3. The Extensiveness of Metaphor in Philosophy.
One corollary of the root metaphor theory is that any
treatment of the topic of metaphor in philosophy
would spread over the whole history of the subject.
Not only are the great traditional systems caught up
in the action of metaphorical interpretations, but the
cultural concepts and institutions dominating the
beliefs and values of ordinary men are impregnated
with them. Common sense and ordinary language have
long been saturated with the presuppositions of
Platonic, Aristotelian, and Cartesian metaphysics, and
lately in many cultures with the Hegelian dialectic
and contextualistic operationalism. If to these relative-
ly adequate philosophies are added the metaphorical
presuppositions of a number of humanly fascinating
inadequate philosophies such as animism and mysti-
cism, the spread of the influence of philosophic meta-
phors in the cultural thought and practices of men is
enormously extended.
The mention of animism leads one inevitably to think
of mythology. Here metaphor runs rampant—and with
cosmic references also. Its intent is apparently to be
as philosophically explanatory as Aristotle's categories
of form and matter or A. S. Eddington's Space-Time
and Gravitation. This close relation of primitive myth
to the relatively adequate philosophies named above
in respect to the explanatory use of metaphor should
not prejudice one against the relatively adequate world
hypotheses or their presuppositions incorporated in
modern common sense and in modern science and
logic. As long as men must make hypotheses to solve
their problems, they will seek analogies to stimulate
their invention, and when these analogies generate
explanatory categories, these immediately function as
explanatory metaphors. The important thing is to find
explanatory hypotheses that are widely confirmable,
and here is where the difference lies between primitive
myth and adequate hypothesis.
