Metaphor plays a fundamental role in our perception and comprehension of our environment, not just as a means of escape from customary vision but, more importantly, as the means whereby that customary vision first becomes established. Societies differ in "metaphorical vision" because their vision of the world derives from different metaphors. Three periods in the history of the Western world are distinguished. In the Middle Ages, nature was seen primarily as a book. In the Renaissance, it was believed to be organized in the same manner as a human being. In the modern age, the most influential metaphor has been the machine. A society's choice of one metaphor rather than another as the primary vehicle through which it seeks to comprehend its environment is highly indicative of the needs and aspirations of that society.Key Words: Metaphor, book of nature, microcosmism, machinism, history of environmental attitudes.HERE have been recently signs that T metaphor is becoming a focus of growing geographical interest (Kolodny ). An awareness of the extent to which our image of the world is our own construction appears to lie at the root of this development.In an important article, Livingstone and Harrison (1981) have drawn attention to the epistemological role of metaphor and analogy. They have stressed the role that these play in creative thought as the means for breaking through the bonds of customary vision, that is, those ways of looking at the world which have hardened into unanalyzed convention. My concern here is to investigate the role of metaphor in the establishment of that customary vision.Livingstone and Harrison distinguish between the "translation" and the "interaction" views of metaphor. Neither of these, however, is adequate to my purpose. The approach to metaphor followed here is perhaps best demonstrated by contrasting it with the "translation" view, which holds that metaphors should be seen merely as collapsed similes with the preposition of comparison omitted.Certainly metaphor can be so used, but it is a minority usage. The "translation" view encourages us to imagine that authors who use metaphorical language cannot mean what they are saying; this reduces metaphor to a mere device of style. Sometimes, of course, this is all that metaphor is, but more normally this is not the case. Cohen and Nagle (1934, p. 369) provide a particularly clear description of the alternative theory of metaphor that
