The Literary Mind by Mark Turner

Author:Mark Turner [Turner, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 0195104110
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

MANY SPACES Q. 95

However, a second possible response in the social debate occurs when those in the target reject the projection, on the claim that the two groups do not belong to a category at all. It might be claimed, for example, that violence is central to men but not to women and that any generic space that lumps them together does a disservice to women and is to be rejected; that the rich are inherently dishonest while the poor are inherently honest and that any generic space that lumps them together does a disservice to the poor and is to be rejected; that white culture is essentially a culture of ice and therefore cold while black culture is essentially a culture of the sun and therefore warm and that any generic space that is pro- posed as a category that applies to both of them is to be rejected; that conven- tional marriage involves asymmetry between the man and the woman while same- sex marriage has no such asymmetry and so any generic space proposed to lump them together is to be rejected. VVhat is at issue here is of course not in the slightest degree any particular ideological view but rather the fact that all ideological views use parable to judge and reason. Parable is an instrument of thought and belief and consequently of argument.

The cultural tussle over the analogical pressure of “same-sex marriage” upon conventional category structures provides daily journalistic copy and stirs pas- sions. It is an example of the role played by blended spaces in our understanding of cultural and social reality, and of our place in that reality. Blended spaces play the identical role in the world of basic science. Consider the case of “artificial life.” If a mental space that includes biological life has as central information “embodied, developed through biological evolution, carbon-based,” and so on, then “artificial life”-which comes from a computer lab and is not based on car- bon#will always be an analogical concept, and “artificial life” will not belong to the category “life.” It will be a provisional category extension, like “He’s a real fish.” But computer viruses, for example, share abstract structure with biological organisms. As the generic space that can be projected from biological life and imposed on computer events grows more useful, some people may be tempted to change their conception of the status of this information as carried in the source. The generic space involved in the concept “artificial life” could in principle come to constitute the central structure of the source. In that case, “artificial life” would become a subcategory of life. At present, “artificial life” is an analogical projec- tion of evident utility that seems unlikely to displace conventional category con- nections. But that situation could in principle change.

Blended spaces play a routine role in the development of even the most fun- damental scientific concepts. Mass and energy, once conceived as belonging to two different categories, have been reconceived. The blended space of mass that is simultaneously energy has become the new category: Mass is energy and energy is mass.

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