking applies to physics. I think the equations of quantum physics have no metaphorical meaning – they are simply what they are and are constrained in what they are and what they can be by a great many rules. They have no metaphorical meaning. They are (complex) symbols, which represent a long list of a set of rules.
With regard to the determanistic properties of Nature, I’m not sure I agree. There is a discipline in electrical engineering, which I do not know the name of, that asks the question: If you are given an electrical circuit of unknown configuration, how many input/output measurements, and of what accuracy, would one have to make to absolutely determine what the components, and design of the unknown circuit is? The answer for even very simple circuits is astronomical!
I think this phenomenon applies the biology, and the lack of accuracy in measurement coupled with the unknown circuitry, coupled with the ‘sloppiness’ of biochemical processes (okthx entrpy!) ends up making biology undetermanistic.
I’m predicting that because of this we will be left to conclude in the future that evolution happens, and here is the equation that gives the probability of it happening. This equation won’t be metaphorical, but strictly defined and constrained by a whole set of rules and definitions.
Evolution happens, there is no why. There is a balance between enthalpy and entropy. In a closed system if there is enough enthalpy in it, this can negate the insanity and disorganization of entropy*. The sun gives us a lot of thermoradiation! The Zoroastrians worship the Sun – and why not? This radiation, by chance, has combated entropy and won out to create what we call life!
*The good news about entropy (even though it is insane) is that there is a limit at the rate at which it can change, and this rate is directly related to the ‘number of was of being’ of a given system. S = k ln(w) As the ‘ways of being’, which is ‘w’, increases the rate of change of entropy, ‘S’, goes down. There are a great many ways life can be, so the rate of change will be relatively slow.
Alright, I’ll stop rambling there.
I should address some of the other comments you made…
It is true that authors communicating with all of us about subjects we are not close to use metaphor to help us out. But I would suggest all of these stories shall be off the mark – and in fact can be harmful. If the casual reader wants to dig deeper for meaning the metaphors fail, and can be very misleading.
Some clarifications…
The balance between entropy and enthalpy does not provide us with a ‘why’ for life. It only gives us a basis for expectation of life developing, a non-zero probability, but no deterministic guarantee.
Finally, why might I feel so positive about the slow rate of change of entropy? When there are only a ‘few ways of being’ the rate of change of entropy can fluctuate dramatically. This is a dangerous regime for life to be in, because life has a great deal of enthalpic dependent organization. If entropy fluctuated too much too quickly, then it is probable that the enthalpy would not always compensate, and then it is game over for living critters, except emus.
But, because of the delightful complexity of our world we do not need to be so concerned – unless the emus take over, which is unlikely as long as the M??SE are here (notice how M??SE are ‘non-zero’!)
hi-ya! Chundernozzles!
Howdy cowboy!
Clarification:
M??SE are actually a double null-set.
I’m not sure if the null-set of the null-set is the whole set?
Great – looks like Timbaland has been ripping off a Finnish musician:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4KX7SkDe4Q
So much for kinetic musical genius.
???:
Just in the past week, I stumbled across a book that contains a sustained critique of the use of the “force” metaphor for evolutionary processes:
Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology by Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan (U of Chicago Press, 2006)
Their argument is an extension of that made by Mohan Matthen and André Ariew in their paper:
“Two Ways of Thinking About Fitness and Natural Selection” (pdf), Journal of Philosophy, February 2002, Volume 49, No. 2, pp. 53-83.
If I am understanding your position correctly, I think you would find these discussions fit in well with your conception that evolution in its predictive sense “just happens”.
I have not found either pair of writers to be expressly advancing the kind of austerity position as regards metaphor that you seem to, but their sense of what the predictive equations of evolution look like and accomplish seems to accord with what you are saying.
And while I don’t think they are making a case against metaphor in any overall sense, they are explicitly arguing against the kind of Newtonian “force” metaphor for natural selection that I complained about in this and my earlier post, and address the kinds of issues I raised.
For example, in the earlier post, I wrote:
Pigliucci and Kaplan argue that it is actually the other way around: that the “force” metaphor is actually sustaining some very inadequate methods of constructing and talking about fitness landscapes.
Anyway, I haven’t read this stuff in much detail yet, but I thought it might interest you.
M??SE are actually a double null-set.
That was my reaction too…
Also, it is true that the intersection of an empty collection of subsets of X is the whole set X, but I’m not sure that’s quite what you had in mind.
With M??SE I didn’t have anything in mind – I just desperately needed some kind of anti-emu, and a mathematicalish M??SE did the trick.
I don’t really know anything about the math that underlies current thinking in the field of evolution. But, intuitively I image the math to be probabilistic and not have much predictive power.
I’m not wholly anti-metaphor, I just think when it comes to science we so often just adopt an everyday word to mean something very, very specific in a scientific context. This leads to endless confusion. On the other hand, it is always frustrating when a field becomes filled with jargon, so much so as to make it a different, uncomprehendable language for the rest of us.
I suppose, if I’m honest, I do have other anti-metaphor sentiments. These come from the conundrum that we can ask any question we want, but more and more frequently the true and correct answer to the question is ‘you cannot know the answer’. It is very difficult, at least for me, to take that into account in my scientific pursuits (I am a biologist), and parse out all of the questions I shouldn’t be asking because the answer is unknowable. I think in this situation it is much easier mentally to just take the morphine of metaphor, which – as you pointed out – is so familiar and comfortable to our brains. These metaphors dull the edges, and don’t let us see the cracks and flaws in our understanding of the world and gets us beyond the frustrations of knowing we cannot know the answer. As horrified as I am to know I cannot know something, I try to fight the urge to use metaphor, and rather I try to accept unknowingness.
I suppose I do this in part becuase I’m not always convinced we cannot know something – maybe our current thinking is off the mark? By not accepting metaphor, and not accepting we cannot know, I suppose I’m hoping to leave my mind open to spot a way into what we think is unknowable?
>enter the unknowable
I would not do that.
>know the unknowable
Don’t go there girlfriend!
>know the unknowable
You are feeling hungry.
>eat the unknowable
With what, your bare hands?
>eat banana
Banana is the funniest word ever! Burp!
>accept the unknowable and reject metaphor
Flavor Flav says you now know what time it is.
** END **
You scored 3 out of 100 points.
Wow, it is like I’ve just had a public therapy session, except knowbody knows who I am, except many here, who – in fact – do know who I am.
Do I dare push ‘submit’?
I wrote:
“I suppose I’m hoping to leave my mind open to spot a way into what we think is unknowable?”
Last night UC told me the way to knowing the unknowable! UC, you are the best!
From an ‘Adventure’ guide book:
I am about to invoke another magic word, “plover.” There is a room which has a very narrow crack as its entry way. Nothing can get through it except me and the emerald. There’s knowledge behind that crack which cannot fit through the crack. The only way to get the knowledge out is to use the magic word. “Plover” is a way to get into the room behind the crack.
I’m not wholly anti-metaphor, I just think when it comes to science we so often just adopt an everyday word to mean something very, very specific in a scientific context. This leads to endless confusion.
I don’t see how attaching exact scientific meanings to everyday words could be really the same thing as describing scientific processes metaphorically. The first case doesn’t strike me as metaphorical, but rather, definitional.
Of course, this has nothing to do with whether or not such words cause confusion, which, of course, they do. However, the difficulties caused by giving “fitness” (or “temperature”) an exact scientific definition are not the same as those caused by saying that thinking of genes as “selfish” is a useful guide to thinking about evolutionary processes.
A scientist using a word like “fitness” can always return to the exact definition for a guide if other meanings of the word are causing conceptual muddiness. On the other hand, a metaphor is only useful to the degree that the comparison really does fit with conditions of the concrete scientific facts, and becomes misleading the moment any element of the system under consideration does not really match the comparison.
To scientists themselves, the metaphors are probably much more dangerous than the definitions, because they can easily become habits of thought with no well defined context available as a corrective.
For people without a good grounding science, almost any description of scientifically defined phenomena can probably be misleading on some level. The metaphors may often be less misleading as they provide some frame of reference to start from that makes sense to the layperson. Though it seems incumbent upon someone constructing such a metaphor to describe how the metaphor fails, as well as how it works.
I’m not sure I quite understand why you think that metaphor necessarily — for scientists — leads to wallpapering over scientific problems that cannot (at least currently) be answered. Do you have an example?
It seems unlikely to me that scientists who use metaphor are necessarily correlated with those who are blinkered (or sloppy or deluded) about what they can and cannot know (other than for those scientists whose use of metaphor derives from extra-scientific commitments such as ID emus).
You compared metaphor to a drug, whereas I compared it to oxygen. It’s not just that that it’s comfortable for our brains, it’s that human thought is deeply rooted in metaphoric processes. As Lewontin quoted: “The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance.” Given that it seems effectively impossible to think completely outside of metaphor, it seems the trick is to know how our brains process metaphor, how and when to guard against the misleading effects of our thinking processes.
Last night UC told me the way to knowing the unknowable! UC, you are the best!
Asian symbol, I expected better out of you! His ego is already way too big.
And yet, you still never come to RoD and play with us. You (and Chuckles)are a gay hater. AG knew it!
“Last night UC told me the way to knowing the unknowable!”
That sounds tawdry… Did you feel the need to smoke a cigarette afterwards?
I did, Jennifer. We were so … so … superbad!!!!!!
UC, that joke is soooo lame.
Lame, lame, lame.
I blame Jennifer for encouraging you.
AG – UC is the best, I can’t help it.
Jennifer – I did want to go and get ice cream afterwards, I don’t know if that counts?
Plover, I can’t address everything just now, but I’ll take a first go at it. You are right to write that our whole lives are filled with definition and metaphor, without them we wouldn’t be functional. I think my ideas about the similarity of metaphor and definition betray the underlying way I think about the brain. My thinking has no scientific basis. I imagine/fantasize that the structure of language reveals to us something about how the brain works. This may or may not be true, I have no idea? You wrote:
“I don’t see how attaching exact scientific meanings to everyday words could be really the same thing as describing scientific processes metaphorically. The first case doesn’t strike me as metaphorical, but rather, definitional.”
This comment makes me wonder what the difference is between metaphor and definition?
I went to wikipedia and pulled out the following—
On the ‘metaphor’ page:
“In literary analysis, a metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin) is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects. In the simplest case, this takes the form: “The [first subject] is a [second subject].”
On the ‘definition’ page we find the definition of definition:
A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term, word or phrase.
The form of definition is striking, “[definition] is a [statement of meaning].”
These look the same to me? Are not all of our definitions just metaphors?
This is my intuition, and I have no clue if there is any scientific basis for it at all: I’m willing to bet that whatever trick of neural architecture and biochemistry our brains use to ‘know’ a definition are identical to the ones our brains use the ‘know’ a metaphor. These two kinds of ‘knowing’ may even be processed in different locations in the brain, if so I still bet the neural architecture and biochemistry are the same.
However, I think there is a difference between the two, but I don’t think that the difference occurs at the location of where the processing of connecting [first subject] to [second subject] happens. Rather, I think our brains have a different process/location(s) where we assign ‘value’ to those connections. We have a kind of grading scale about how concrete we think [first subject] is to [second subject]. It seems we take analogies as weakly linked, metaphors as more tightly linked, and definitions as absolutely linked.
My intuition is that the ‘meaning’ of something is the ‘integration’ of the ‘know’ and ‘value’ circuits. I have no idea what this ‘integration’ mechanism is, but I just like to imagine that it exists.
Going back to what you wrote, – when attaching exact scientific meanings to words, I think the process is the ‘integration’ of a ‘know’ and ‘value’ circuit. When describing a scientific process as metaphor, I think that process is the ‘integration’ of a ‘know’ and ‘value’ circuit. I think these two intellectual actions (definition and metaphor) contain both elements.
This is where I think maths can help us out. I think when a mathematician thinks of the number 3 they do not use the ‘value’ circuits, only the ‘know’ circuits, which are full of endless rules that highly constrain what 3 is and what it can be. 3 is just a symbol of all of these rules, a kind or shorthand. 3 has no ‘value’ of its own, independent of all of the rules and constraints, in maths.
This is not to say that the everyday 3 doesn’t have ‘value’. I think when I use 3 in the everyday sense it is imbued with value, and thus meaning. “The Detroit Tigers are 3 games back in the AL wild-card race”. This means that Yankees are in the lead – yuck!
I suppose what I long for is for all of the sciences to move away from definition and metaphor, which contains meaning, and thus both ‘know’ and ‘value’, and move towards the model we have in maths, where the definitions are ‘valueless’, they do not contain any use of the ‘value’ circuit, only the ‘know’ circuit. In biology we are a long, long way from that. I think mathematics is there and I think some parts of physics are there, and a little bit of chemistry is there. If we can get to a mathematical description of evolution I predict it won’t inform us about the why of life, or the meaning of life, rather it will just be a probablility of life. We will ‘know’ that life has a probability of happening, and we’ll have a sense of what that probability is, but that is it. I think many, many people will be disappointed by this.
You are absolutely right to say metaphor (and definition) are deeply, deeply ingrained in our brains. I think non-mathematical definitions and metaphors leave us some wiggle room because of the presence of the ‘value’ component, because we can connect a ‘value’ component with different ‘know’ components. Whatever the ‘integration’ process is gives us this incredible freedom. This freedom is beautiful, but it also is in this wiggle room that the cracks and sharp edges are smoothed.
Trying to think about the unknowable is interesting – the initial question we ask gives rise to the meaning. For meaning we want to connect ‘value’ and ‘know’. But what if there is no ‘know’? We are just left thinking about something we think is important, has ‘value’, but no ‘know’ circuit to connect it to. This can be very painful, and I think in this situation because of the wiggle room in giving nonscientific words scientific meanings, or the wiggle room we find in metaphors we so easily slip into accepting some ‘know’ element that may not really fit. We accept it and move on. This can be a disaster. We can take this as a starting point and build up a house of cards on it, which eventually come tumbling down. Or, we actually miss and ignore the correct ‘know’ circuit to connect the ‘value’ to, which is the process of trying to figure out the unknown. Looking back, we can look like fools. Be vigilent indeed!
As an aside, and not really well connected to the above, I wanted to comment briefly about ID because you mention ID emus, which I take to mean Intelligent Design emus. I came across this amazing quote from William J. Burchell’s two volumes entitled, “Travels In The Interior Of Southern Africa”, 1822 and 1824. I have not read the entirety of his volumes. He made two large expeditions, one to Southern Africa (1811-1815) and another in Brazil (1825-1830). In those journeys he collected more specimens than anyone has ever done – and made incredibly detailed notes about every single one. From 1830, until his death by suicide in 1863, he did not publish, discuss, or share any of his specimens, drawings or notes. He was a complete intellectual Scrooge. The Oxford University museum credits him with donating his collection, which is only partially the truth. It was two years after his death that his sister decided to donate the collection to the museum. We are lucky she did – it is quite a collection. She deserves the credit for sharing this with the rest of Humanity, not Burchell, who wanted everything to be burned. I’ll give you this ironic quote from him, about the origin of plants and animals. It would appear that our esteemed Naturalist, is in fact a Creationist, and that the Native Africans (which, by the way, he continuously insults and degrades) seem to have been closer to the mark:
“The superstitions of the Bachapins, for it cannot be called a religion, is of the weakest and most absurd kind; and, as before remarked, betrays the low state of their intellect. These people have no outward worship, nor, if one may judge from their never alluding to them, any private devotions; neither could it be discovered that they possessed any very defined or exalted notion of a supreme and beneficent Deity, or of a great and first Creator. Those whom I questioned, asserted that everything made itself; and that trees and herbage grew by their own will.”
I say the Bachapins were spot on!