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Metaphor in Cognition, Poetry and Science

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The Poetry of Knowledge and the 'Two Cultures'

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine ((PLSM))

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Abstract

This chapter draws on Mark Johnson’s demonstration that all understanding, even the most complex and systematic, is irreducibly metaphorical and shaped by our human bodily experience. From this viewpoint, the metaphors in which poetry abounds do not represent a wild or unruly element, but rather an intensification of a basic means of understanding, as Lakoff and Turner have argued. In science, metaphors are powerful tools which both shape and constrain understanding, as has been shown particularly by Theodore L. Brown.

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Correspondence to John G. Fitch .

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Fitch, J.G. (2018). Metaphor in Cognition, Poetry and Science. In: The Poetry of Knowledge and the 'Two Cultures'. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89560-4_8

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