Quote:
Originally Posted by duga
we may communicate in metaphors and granted, it would be hard to disprove anything you are saying...but the words we use to describe these phenomena are directly linked to thoughts and emotions in our minds. the words (and metaphors, for that matter) are linked to our understanding...which is the important thing. it may be impossible to describe science without using metaphors, but that is not the point. the point is, using those metaphors, it can be safe to assume that someone in the same field would be able to understand exactly what i was describing. you could bring up that this is because it is linked to the human condition...maybe true. but i have no doubt if a superior alien race were to study us and were able to translate our language, they would be able to say quite reasonably what kind of understanding of science we actually have.
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no, the point is that metaphor is not restricted to language. we think in metaphors, and we cannot help but think in metaphors. our entire conceptual understanding of reality is based around a fairly limited set of base metaphors, upon which a basically limitless set of extended metaphors can be constructed.
it all boils down to a matter of truth, and to our ability to assess the truth of the claims we make about the world around us.
while the truth value of following sentences may be judged by an independent observer who understands the metaphors used in them, these sentences can never be said to be objectively true:
the dog is behind the tree.
i don't have enough time to make my flight.
she is in debt.
the day is far from over.
he fell into a coma.
the water went from hot to cold in under a minute.
the noise brought the old man out of his slumber.
our understanding of these sentences is not a mere matter of picking out words and finding out what each one means. take the first one for example. trees obviously have neither fronts nor backs, so the idea that something is behind a tree is only relationally true. in most cultures, this "front-back" orientation is metaphorically projected onto objects such that the object's front faces the observer.
there are some cultures, however, where this front-back orientation is reversed, and objects are conceived as standing in the same orientation as the observer. to a person from one of these cultures, the sentence "the dog is behind the tree" would mean something absolutely different.
all of the metaphors used in the above sentences rely on the reader's ability to relate to very specific kinds of experiences, many of which are only possible because of the nature of the world in which we live and the nature of our bodies.
like the basic metaphor MORE IS UP. to intelligent beings living in space without gravity, this concept would be meaningless.