In 1980 George Lakoff and Gregg Johnson published Metaphors We Live By. The book made the case that most of our thinking is largely metaphorical in nature; that we directly apply our understanding of the less abstract to the more abstract. Their description of metaphoric language as reflective of a thinking mind irrevocably situated in a physical context helped ignite an explosion of research in numerous fields including linguistics, psychology, philosophy, law, art, and politics. While there’s been much written since then, this work has been repeated referenced in other current texts that I highly value.
The edition I read contained an afterward written in 2003 that provided a great summation of the work, empirical support somewhat lacking in the original and some revisions and their thinking. If pressed for time I would recommend reading these 30 or so pages to the exclusion of the rest of the text.
Most importantly Metaphors We Live By validates my solution of using manipulation as a starting point for the design of interactivity and provides logical arguments against feedback that I previously could only disagree with on intuitive grounds. In my review (which I have yet to talk about, but which I hope to do at some point in the next few weeks), a midst concerns about the scope of my research, I was questioned on the type of manipulation I was going to address “Manipulation is very broad; there’s all kinds of manipulation, semiotic, physical, interpersonal…” (paraphrased). In concern over the “unfocused” quality of my proposal itself and during an attempt to guide me to “just do a nice project” it was stated that if I was going to find some fundamental principles “… I would have found it by now”. On the first concern, I simply acknowledge the potential pitfalls of the and stated that I’d be focusing on the most basic form of manipulation, the equivalence between an intentional quantifiable value and that of a screen based entity (such as a box’s rotation to the position of a pointing device). On the second statement I simply bit my tongue. Having read Lakoff & Johnson I would now answer differently; There is not “many kinds of” manipulation. There is only one kind of manipulation which is conceptually mapped to many different experiential phenomena so as to highlight common qualities. These commonalities stem from our physical/spatial understanding of manipulation as a “base metaphor” concerning the movement of an object in space on behalf of an intent. Thus my investigation of manipulation is not “broad” in the fashion expressed. Secondly, our understanding of what we experience and the metaphoric ontologies we use to understand abstract phenomena — such as complex interactivity —don’t get any more base than those based on our body and the physical space it inhabits.
While Lakoff’s research is undoubtedly important, he’s been criticized as delivering his ideas more rhetorically than not and being remise in acknowledging others who have tread on similar, if not the same ground. Metaphors We Live By makes lengthy arguments against forms of objectivism and subjectivism that I’m not certain are necessarily reflective of philosophical thought at the time, and left me want of understanding the context within which the book was released into. The ideas of embodied thinking that seem to stem from their research into metaphor are highly reflective of thinking phenomenological thinking which was hardly underground at the time. At one point they do make reference to this area, but only as it exists, in their words, as “café phenomenology”. Their discussion limited to bullet points and bereft of topical consideration. One critical reviewer on Amazon.com points to Maurice Merleau-Ponty as providing much more nascent thinking on the issues that Lakoff and Johnson have waded into, going so far as to claim Lakoff and John’s most important ideas are ripped of from him. As Paul Dourish’s discussion of embodied thinking also references strongly Merleau-Ponty, it doesn’t seem impossible that there’s some truth there. Furthermore, I’ve found their most interesting ideas such as the reuniting of thinking and physical embodiment and how this manifests in a sort of layered understanding of the world echos those of Rudolf Arnheim whose book Visual Thinking I’ll be writing about in my next post.
Overall I’m a little surprised that in all the reading I’ve done from those in interactive or interaction fields that continually state that more investigation needs to be done in areas of metaphor that this book hasn’t come up.
In 1980 George Lakoff and Gregg Johnson published Metaphors We Live By. The book made the case that most of our thinking is largely metaphorical in nature; that we directly apply our understanding of the less abstract to the more abstract. Their description of metaphoric language as reflective of a thinking mind irrevocably situated in a physical context helped ignite an explosion of research in numerous fields including linguistics, psychology, philosophy, law, art, and politics. While there’s been much written since then, this work has been repeated referenced in other current texts that I highly value.
The edition I read contained an afterword written in 2003 that provided a great summation of the work, empirical support somewhat lacking in the original and some revisions and their thinking. If pressed for time I would recommend reading these 30 or so pages to the exclusion of the rest of the text.
Most importantly Metaphors We Live By validates my solution of using manipulation as a starting point for the design of interactivity and provides logical arguments against feedback that I previously could only disagree with on intuitive grounds. In my review (which I have yet to talk about, but which I hope to do at some point in the next few weeks), a midst concerns about the scope of my research, I was questioned on the type of manipulation I was going to address “Manipulation is very broad; there’s all kinds of manipulation, semiotic, physical, interpersonal…” (paraphrased). In concern over the “unfocused” quality of my proposal itself and during an attempt to guide me to “just do a nice project” it was stated that if I was going to find some fundamental principles “… I would have found them by now”. On the first concern, I simply acknowledge the potential pitfalls and stated that I’d be focusing on the most basic form of manipulation, the equivalence between an intentional quantifiable value and that of a screen based entity (such as a box’s rotation to the position of a pointing device). On the second statement I simply bit my tongue. Having read Lakoff & Johnson I would now answer differently; There is not “many kinds of” manipulation. There is only one kind of manipulation which is conceptually mapped to many different experiential phenomena so as to highlight common qualities. These commonalities stem from our physical/spatial understanding of manipulation as a “base metaphor” concerning the movement of an object in space on behalf of an intent. My investigation of manipulation qua manipulation is still modest enough for the project, but more applicable to more complex systems than previously stated. Secondly, our understanding of what we experience and the metaphoric ontologies we use to understand abstract phenomena — such as complex interactivity —don’t get any more fundamental than those based on our body and the physical space it inhabits.
While Lakoff’s research is undoubtedly important, he’s been criticized as delivering his ideas more rhetorically than not and being remise in acknowledging others who have tread on similar, if not the same ground. Metaphors We Live By makes lengthy arguments against forms of objectivism and subjectivism that I’m not certain are necessarily reflective of philosophical thought at the time, and left me want of understanding the context within which the book was released into. The ideas of embodied thinking that seem to stem from their research into metaphor are highly reflective of thinking phenomenological thinking which was hardly underground at the time. At one point they do make reference to this area, but only as it exists, in their words, as “café phenomenology”. Their discussion limited to bullet points and bereft of topical consideration. One critical reviewer on Amazon.com points to Maurice Merleau-Ponty as providing much more nascent thinking on the issues that Lakoff and Johnson have waded into, going so far as to claim Lakoff and John’s most important ideas are ripped of from him. As Paul Dourish’s discussion of embodied thinking also references strongly Merleau-Ponty, it doesn’t seem impossible that there’s some truth there. Furthermore, I’ve found their most interesting ideas such as the reuniting of thinking and physical embodiment and how this manifests in a sort of layered understanding of the world echos those of Rudolf Arnheim whose book Visual Thinking I’ll be writing about in my next post.
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