9 quotes
The metaphysics that still dominates science and enthralls the minds of men is nothing but a metaphor, and a limited one.
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)
In short, the use of metaphor involves both the awareness of duality of sense and the pretense that the two different senses are one.
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)
There is a remedy against the domination imposed, not by generals, statesmen, and men of action, whose power dissolves when they retire, but by the great sort-crossers, whose power increases when they die- the remedy of becoming aware of metaphor...
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)
It is a confusion to present the items of one sort in the idioms of another -- without awareness. For to do this is not just to cross two different sorts; it is to confuse them. It is to mistake, for example, the theory for the fact, the procedure for the process, the myth for history, the model for the thing and the metaphor for the face of literal truth.
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)
However appropriate in one sense a good metaphor may be, in another sense there is something inappropriate about it. This inappropriateness results from the use of a sign in a sense different from the usual...
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)
That well known distinction between knowing that and knowing how fits the learning of a language....That is, we must distinguish between knowing how to speak or listen to words and knowing that about them. Learning a language is primarily the former.
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)
The mechanical philosophy is a case of being victimized by metaphor. I choose Descartes and Newton as excellent examples of metaphysicians of mechanism malgré eux, that is to say, as unconscious victims of the metaphor of the great machine. Together they have founded a church, more powerful than that founded by Peter and Paul, whose dogmas are now so entrenched that anyone who tries to reallocate the facts is guilty of more than heresy.
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)
Although we acquire the skill of understanding words by experience, so that we know the correlations between them and things, between words and other words, and between words and feelings and actions, we do not do it by inductive reasoning. Nor must we think that we do it by deductive reasoning... In the main, words are cues rather than clues.
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)
The history of science may be treated from the point of view that it records attempts to place metaphysical disguises upon the faces of process and procedure... The metaphysics that still dominates science and enthralls the minds of men is nothing but a metaphor, and a limited one.
The Myth of Metaphor (1962)