The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In (...) this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language. (shrink)

"What in the ever-loving blue-eyed world do these [U1ano wicz's] innocuous comments on thermodynamics have to do with ecology!" Anonymous manuscript reviewer The American Naturalist, 1979 "The germ of the idea grows very slowly into something recognizable. It may all start with the mere desire to have an idea in the first place. " Walt Kelly Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo, 1959 "It all seems extremely interesting, but for the life of me it sounds as if you pulled it (...) out of the air," my good friend Ray Lassiter exclaimed to me after enduring about 20 minutes of my enthusiasm for the newly formu lated concept of "ascendency" in ecosystems. "It wasn't," I replied, "but it would take a book to show you where it came from. " If such was the reaction of someone usually sympathetic to my manner of thinking, what could I expect from those who viewed biological devel opment in the traditional way? After all, I was suggesting that it is possi ble to quantify the growth and development of an entire ecosystem. Fur thermore, I was maintaining that this development was not entirely determined by events and entities at smaller scales, and yet could influ ence these component processes and structures. To be sure, mine was only the latest of many challenges to straight reductionism, but, like everyone else with a new idea, I thought mine was special. (shrink)

"[Mitchell] undertakes to explore the nature of images by comparing them with words, or, more precisely, by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language.... The most lucid exposition of the subject I have ever read."—Rudolf Arnheim, _Times Literary Supplement_.

This is the engaging story of a moment of transformation in the human sciences, a detailed account of a remarkable group of people who met regularly to explore the possibility of using scientific ideas that had emerged in the war years as a basis for interdisciplinary alliances.