I’m currently reading a fascinating book about the relationship between language and thinking, Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought. In a chapter on the way in which we use metaphors, Pinker describes the position of a linguist named George Lakoff, whose thesis is characterized as follows by Pinker:
"Metaphor is not an ornamental flourish of language … but an essential part of thought…. Since we think in metaphors grounded in physical experience rather than in logical formulas with truth values, the entire tradition of Western thought since the Greeks is fundamentally misconceived. Reason is not based on abstract laws, because thinking is rooted in bodily experience.”
While Pinker does not fully buy into the proposition that we never use abstractions to support our thinking, he does appear to agree with the central place of metaphor in the process of learning. In particular, Pinker refers to metaphors (such as THE ATOM IS A SOLAR SYSTEM or AN ANTIBODY IS A LOCK FOR A KEY) as “mechanisms that the mind uses to understand otherwise inaccessible concepts.”
This discussion reminded me of a three-day improv retreat I attended several years ago in Asheville, North Carolina. In one session (whose context I can’t recall), two participants played the roles of friends who were emailing across a long distance. As one participant “typed” her first message to the other, she began to speak out loud as a means of communicating the contents of her “note” to her scene partner and the audience. Immediately, however, another player spontaneously leaped onto the stage and began playing the role of the “message” by crawling back and forth between the “typists” and relaying their respective communications.
This struck me as a perfect example of putting concrete form to abstractions such as “a message” and “electronic communication.” I can think of several more examples on the improv stage where players used physicality to personify concepts – emotions, states of being, collective enterprises – that otherwise would have only been verbalized.
For the Daily Improviser, this is one of the most powerful aspects of improvisation: It reinforces the use of concreteness in our thinking and our communications! Not only does this help us clarify our messages but it helps us to engage on a physical level with the process of acquiring knowledge and skills – or again, as my AIN colleague Gary Schwartz says, it “gets the learning into our bones.”
While Pinker does not fully buy into the proposition that we never use abstractions to support our thinking, he does appear to agree with the central place of metaphor in the process of learning. In particular, Pinker refers to metaphors (such as THE ATOM IS A SOLAR SYSTEM or AN ANTIBODY IS A LOCK FOR A KEY) as “mechanisms that the mind uses to understand otherwise inaccessible concepts.”
This discussion reminded me of a three-day improv retreat I attended several years ago in Asheville, North Carolina. In one session (whose context I can’t recall), two participants played the roles of friends who were emailing across a long distance. As one participant “typed” her first message to the other, she began to speak out loud as a means of communicating the contents of her “note” to her scene partner and the audience. Immediately, however, another player spontaneously leaped onto the stage and began playing the role of the “message” by crawling back and forth between the “typists” and relaying their respective communications.
This struck me as a perfect example of putting concrete form to abstractions such as “a message” and “electronic communication.” I can think of several more examples on the improv stage where players used physicality to personify concepts – emotions, states of being, collective enterprises – that otherwise would have only been verbalized.
For the Daily Improviser, this is one of the most powerful aspects of improvisation: It reinforces the use of concreteness in our thinking and our communications! Not only does this help us clarify our messages but it helps us to engage on a physical level with the process of acquiring knowledge and skills – or again, as my AIN colleague Gary Schwartz says, it “gets the learning into our bones.”
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