Quotes from James Geary

Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns.

You only really discover the strength of your spine when your back is against the wall.

For life is short and the art of writing books is very, very long.

These experiments demonstrate the conceptual synesthesia connecting our ideas of the concrete experience of space and the abstract experience of time. Our concept of physical motion through space is scaffolded onto our concept of chronological motion through time. Experiencing one-indeed, merely thinking about one-influences our experience of and thoughts about the other, just as the theory of embodied cognition suggests.

If our bodies were different, though, our metaphors would be different, as Olaf Stapledon showed in Star Maker. Crabs walk sideways, for instance. If crabs could talk, they would undoubtedly describe progress in difficult negotiations as sidling toward agreement and express the hope for a better future by saying their best days are still beside them. Our bodies prime our metaphors, and our metaphors prime how we think and act.

The theoretical physicist Richard Feynman was such a lauded lecturer in large part because, like Hui Tzu, he was skilled in finding the right analogies to illustrate his explanations of extremely abstract-and extremely difficult-concepts. He once compared a drop of water magnified 2,000 times to "a kind of teeming...like a crowd at a football game as seen from a very great distance." That description has all the precision of good physics and good poetry.

The word "kenning" comes from the Old Norse verb kenna, which is also a "seeing=knowing" metaphor, meaning "to know, recognize, or perceive." The etymology survives in words meaning "to know" in various Scandinavian languages as well as in German and Dutch. Kenna is also the source of the English "can" as well as the somewhat arcane "ken," as found in the expression "beyond my ken," meaning "beyond my knowledge.

It scares me shitless," I admitted. (The "scared shitless" metaphor derives from the physiological fact that animals in stressful situations-an antelope pursued by a lion, for example-involuntarily defecate to shed excess weight, thus speeding their flight.)

In Second Nature: Brain Science and Human Knowledge, Edelman theorizes that the human brain's astonishing interconnectivity produces consciousness and, because of the astronomical number of associations our brains are capable of making, pattern recognition is the basis not just for metaphorical thinking but for all thinking.

Few people may be consciously aware of the etymological origins of common words and phrases, but the essential metaphor-making process of comparing the unknown with the known is still vital and ongoing. This process is the way meaning was, is, and ever shall be made.

No one can achieve profound characterization of a person (or place) without appealing to semi-unconscious associations. To sharpen or intensify a characterization, a writer makes use of metaphor and reinforcing background-weather, physical objects, animals- details which either mirror character or give characters something to react to...The game proves more dramatically than any argument can suggest the mysterious rightness of a good metaphor.

Why should jokes and metaphors give such pleasure? Because we can't stand very much ambiguity. Cognitive dissonance makes us uneasy, and for good reason-survival depends on making the world as predictable as possible. So when we figure something out, when we impose order on what seems chaotic, we heave a psychological sigh of relief.

What did the Dalai Lama say when he got an electric shock? Ohm.

What color is the wind? Blew.

Why do statisticians never have friends? Because they're mean people.

A kenning is a metaphorical circumlocution consisting of paired nouns or a noun phrase. For example, in ancient Icelandic verse, a sword is not a sword but an "icicle of blood"; a ship is not a ship but the "horse of the sea"; and eyes are not eyes but the "moons of the forehead." Similarly, the earth is "the floor of the hall of the winds" or "the sea trodden on by animals," while fire is "destroyer of timber" or "the sun of houses.

Comparing your beloved to a red, red rose might be fine if you're writing a poem, but these thinkers believed more exact language was needed to express the "truth"-a term, by the way, distilled from Icelandic, Swedish, Anglo-Saxon, and other non-English words meaning "believed" rather than certain.

Why must an aphorism be brief? Because only a fool gives a speech in a burning house.

Diderot was so flustered by the affront that he only thought of a clever retort as he was walking down the stairs on his way out. The encounter led him to devise the term "l'esprit d'escalier," "the wit of the staircase," for the experience of thinking of a witty comeback only after it is too late to deliver it.

The malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

that the unknown can only be made known through metaphor and analogy. "When we pass beyond pointing to individual sensible objects330, when we begin to think of causes, relations, of mental states or acts, we become incurably metaphorical," Lewis wrote. "We apprehend none of these things except through metaphor.

Witzelsucht, in which patients compulsively share dreadful puns, facetious jokes, and socially inappropriate wisecracks.

Jive undertakes to remedy that situation with language that makes up for the dullness of mere existence.