On the advice of Alexander , I just finished "Wonders of the analogy and Vertigo," by Jacques Bouveresse and I was a little disappointed. I expected to see it described the fascination of thought for a well chosen analogy, still more convincing argument that rigorous, sometimes to the detriment of basic common sense. Bad luck, Bouveresse polarizes the famous controversy sparked by Sokal and his essay is only an information (convincing the rest) of verbiage philosophical basis of scientific concepts as poorly digested Theorem Gödel's incompleteness or the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. While he sometimes refers to our unreasonable penchant for beautiful images when he writes about such a nice formula Regis Debray (which he persists long): "It's obviously much too simple to be true, but it is so well told that it becomes one. " (P99). But it does not analyze the reasons that make these formulas also pretty compelling for the spirit that light to the moth *. had neither the talent nor the erudition Bouveresse, I propose in this post xochipillesque synthesis of what I liked see in his essay. In essence, the analogy is central to our mental toolbox . Its fascination for the mind is precisely because it is THE method of learning and memory par excellence. I venture to think that through this cognitive ability altogether that we constitute our primary benchmark mental representation of our world, our beliefs, values etc.. You tell me what you think of this Bouveresse remixed.
Abstract thinking comes from the analogy
I already told in this post the power of learning by unconscious association. The analogy is a sophisticated form of mental association is equally impressive. To convince you, try to unravel what lies behind a word abstract (one furniture, a city ...). The philosopher Wittgenstein showed that a term like "games" covers so many different activities that you can not find them the least common denominator: some games are fun but not all, they are sometimes several times alone, there are often winners and losers, but not always, sometimes and sometimes not so rules. He must give up to define a game by a set of prerequisites. "The result of this review, here it is: a complex network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. I see no better expression to characterize these similarities than resemblance Family as the various resemblances between members of a family: the conformation traits, eye color, gait, temperament, etc.., overlap and intersect in the same way. And I say: the 'games' form a family. " An activity is a game if it is sufficiently similar to one or another well-known game. In other words, an abstraction is built on analogies rather than on logical rules.
Analogy: a very basic cognitive ability mental
This comparison is probably a very basic cognitive ability as it can look very easily even if you have no idea of the comparison criteria. Take the example of musical genres. If you're not a seasoned musician, you're probably unable to specify a style of music (jazz, rock, country, salsa, etc..) In terms of rhythms, melodies, harmonics, tempo etc. . (Me, I always wondered about that makes the difference between the "rock" and "pop" if you have an idea that interests me) And yet you'll have no trouble labeling the style of a song you hear for the first time just because you mentally closer style of another song you know.
Knowledge is recognized
Let us one step further reasoning. When you meet a friend in the street by chance, you recognize instantly as you automatically associate her with the mental image as you do. Ditto when you recognize a smell or a noise you make a natural correspondence between a real perception and mental representation, disregarding any differences. Borges describes in his novel, the story of Funes, a man with a memory so prodigious that he could not forget. Funes felt all the pains of the world to recognize things because he could not forget the differences between the dog he had seen the day before and the same dog today, seen from another angle and in a different light.
And if the knowledge was within the same type of bridging mental thrown this time not from a particular perception and category (the trick is to coat all drooling a dog) but between several different classes and a super-category that encompasses (dogs and cats, the family of mammals )? Borges is the idea of when he wrote about the unfortunate Funès: "I suspect however that it was not very capable of thinking. To think is to forget differences, generalizing, abstracting. In overloaded world of Funes there were only details, almost immediate. "The analogy would be the pillar of our minds since thinking = conceptualize, design = recognition, and recognize = An analogy.
Logic is nothing without the analogy
course, there are other mental processes that shape our thinking, logic, for example ("All men are mortal, Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal "). But all that is rigorous, no reasoning is rooted in our minds that if he manages to associate itself with concrete illustrations that stores easily. That whole concept of mnemonic techniques (source). If the formula E = mc ² is so famous is that it makes sense , that is to say that we can associate an interpretation (the idea that matter is a form of energy as another), an application (the civilian or military applications of nuclear power), images (the formula itself, or very simple pictures of Einstein) and so on. Our memory and our more general representations of the world find their place in our mind that with the hierarchical network of associations, analogies that have sedimented in our brain.
I found in my favorite podcast ( Radiolab in English unfortunately) an illustration of the contrary idea. Eureqa (downloadable for free here ) is a great program to infer the equations of any system to be studied (mechanical, electronic, biological, etc.) from just the observed data over time. Faced with a mechanical movement, he finds himself all Newton's laws, the laws of energy conservation of momentum etc.. Crazy right? A biologist has sought to capitalize on this revolutionary program to understand the law of evolution of a particularly complex biological system that had some very strange recurrences. Eureqa he quickly spat a very simple equation that not only was fully account the comments, but predicted that in addition to other hidden reasons we have been able to check afterwards. Except that the meaning of the equation is far remained completely opaque to researchers: the exact formula but it seems unable to interpret its meaning and the mystery has only thickened. Unable to link it with other known laws, discovered the formula does not fit into our body of knowledge, it is literally indigestible by our mind.
Do not confuse Eureqa and Eureka!
Eureqa The program provides equations but can not trigger in the user clicks the famous brand that understanding, this delicious moment where things suddenly take effect by associating with each other. The image of the light that lights up above the head of him who has understanding (Source: iStockphoto / Kutay Tanir) seems particularly well chosen: this time apparently translates a sharp transition in the functioning of our neurons that synchronize their sudden shocks. It is almost Lacanian: we think in resonant in his head. I found nothing in the literature regarding the discharge of pleasure that accompanies this moment, but I am convinced that there is not much difference between this kind of pleasure "intellectual" and other carnal pleasures. And it must be true for some animals, because we have discovered several wild dolphins spontaneously practicing to "walk on their tails" just for the pleasure of overcoming this challenge, after hanging around one of their fellows drawn to do and then released. A shortcut to the intelligibility of the world
back to our sheep. We have, I think he all elements of explanation to understand the attraction of well-chosen analogies. The analogy is even more tempting when the image is familiar and used its natural association with the object in question. If in addition, it provides a simple explanation for a phenomenon difficult to understand, it becomes irresistible. It became almost impossible to talk about the economy other than sports or war metaphors, like "France wins / loses the battle for jobs"; "The G20 down growth"; "MEDEF is resisting "etc.. The problems begin when the analogy is both natural and biased. - We saw in the series of notes on globalization , the famous image of an economic war between nations is dangerous because, unlike war,
international competition is certainly not a game zero sum.
- Equally misleading picture of the economic pie that we share (speaking of jobs, wealth etc.), since often the size of the pie in question depends largely on how one chooses to cut it!
- In medicine, the image of the burning fever patient has long led the fight when it is the best defense of the organism against disease.
- In polique, the personification of the electorate is the source of the most outlandish comments ("the electorate wanted to give a measured warning to the government" or "voters showed cautious support to such candidate") as if the average vote reflected the opinion of the majority of voters.
- In biology, comparing the brain to a super-powerful computer has thick skin, then it ignores the role of emotions in its operation.
- Finally, there are unfortunate pseudo-Darwinian analogies used to justify the survival of the fittest ("survival of the fittest"). Obviously
Proverbs are all built on questionable analogies ("it does not make an omelette without breaking eggs" or "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush"), and I'm not going to get into everything limits. But as public health, I still leave this post open in order to record false analogies evident as they fall under my nose ...
* To illustrate my thesis xochipillesque all, I put images or analogies green in this post.
Sources:
Jacques Bouveresse: Dizziness and Wonders of analogy
Related posts:
Praise the rule of thumb how the solution comes to the dreamer
International Trade: an example of equality! on analogies too obvious in the economic field
Magic Pavlov: about the wonders of the mental association
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