In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

essential continuity between the mundane and quotidian and some of the highest feats of human endeavour. MacCormac isstriving to achieve an account ofthe logical foundationofsemantic structures in which the operation of metaphor may be understood; he explicitly disclaims that his model represents an attempted description of any actual operatingmental software. Yet he is obviously interested as well in seeing if his account is congenial to contemporary theories of cognitive functioning-in particular the modus operandi of semantic memory. For his purpose he requires an account of recall in terms of reconstruction rather than retrieval, and he cites another eclecticselection from contemporary offerings which provides an adequate explanatory base for how it is that conceptual nodes which are remote in the semantic network can be simultaneously stimulated . His hypothetical account of degrees of similarity and difference of associations of concepts in terms of the relative lengths of vectors in a semantic space is certainly intuitively satisfying. How such patterns of association are activated is not known, but MacCormac suggests that there may be a similarity with the process of mnemonicswhere patterns of one kind or another carry on their form (rhythm, visual gestalt, number sequence, etc.) high-level codes that facilitate acts of memory that are almost inconceivable in their extent and in the remoteness of the concepts connected. MacCormachimself isat his most intriguingly metaphorical when he looksat how it is that we can establish prototypical or natural categories in the first place-that is, how our cognitive processes are grounded in external reality. The assertion that natural categories “build bridges to the physical world” is easily understood. Projectingthis knowledge isomorphically onto the abstract realms of epistemology is not too difficult. But what about the idea of Nature “cutting itself at itsjoints” (page 147)?Nature as the Great Dissector is an analogy in terms of personification that is not hard to understand. Here again though, it is the disanalogies that disturb. How could any real-world dissector take himselfapart at his ownjoints?True there is a remote association with similar metaphors for self-referential acts, such as, ‘pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps’, or, better, with the metaphor coined by Otto Neurath (and cited with approval by MacCormac) of “philosophy and science as in the same boat-a boat which ...wecan rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it”. But neither of these seems to provide an analogue quite close enough for us to make the imaginative leap that leads to new understanding .Since the idea of natural categories is an important element in the argument against the claim that a//language is metaphorical and hence that there can be no literal statements (here MacCormac makes interesting use ofthe work of Rosch on the apparent universality of natural categories in the perception of colour), it is important that such implausibilities be ironed out. In a brief afterword MacCormac asks whether we should not set out on a further enterprise to establish an ethics of metaphor, given its importance in our understanding of the world, in our culture and even in our evolution. Are there right and wrong ways of using metaphor? Given its central importance in the creative processes of both art and science, few would deny the interest of such a quest. But how would this be different from traditional moralising about the possible deceitfulness of rhetoric in general, a topic which has haunted discussions of style and communication since Roman times? And where is such an ethics to come from, given the innumerableand deliquescentways that feelings and emotions infect the generation and understanding of metaphor? 1recommend this penetrating and suggestive book to all readers ofleonardo,whatever their discipline. Although it is quite technical, the patient reader will find much illuminating material. BeyondEngineering:EssaysandOther Attempts to FigureWithout Equations.Henry Petrowski. Illustrated by Karen Petrowski. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1986. 256 pp. Trade, $17.95. ISBN: 0-312-07785-8. Reviewed by LeonTsao,Earth Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, I Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A. According to Henry Petrowski, modernengineering students are aware of the ‘two cultures’ problem and are interested in addressing it. He is in a good position to know, professing civil...

pdf

Share