Faux gothique de Bahlui

imagery

'But in fact what was being metaphorized were two dissimilar phenomena, since the planetary system’s motions work in terms of gravity, whereas inside the atom it is electrical forces that obtain. And so the metaphor started growing ragged and incoherent very quickly; it went from positive analogy to negative analogy. If the model was a planetary one, then how come the electrons were not continually losing energy in their orbits, as one would expect? If the inside of an atom were really functioning according to its metaphoric other half then the electron would soon lose its necessary energy and spin counter-clockwise into the nucleus.'

Dissimilitude

Some philosophers maintain that if determinism holds in our world, then there are no objective chances in our world. And often the word ‘chance’ here is taken to be synonymous with 'probability', so these philosophers maintain that there are no non-trivial objective probabilities for events in our world. (The caveat “non-trivial” is added here because on some accounts all future events that actually happen have probability, conditional on past history, equal to 1, and future events that do not happen have probability equal to zero. Non-trivial probabilities are

interwoven

   'Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,
      Now are visions ne'er to vanish;
      From thy spirit shall they pass
      No more, like dew-drop from the grass.'

The one red leaf

'....100 years ago when Rodin sculpted his great figure of The Thinker, The Thinker was, you know, in a contemplative pose and was concentrating deeply, and wasn’t you know, multi-tasking. And because that is something that, until recently anyway, people always thought was the deepest and most distinctly human way of thinking. And that doesn’t meant that I believe that all of us should sit in you know, darkened rooms and think big thoughts without any stimuli coming at us all day. I think it’s important to have a balance of those ways of thinking.'

Monetized values

‘The mind becomes narrower, men grow hot after gain, work too much, acquire too many needs….Everybody becomes plebeian, proletarian or shop-keeperish, sharp, hard, anxious and unhappy. To make money – such, nowadays is the daily concern, the all-absorbing idea– and in this country more than any other. Poverty, he writes, is generally degrading. ‘It is to some extent to avoid falling into such degradation that the English strive so fiercely after riches. They prize wealth so highly because it is, in their eyes, the accompaniment to, sustenance for and condition of morality, education and all the attributes which make a gentleman. It is under this unremitting lash that every man goes forward, drawing his load after him. And use turns into a need: even when he has reached his goal, he still goes on pulling and, in default of a load of his own, harnesses himself to that of his parish, his association, or the State.

Oxymoron

Metaphor is not simply a detection of patterns of meaning, nor is it a mere figurative distortion of meaning: it is productive of meaning in its own right. When we employ metaphoric language, we are engaging in metaphoric thought, whether consciously or not. And this is highly significant in terms of metaphor in scientific discourse.

projective imagery

When Einstein conducts one of his thought experiments, he is modelling in his mind the universe as he conceives it. He imagines that he is travelling on a beam of light. He is holding up a mirror twelve inches from his face. What happens? he asks himself. There is nothing to be seen in the mirror. At 186,000 miles per second, nothing can overtake me; nothing travels faster. So, if my image cannot travel faster than the speed of light, then it can never arrive at the surface of the mirror. That’s the thought experiment, based upon the Einsteinian model. And if I now create a phrase to encapsulate it and say ‘travelling at the speed of light is an endless stare into an empty mirror’ I have created my metaphor. One thing – the speed of light – is another – a stare into an empty mirror; each belongs to a different intellectual genus.

Housekeeping

"To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living." -Samuel Beckett

reality monitoring

...“You have to take in outside information, record it accurately and with a high degree of fidelity. You have to be able to monitor your internal thoughts, recognize they’re occurring internally, and remember them. Then you have to compare the inside with the outside. In a healthy brain, this happens without us even being aware of it.

Holiday Romance

One day the King was going to the office, when he stopped at the fishmonger’s to buy a pound and a half of salmon not too near the tail, which the Queen (who was a careful housekeeper) had requested him to send home.  Mr Pickles, the fishmonger, said, “Certainly, sir, is there any other article, Good-morning.”

The King went on towards the office in a melancholy mood, for quarter day was such a long way off, and several of the dear children were growing out of their clothes.  He had not proceeded far, when Mr Pickles’s errand-boy came running after him, and said, “Sir, you didn’t notice the old lady in our shop.”

“What old lady?” enquired the King.  “I saw none.”

Now, the King had not seen any old lady, because this old lady had been invisible to him, though visible to Mr Pickles’s boy.  Probably because he messed and splashed the water about to that degree, and flopped the pairs of soles down in that violent manner, that, if she had not been visible to him, he would have spoilt her clothes.

Just then the old lady came trotting up.  She was dressed in shot-silk of the richest quality, smelling of dried lavender.

“King Watkins the First, I believe?” said the old lady.

“Watkins,” replied the King, “is my name.”

y croit encore

......les mots «mensonge» et «calomnies» sont répétés à plusieurs reprises par les deux débatteurs, et qui se termine par un «vous êtes un petit calomniateur» de toute beauté de la part de...