Jacob’s Ladder: Logics of Magic, Metaphor and Metaphysics

Abstract

In this article, we discuss some issues concerning magical thinkingforms of thought and association mechanisms characteristic of early stages of mental development. We also examine good reasons for having an ambivalent attitude concerning the later permanence in life of these archaic forms of association, and the coexistence of such intuitive but informal thinking with logical and rigorous reasoning. At the one hand, magical thinking seems to serve the creative mind, working as a natural vehicle for new ideas and innovative insights, and giving form to heuristic arguments. At the other hand, it is inherently difficult to control, lacking effective mechanisms needed for rigorous manipulation. Our discussion is illustrated with many examples from the Hebrew Bible, and some final examples from modern science.Keywords Syllepsis · Paronomasia · Magical thinking · Heuristic arguments Love and marriage, Go together like a horse and carriage; This I tell you brother, You can't have one without the other.Try, try, try to separate them, It's an illusion; Try, try, try, and you will only come, To this conclusion.-Frank Sinatra, Sammy Cahn, and Jimmy van Heusen (1955).

Dynamic Oppositional Symmetries for Color, Jungian and Kantian Categories

“…Finally, "small phonetic mutations" can generate new triliteral roots, where clusters related by paronomasia, i.e. that sound alike, are likewise related by meaning; see [89], [143], [170,172] and references therein.…”

“…Moreover these methods have excellent operational characteristics, being usually easier to implement, statistically more efficient, and exhibiting better computational performance than traditional alternatives. For technical details, many application examples, mathematical and logical characterizations, and discussion of their philosophical and epistemological consequences, see [21], [41,42], [49], [66], [67], [98,99], [108], [133][134][135], [155], [160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173][174][175].…”