Metaphors and Action Schemes: Some Themes in Intellectual History

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Bucknell University Press, 1997 - History - 281 pages
All our abstract ideas are based on metaphors and action schemes. Jean Piaget did voluminous research on how thought develops in children through assimilation of action schemes. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have done pioneering work on metaphors and action schemes in everyday thinking. This book builds on those foundations, looking at the role played by metaphors and action schemes in the history of ideas. The author begins his argument by taking a critical look at the philosophy of metaphor from Aristotle to the present. While he sees metaphor as simply conceiving one thing in terms of another, he points out that this is an inexhaustible process, because the context in which the process takes place is always changing. Change opens up new possibilities of similarity. Thus, the metaphor is an open door into a space of infinite possibilities.

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Contents

Acknowledgments 16
9
The Nature of Metaphor
21
Metaphor and Intellectual History
43
Copyright

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