Missing link : the evolution of metaphor and the metaphor of evolution / Jeffery Donaldson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Donaldson, Jeffery, 1960- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Metaphor.

Psycholinguistics.

Evolution (Biology)--Social aspects.

Evolution (Biology).

Cognitive science.

Literature and science.

Science--Social aspects.

Science.

Humanities.

Physical Description:

xii, 494 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2015]

Summary:

We look for missing links in the sciences and humanities, but the essential missing link - metaphor - is always in front of us. In Missing Link, Jeffery Donaldson unites literary criticism and evolutionary and cognitive science to show how metaphor has been with us since the beginning of time as a seed in the nature of things. With examples from centuries of poets, critics, philosophers, and scientists, he details how metaphor is a chemistry, an exchange of energies forming and dissolving, and an openness in the spaces between things. He considers the ways in which DNA learns how to liken things that have been, how mutation makes errors and then tries them on, and how evolution is hypothesis - nature's way of "thinking more." The mind is a matrix of relations: neural synapses cascade into ever-changing pathways and patterns. Metaphor is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is the unbroken thread between matter and spirit. Whether offering analysis of a turn of phrase or chemical reaction. Missing Link presents a vision of literature that is also a vision of the cosmos, and vice versa. It enters the debate between evolution and religion, and challenges scientists, literary theorists, and religious advocates to rethink the relations between their disciplines. Book jacket.

Contents:

"Combinatorial algorithms"

"Peyne and wo" : metaphor among the discourses

Chemistry : dualities that enliven

DNA and the three R's

Graceful errors : the mutation of metaphor

Possibilty naturalized : the story of evolution

Metaphor and cognition

A word aside : the detour that became a thrroughfare

The metaphor of consciousness

Megaphors : the seeing as tool

Natural and design evolution in culture

The evolution of literature

Spirit and its metaphoric environment

"Til the ductile anchor hold" : the allowing conditions of metaphor.

Notes:

"Legal deposit second quarter 2015"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 437-476) and index.

Other Format:

Donaldson, Jeffery, 1960-, author. Missing link.

ISBN:

9780773545182

0773545182

9780773545199

0773545190

OCLC:

895338498