Vico’s Heroic Metaphor

Action, program, metaphor

“…Keller cites Mary Hesse's account of metaphors in science in which ‘the elements of surprise, tension, and creativity are essential … : metaphor is only interesting when it is alive – provoking surprise and shock, indicating new thought’ (1988, 4). Our models are simplified metaphors for dealing with the world (Hesse 1993).…”

“…They depend on an analogy, however thin, between the source and the target, to constrain and direct change. ‘The network is both constraining and flexible’ (Hesse 1988, 5).…”

“…When this creativity is exhausted either by paraphrase or by persistent use so that what is metaphoric becomes literal in a new context, the metaphor is dead. (Hesse 1988, 4 emphasis in original)…”