Metaphors are great for helping us conceptualize the patterns of complex topics, Metaphor is pattern recognition. However, there is a great danger in over-relying on them. Over-simplification and plain inaccurate metaphors will lead us to misjudge the pattern. Metaphors mold our understanding of a concept into its pattern, like a baking tray. We try to stuff the pattern with anything that fits, even when it’s inappropriate.
In Master Metaphors to build understanding of complex issues When crime is likened to a Virus, it is something to prevent environmentally. There is much epidemiology language used in how to handle it. However, if crime is likened to a beast, it is something to hunt down and cage, criminals are predators who lurk on prey, not people infected with a kind of sickness. The metaphor here controls the pattern we assume crime will fit into.
Also see the example of argument to war in Metaphor’s We Live By - G. Lakoff and M. Johnson.
“we don’t just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. …the structure of an argument—attack, defense, counter-attack, etc.—reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in arguing.”
🔦 Examples:
Sigmund Freud’s steam engine The pattern of repression of sexual energy within the body and subsequent release is transfer from the steam engine as a metaphor.
Understand the shortcomings of metaphor. It is used to reveal the patterns of complex issues with simple and universally understood experiences. It is also prone to generalizing and blocking us from the evidence of other patterns emerging.