In Metaphor and Thought, Hugh Petrie and Rebecca Oshlag argue that “metaphor is one of the central ways of leaping the epistemological chasm between old knowledge and radically new knowledge” (Petrie and Oshlag 583). Scientists compare cognitive domains in order to apply widely “idealized cognitive models” to previously unexplained natural phenomena (Kövecses 173). In absorbing “truly new forms of knowledge and understanding,” learners construct, reject, and accept metaphorical comparisons of concrete domains, or familiar concepts, to the more abstract target domain, which the learner attempts to understand. To configure a precise model for understanding alien concepts, learners process and test the possible correspondences between the source
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Extending Oshlag and Petrie’s assertion of metaphor’s functionality as an instrument for communicating radically new knowledge, Zoltán Kövesces claims, in Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, that “each source can only structure certain aspects of the target” (Kövecses 103), and that both speakers and listeners “[understand] a concept jointly by several metaphors” (Kövecses 96). According to Kövesces, speakers and writers correspond a “hierarchy of concepts,” which he describes as a Great Chain of Being, to more abstract target domains (Kövecses 154). This metaphorical system of understanding abstract targets compliments the Event Structure Metaphor System that applies physical or social conceptual structures or movements to otherwise indescribable events. The Event Structure Metaphor System encompasses the conventionalized EVENTS ARE ACTIONS metaphor, which attributes agency or intent to events or occurrences (Kövecses 152). Kövesces classifies those target domains “accounted for as being part of either the Great Chain of Being or the Event Structure metaphor” as a complex system, or the configuration of several entities and their relationships that a network of metaphors explains (Kövecses 155). Applying Oshlag and Petrie’s and Kovesces’s theories to teaching the complex system of cells to readers in chapter four of …show more content…
Individuals “blend” two or more input spaces, or domains, into a single cognitive domain, or “metal space” in which the input domains merge “imaginatively” and “counterfactually.” Indeed, Kövesces claims that this cognitive process applies to conceptual metaphors, in which the source and target domain blend, generating additional meaning about the target domain. This blending of source and target domains enables readers to extrapolate beyond the information in Biology and to understand each of cellular structure and function precisely. Also, domain inputs with a shared “generic space,” or an “abstract structure” that pertains to each of the inputs spaces, might merge, without a specified target domain, into a blended space (Kövesces 268-73). In understanding the cellular structure and function together, Mason, Losos, and Singer blend information from many types of cells that share a few distinctive features, despite being biologically unique overall. Though different types of cells with dissimilar functions and attributes exist in organisms, in parts of organisms, and even simply as independent organisms, the “generic space” of a small unit of organic matter
Extending Oshlag and Petrie’s assertion of metaphor’s functionality as an instrument for communicating radically new knowledge, Zoltán Kövesces claims, in Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, that “each source can only structure certain aspects of the target” (Kövecses 103), and that both speakers and listeners “[understand] a concept jointly by several metaphors” (Kövecses 96). According to Kövesces, speakers and writers correspond a “hierarchy of concepts,” which he describes as a Great Chain of Being, to more abstract target domains (Kövecses 154). This metaphorical system of understanding abstract targets compliments the Event Structure Metaphor System that applies physical or social conceptual structures or movements to otherwise indescribable events. The Event Structure Metaphor System encompasses the conventionalized EVENTS ARE ACTIONS metaphor, which attributes agency or intent to events or occurrences (Kövecses 152). Kövesces classifies those target domains “accounted for as being part of either the Great Chain of Being or the Event Structure metaphor” as a complex system, or the configuration of several entities and their relationships that a network of metaphors explains (Kövecses 155). Applying Oshlag and Petrie’s and Kovesces’s theories to teaching the complex system of cells to readers in chapter four of …show more content…
Individuals “blend” two or more input spaces, or domains, into a single cognitive domain, or “metal space” in which the input domains merge “imaginatively” and “counterfactually.” Indeed, Kövesces claims that this cognitive process applies to conceptual metaphors, in which the source and target domain blend, generating additional meaning about the target domain. This blending of source and target domains enables readers to extrapolate beyond the information in Biology and to understand each of cellular structure and function precisely. Also, domain inputs with a shared “generic space,” or an “abstract structure” that pertains to each of the inputs spaces, might merge, without a specified target domain, into a blended space (Kövesces 268-73). In understanding the cellular structure and function together, Mason, Losos, and Singer blend information from many types of cells that share a few distinctive features, despite being biologically unique overall. Though different types of cells with dissimilar functions and attributes exist in organisms, in parts of organisms, and even simply as independent organisms, the “generic space” of a small unit of organic matter