Spiabooks

What is the relationship between language and thought? Do we think in metaphors and therefore use them in our speech or do they originate in language and then become the way we think? "Metaphors enable the understanding of a concept in terms of another concept, which is generally not associated with it. In problem solving tasks, reasoning by metaphors has a significant influence on the development of innovative ideas. In design metaphors help structure thinking and represent things from different viewpoints" Casakin Metaphors are perspective from a different point of view; they promote juxtapositions, which leads to invention and design. A metaphor is a "device for seeing something in terms of something else. It brings out the thisness of that and the thatness of a this. " Kenneth Burke Seeds and the sowing of seeds are one of our most prevalent metaphors; they are both the end and the beginning of a cycle. It occurs in almost all religious teachings from primitive cultures to the mustard seed in the Bible. "Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Thoughts are seeds that give rise to actions, habits and character." The first line of Dhammapoda. We use metaphors to explain what we cannot grasp like the concept of God, the huge numbers in the world of astronomy or the geological time and more recently our computers. This book proposes a game. The seeds are imaginary and can be seen as good or bad qualities, the pockets in the book "pod" are the environment or the soil this 'quality' inhabits. Assign a quality or character to each seed and find it's pocket in the book 'pod', and then compare notes on how others attach qualities to a neutral object like and imaginary seed. Metaphor is not just about language; it's really about thought. We conceive of things in terms of other things.