Tag Archives: metaphor

Glasses, Not Mirrors: Richard Rorty’s Whole Philosophy In 900 Words

Posted on December 2, 2013 by

I’m going to try to sum up the whole of Richard Rorty’s philosophy in just 900 words. Do you suppose I can do it? Here goes. The religionist, the scientist, and the ironist. There are three types of people in … Continue reading →

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Metaphor Generators: Douglas Hofstadter and Shakespeare

Posted on October 29, 2013 by

I’ve been reading Douglas Hofstadter’s new book, Surfaces and Essences, in which he posits an analogy model for what human intelligence ultimately is, and I notice that the new November edition of The Atlantic has a profile piece on Hofstadter, a … Continue reading →

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“Fresh Guacamole”: A Poem Made Flesh

Posted on March 8, 2012 by

Stunning tropes for food; each chop akin to the surprise that accompanies a line break in poetry.

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Are You the Crab Eye of God Turned Back to Gaze on Your Own Creation?

Posted on December 13, 2011 by

A striking quote from John Jeremiah Sullivan (paraphrasing botanist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque): If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may … Continue reading →

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Three Ohio Bucks Locked in Life—and Death. Why Is This Poetic?

Posted on February 26, 2011 by

A distressing scene to contemplate was recently recounted (with photos) in Field & Stream: [T]hree Ohio bucks somehow locked antlers while battling near a small creek. When one deer slid into a shallow pool, it sealed the fate for all three, … Continue reading →

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Is God a Poet and is Metaphor Akin to Empiricism?

Posted on January 19, 2011 by

At BioLogos recently, Mark Sprinkle said something about poetry (and God, if God exists) that I found especially interesting: The work of poetry is to polish human language until it reflects the structural orderliness and the improvisational freedom and playfulness … Continue reading →

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Thinking about Metaphor with Jan Zwicky

Posted on July 7, 2010 by

At the Huffington Post yesterday, Jason Derr referred to a book that sounds interesting: In her book Wisdom and Metaphor poet and philosopher Jan Zwicky argues for a poetic form of doing philosophy, one rooted in an understanding of metaphor. … Continue reading →

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Is Life’s Meaning to Be Found in the Myth of Sisyphus, Bunyan’s Pilgrim, Voltaire’s Candide, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Shakespeare’s Stage—or Something Else?

Posted on July 1, 2010 by

Albert Camus famously said that the first question of philosophy is suicide: is life’s game worth the candle? Camus thought that it was. Yes, the universe appears to be absurd (without meaning, unity, or purpose), and yes, Sisyphus was Camus’s chosen symbol for the … Continue reading →

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Health Care Reform Metaphor Watch: is the Republican Party “a broken wheel,” “facing its Waterloo,” “Wile E. Coyote”—or something else?

Posted on March 20, 2010 by

With regard to health care reform, I’m grappling with a lot of metaphors for describing where I think the Republicans are at, and those metaphors are not good, so I’ll just mix them all together below. See if you can … Continue reading →

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Socrates in Kansas

Posted on December 17, 2009 by

This Kansas song seems to me packed to the brim with Western literary and religious allusions, from Greek figures like Diogenes, Socrates, and Odysseus—accompanied by a Greek chorus!—to an obvious biblical allusion (the Prodigal Son). Oh, and notice Icarus in the third … Continue reading →

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Life and Metaphor: Are We on a Journey or in a Piece of Music?

Posted on December 9, 2009 by

Maybe both?

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Things Favorite, My (Cream Colored Ponies &) Silver White Winters

Posted on October 23, 2009 by

Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. (Or something like that.)

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A Life as Metaphor Poll!

Posted on October 17, 2009 by

Really. This two days ago at Pollster.com: StrategyOne polled Americans (n=1,000 telephone survey) October 9-12, 2009 with the following question: “People often use metaphors to describe their life… Which ONE of the following do you think best descibes your life?” A Journey: … Continue reading →

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Symbols, Myths, Metaphors, and Stories: Are Atheists More (or Less) Deluded By These Things Than Theists?

Posted on October 10, 2009 by

For both the atheist and the theist, reality is anything but fulfilling. The way things are, without you doing anything about them, has always been a problem, for reality, unstoried, is just one damn meaningless thing after another. And often unpleasant. It’s … Continue reading →

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What are the Implications of the Block Universe for Atheism? In Other Words, If We Live in a Block Universe, Wouldn’t That Make Our Universe the Ultimate Flash-Assembled 747?

Posted on June 3, 2009 by

One thing that atheism seems to need is time for the simplest elements of existence at the Big Bang to evolve into all that we see around us. But here’s a quote from the physicist Paul Davies on the block universe: … Continue reading →

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What Do Things Really Mean?

Posted on June 2, 2009 by

I mean really. This from Marvin Minsky, the co-founder of MIT’s artificial intelligence lab: “The secret of what something means lies in the ways that it connects to all the other things we know. The more such links, the more … Continue reading →

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Does Meaning Reside in Facts—or Our Descriptions of Those Facts?

Posted on March 14, 2009 by

I bet you can guess my vote. I think that our languages never perfectly correspond with the world “as it is” and so we derive our meanings from our eccentric descriptions of “the facts.” Here’s an example. Since the publication … Continue reading →

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Descent into the Realm of Dream

Posted on February 22, 2009 by
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The Greatest Pearl of the Night Sky’s Tribe

Posted on January 9, 2009 by

Will there ever be a “final language” (I’m thinking in terms of a scientific one) that corresponds perfectly with the TRUTH of what all of reality IS? And should that language then be held up as “superior” to all other ways of … Continue reading →

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What Language Are You at Home In?: Richard Rorty and the Languages That We Speak

Posted on December 4, 2008 by

The philosopher Richard Rorty used to suggest that the way that a person talks about things should be thought of as a language. Thus there are people who, in addition to speaking, say, English, also communicate in such languages as: Reformed Calvinism Speak … Continue reading →

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