The question concerning technology.--The turning.--The word of Nietzsche: "God is dead."--The age of the world picture.--Science and reflection.

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)

The focus of the article is toreflect on the tendency of research traditionsin the areas of human learning, development,and communication, to use metaphors andanalogies that construe human mental activitiesand resources in terms of physical objects.This is evident, for instance, in moderncognitive science where computer metaphors(information processing and informationstorage) have been foundational for thediscipline. However, this tendency to reifyhuman activities can be found in many othertraditions, and it goes back to ancient Greekthinking. It is argued that the consequences ofthis tradition of (...) reification are significantfor the human sciences. One important elementof these types of metaphors is that theydescribe people and their capacities in static,rather than developmental, terms. (shrink)