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zarcus - 26 October 2007 09:36 PM

It reminded me of Michael Shermer’s outline of scientific writing.

Michael Shermer:

Sadly, too many professional scientists think level one is the only legitimate form of science writing, and that anything else is simply “dumbing down.”

Zarcus - can you give a reference for the Michael Schermer quote. I agree that all three forms of writing are important—I think many scientists support all three levels, but I also think Schermer is well-networked and well-informed on this point.  Is he talking about the “dumbing down” of Scientific American? Or is he talking about problems he has had from professional scientists? (and to paraphrase Richard Feynman “why does he care what other people think?")

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zarcus - 26 October 2007 09:36 PM

Great Show! 

I agree.

Here is the NY Times Book Review of
[The Stuff of Thought]

Pinker emphasizes the importance of metaphor in human thought and language.

At one time the college board SAT exams had a major section on “analogies”, and based on Pinker’s work this actually seems to be justified to test thinking skills.  The section was [ELIMINATED AROUND 2002 (this article mentions complaints by Univ Calif system)]

I think it’s quite an interesting emphasis.

Hi There,

For an interesting perspective on the role of metaphor in our interactions between ourselves and our orientation towards “the world” see also Jan Zwicky’s “Wisdom and Metaphor”.

b

I enjoyed the show as well. I’m currently re-reading The Language Instinct so the timing was great for me.

I wonder, though, if metaphors are a crucial device for our brains to engage concepts beyond the physical and social worlds they evolved to deal with, and yet if they need to be stripped of their misleading elements, as Pinker says, how does one decide what is the truthful and what the misleading compnent to an entrenched metaphor. We often talk about religion as a set of metaphors and, from the memetic point of view a very successful one. Yet we also tend to agree here that these are pretty seriously misleading metaphors. Any thoughts as to how we check our own metaphors for accuracy?

As I use them, the metaphores are resources to explain the behaviour of object A in terms of a better known object B. I think that as more aspect of A’s behaviour can be explained using B ‘semantics’, the better the metaphor is. It is inevitable to find divergences between A and B, as soon you can find them, the worst the metaphor is. I’d say, to take the example from the show, that ‘the course of events’ is a poor metaphor because a course means a somewhat fixed route, while the history has not a defined path.

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Because I have more doubt than certainties in this topic, my possition will change as the discussion progresses.