Kuhn 16: Like A Metaphor

[koganbot]

Mark informs me that a well-regarded philosopher once said something somewhere linking "paradigm" to "metaphor." I haven't read this thing that the well-regarded philosopher said, but I felt like posting a caution anyway.

Similarity is an important theme for Kuhn: when a scientific discipline or subdiscipline undergoes a paradigm shift (in the broad sense of "paradigm" meaning "disciplinary matrix" [remember, "paradigm" has both a broad and a narrow meaning for Kuhn, the two meanings not being identical]), some crucial things that were once seen as similar or the same under the old paradigm are no longer grouped together under the new, and some crucial things that were once considered unrelated are now considered similar or the same. This similarity can be metaphoric - e.g., an electric current running through a circuit is seen to be like the flow of water in a pipe while not literally being the flow of water in a pipe. But often a similarity will be literal: after the Copernican revolution, the earth was considered similar to Mars and Jupiter etc. in that they were all material bodies that orbited the sun, i.e., planets. But this resemblance wasn't metaphoric. They were all literally planets, though the concept "planet" had to undergo a change to accommodate them all. Where the similarity isn't so direct, it nonetheless usually isn't metaphoric. E.g., for an Aristotelian, a man being restored from sickness to health is like an acorn growing into an oak, which is like fire seeking its place at the periphery and a heavy object such as a stone falling towards its place in the center. The resemblance here is not metaphoric. For an Aristotelian these are all examples of motion - literally are all examples of motion, are all variants on the same phenomenon.

"Paradigm" in the narrow sense - as a specific puzzle solution or achievement that functions as a model or example for the solution of similar puzzles - involves doing something similar to or analogous to what someone else had done in a similar situation. The problem with calling this phenomenon "metaphor" is that again, the relation is tighter than metaphor, since it's treating several things as similar enough to undergo a substantially similar operation; for example, Galileo's idea of the pendulum was adapted to a range of other problems (see Kuhn 9: Examples Versus Definitions and Kuhn 10: Vis Viva), but all of the related solutions were seen as embodying the same principle ("vis viva"). And where there isn't necessarily a single principle at work, nonetheless the resemblance isn't just a figure of speech. Resonators in a cavity filled with radiation were seen as being similar enough to gas molecules in a container as to be understood using the same probability theory. (Of course, there turned out to be a crucial dissimilarity, and this provoked a scientific revolution.)

Kuhn took his concept of similarity straight from Wittgenstein's writings on "family resemblance," which I quoted at length in Kuhn 13: A Wittgenstein Saves Nine. I'd think that Kuhn and Wittgenstein would say (well he and Wittgenstein never said it like this, but I think they would) that when we're speaking literally we're also using analogy. Which is to say, when something is a game or a duck or motion it is like something else that is a game or a duck or motion, whereas in calling something metaphoric you're saying that something is like a game or a duck or motion without being a game or a duck or motion (e.g., calling someone a "sitting duck" or a "lame duck").

I suppose that all this means that there's no hard barrier between the literal and metaphoric: but nonetheless you don't want to say that the literal is metaphoric any more than you want to say that cold is hot or quiet is loud and so on. There's no set barrier between cold and hot or quiet and loud any more than there is between "literal" and "metaphoric," but nonetheless we use those distinctions - they just happen to be relative terms by my first example of "relative" way back when.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

The Wittgenstein post (which I have just now read) kind of sums up a feeling I've had for ages now, which is that the terminology of music genres/movements is most creatively useful when at its fuzziest - usually, when the genre/movement is first being apprehended/described/defined. These situations arise where the context in which the artist saw him/herself operating included X, Y, Z and so what they do emulated X, reacted against Y, and ripped off Z, and then years go by and X and Z fall out of the conversation as boundaries are further refined so that someone else following the critical discourse upstream can only trace their way from said artist back to Y. (...Which come to think is what people hold against the "hardcore continuum" isn't it.)

I've used the words "creatively useful" but I don't know if that is the same thing as "critically useful" or stands in opposition to it.

[koganbot]

Yes. Creatively and critically useful (but then I think that critics are creators). My idea about genre titles is that at their best they're simultaneously battle flags and the rabbit that runs on ahead at the dog races. So genres aren't just fuzzy, they're a site for skirmishes, a big hunk of their use being to have their titles fought over and the meaning slither out of everybody's grasp. (For more on that subject see the "Superwords" link under "Frank stuff" in the side margin.) As long as a genre matters, there'll be arguments over what it really is and who belongs in it.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i hadn't finished the essay when i flagged up the section on "paradigm"; it's actally very short -- he doesn't return to the idea -- and consists (as so often with JD) of battling citations from other writers as they discuss a third writer

in this case, the third writer is plato, the topic is "plato and metaphor", the two duelling writers are people i have never heard of: pierre louis, author of "plato's metaphors", 1945; and v.goldschmidt, author of "la paradigme dans la dialectique platonicienne", 1947

concerning the latter, we are enjoined especially to read chap.3, "paradigme et métaphore"; concerning the former, JD quotes (in paratheses), louis's exclamation, re plato's definition of "paradgm" in the politics, "It would suffice to replace paradeigma by metaphora to obtain a Platonic definition of metaphor

so this means that -- in refrence to JD's main discussion -- this is a digression (albeit one he finds intriguing enough to flag up); and it's intriguing -- presumably -- because he hasn't had time to adjudicate between these two views, rival analyses of the use and role of metaphor [or certain types of metaphor] within plato's writing; he doesn't actually do more than gesture at them

paradigm is not -- in this instance -- a derridean term*: it's a platonic term (apparently), which he's come momentarily within hailing distance of... kuhnian ears naturally prick up but the two commentators on plato being cited cannot, just by dates, have been aware of kuhn's usage (or project): derrida may have been aware (white mythology wasp ublished in french in a mag called poetique in 1971) but i wouldn't count on it

(i assumed because he signalled it, he has more to say about the issue -- his digressions are rarely irrelevant -- but if he does, i missed it when as i finished the piece) (admission: i finished it while tired and quite drunk on the bus last night -- so MUST reread and poke about a bit to see what he's getting at)

[koganbot]

According to The American Heritage Dictionary (1st ed.) "paradeigma" is a Greek word for "model," which derives from the Greek verb "paradeiknunai," which means "to compare, exhibit," "para" meaning "alongside" and "deiknunai" meaning "to show." I don't know if a paradeigma was a particular type of model or simply was the Greek word for model, but the concept, "model," seems the same as our concept(s) of "model," at least in the senses of "example" or "illustration" or "something you model something else on," if not "miniature mock-up."

American Heritage also shows Greek ancestry for "metaphor": "metapheiren," which means "to transfer." I can't tell from that derivation if there was a Greek noun form that functioned like our noun "metaphor." Presumably Plato would push the meaning of "paradigm" too far towards metaphor (or towards something like it), since for him, that games (for example) simply resembled each other would be extremely problematic, and his solution to his problem would be that there must be an absolute idea or form of game that the concrete games we experience partake of and are caused by, the games of our experience being derivative of and (if I am understanding him right) inferior to the idea/form. From my (highly incomplete) reading of Plato I'd say that for him a metaphor would have a feeling of illegitimacy, the transfer of one characteristic to something else. And he would also consider that "modeling" involved a transfer in which something was inferior to its original, and he therefore may well have analyzed metaphor and paradigm in the same way. For him there'd be something fraudulent about mere resemblance (if I'm understanding the guy right).

To return to the question of importance and "transcendence" I raised last week, what was the import of the "problem" that Socrates and Plato brought up, and the import of their transcendent "solution"? That Wittgenstein was so easily able to toss away the problem makes me think that the whole philosophical discussion of "essentialism" had virtually no impact on anyone's actual use of language - that assuming that "game" and "beauty" etc. must have an essence wouldn't affect one's actual varied and flexible use of those terms, and common usage of the word "essence" would ignore its transcendent meaning in philosophy and just end up having a meaning that ranged from "critically important" to "fairly frequent." But that doesn't mean that Socrates/Plato didn't put their "problem" and its "solution" to interesting use. But the use had more to do with creating the presumption that people didn't know what they were talking about when they used words like "virtue" and "beauty," which is a pretty good presumption anyway, even if I'd make it for reasons different from Plato's. And the ideas/forms are crucial to Plato's argument for the immortality of the soul, as well.

[koganbot]

Where I distrust Derrida is that I think he wants to preserve the ideas and the problems that he's attacking, claiming that they can only be deconstructed (or whatever) rather than set aside. And the importance of the ideas/problems therefore gives importance to the attack on (or deconstruction of) those ideas and problems. Whereas reading Wittgenstein's demolition of the problems makes me wonder how much the problems were ever in effect in the first place, what actual force they had in the world. But that's a very open question for me. If someone keeps working on a problem, he's doing something thereby, the question is what.

[(Anonymous)]

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[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Do not even think about deleting this comment.

[koganbot]

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[koganbot]

Or perhaps it is my blog that's supposed to enter her vagina.