A little bit of fun before he died by Dagoberto Gilb
Month: November 2012
Twitter is pivoting
Twitter is pivoting by Dalton Caldwell
The Last Protest Singer
The Last Protest Singer by Tom Chiarella
Samuel Parker’s distrust of metaphor, in a metaphor
The empiricist distrust and fear of metaphor is wonderfully summed up by Samuel Parker:
All those Theories in Philosophy which are expressed only in metaphorical Termes, are not real Truths, but the meer products of Imagination, dress’d up (like Childrens babies) in a few spangled empty words____ Thus their wanton and luxuriant fancies climbing up into the Bed of Reason, do not only defile it by unchaste and illegitimate Embraces, but instead of real conceptions and notices of Things, impregnate the mind with nothing but Ayerie and Subventaneous Phantasmes. [Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophy (1666)]
–George Lakoff Metaphors We Live By
Aristotle saw poetry as positive
Aristotle, on the other hand, saw poetry as having a positive value: “It is a great thing, indeed, to make proper use of the poetic forms,… But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor” (Poetics 1459a); “ordinary words convey only what we know already ; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh” (Rhetoric 1410b)
–George Lakoff Metaphors We Live By
Plato suspicious of poetry
Plato viewed poetry and rhetoric with suspicion and banned poetry from his Utopian Republic because it gives no truth of its own, stirs up the emotions, and thereby blinds mankind to the real truth.
–George Lakoff Metaphors We Live By
Metaphor are devices for understanding
Metaphors are basically devices for understanding and have little to do with objective reality, if there is such a thing. The fact that our conceptual system is inherently metaphorical, the fact that we understand the world, think, and function in metaphorical terms, and the fact that metaphors can not merely be understood but can be meaningful and true as well—these facts all suggest that an adequate account of meaning and truth can only be based on understanding.
–George Lakoff Metaphors We Live By
No such thing as inherent meaning in sentences
understanding. A sentence can’t mean anything to you unless you understand it. Moreover, meaning is always meaning to someone. There is no such thing as a meaning of a sentence in itself, independent of any people. When we speak of the meaning of a sentence, it is always the meaning of the sentence to someone, a real person or a hypothetical typical member of a speech community
–George Lakoff Metaphors We Live By
The secret to blogging
…while everyone wants to know the secret to blogging success, the common denominator is to have a genuine and passionate voice that readers can connect with.
From the Introduction, by Grace Bonney (Design Sponge)
Blog, Inc., Blogging for Passion, Profit, and to Create Community
Bewildered Creatures 