Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
ON METAPHORS AND CONNECTIVITY
One of the tools I find to be highly useful in making intellectual connections with other people is the employment of metaphors, particularly at the start of a debate or a brainstorming process. Metaphors are a cognitive accelerant. They catch the attention of the reader or audience, raise the emotive level and instigate conceptual linking . People will react strongly against metaphors that appear to challenge their values or epistemological worldview, even if the offense merely involves a clever turn of phrase.
In other words, metaphors are useful because they are generative. They are a potential path to new insights.
There are many theories about metaphors – actually a tediously large number – but whatever the truth about how metaphors work, they are deeply involved in the breakthrough process in the sciences, capturing the phenomena as a mental model long before it can be experimentally proven true or the math worked out. That is to say, metaphors are most appropriate when coming to grips with a thing that is new and not yet well understood. They lend themselves well to simplifying complex systems down to a comprehensible essence.
Not least, in terms of memetic appeal, metaphors have the strength of a titan. They stick in our memory. Many of us are familiar with Isaiah Berlin’s ” Fox ” and “Hedgehog” but such metaphors are used all of the time by bloggers. Steve DeAngelis at ERMB recently wrote about a David Brooks column on relationships which ” Ecologists and Engineers” was the metaphor. Here is how that deceptively simple sounding phrase triggered a complex analysis from Steve:
“Other examples of engineers who have connected with ecologists are Bill Gates and Dean Kamen. The results of ecologist/engineer connections is almost universally beneficial. To be fair to Brooks, his column is about politicians (natural ecologists in that they appreciate the power of relationships) who turn into engineers once in office (believing that all problems can be solved by throwing enough resources at them). The result, Brooks writes, is often “policy failure.” To make his point, Brooks focuses on America’s failure to increase its percentage of college graduates despite having thrown billions of dollars at the challenge. He writes:
When politicians address this problem, they inevitably ignore the core issues — lack of preparedness, personal crises, disengagement, cognitive dissonance. They flee to the issue of tuition costs. They think like engineers.
In other words, even in domestic situations “disconnected defines danger.” In an earlier blog, I discussed Frans Johansson’s book The Medici Effect and noted what an intoxicating experience the Medici Effect can be. The Medici Effect is all about getting ecologists and engineers and artisans and scientists and so forth to connect. When that happens, great things result. I really think that is what Brooks is trying to say. He certainly can’t believe that ecologists promote better policies than engineers. Any myopic attempt to solve problems will result in bad policy. Resilient organizations understand that.”
I called the metaphor ” deceptively simple” because ” Ecologists and Engineers” is also a set of analogies ( another very important cognitive tool for stimulating insight) that have been presented using alliteration. The mind of the reader is being grabbed from several directions at once which may explain why Steve, busy CEO that he is, spent his limited time reading that column in the NYT. There were multiple ” hooks” in play with that metaphor that the brain finds naturally interesting, making ” Ecologists and Engineers” a dynamic concept for connectivity in itself. Good metaphors bridge domains, supercharge intellectual creativity and inspire new relationships.
Next time you have a meeting to attend or a blog post to write, try to open with a strong and artfully constructed metaphor. Then sit back and watch how people react. The results may surprise you.
