Metaphorical Extension (Part 2)

Having conceptualized an idea, and established its basic precepts, we’re now able to direct it, like the lens of a camera, towards the external world. We technically embody the concept, we vectorize it, and as a result, it becomes a parameter and therefore, a rule that modifies our experience. We do this all the time, when we look for things, i.e, we have a prefigure or description of what we’re looking for. We can add to this fact that metaphorical extension only applies to pure substances, which is plausible, however, evidently, this does not mean that it does not apply to individual properties or aspects (or derivatives) of the pure substance; e.g deriving a scheme from the word ‘fruit’, or leaf; we see here that both concepts, though derivatives of ‘tree’ are no less valid and meaningful.

"In the garden of life, knowledge is the fruit of experience, ripening under the sun of persistent inquiry."

"Each page of her diary was a leaf in the vast forest of her memories, with every entry marking the growth of her personal journey."

Now this ability to ‘dictate’ the nature and course of experience by determining its object is how metaphorical extension proceeds in general, the caveat here is that ME uses the ‘idea’ of the object, i.e its precepts and rules as the context of another thing. Adverbial phrases illustrate this process.

Walking → Quickly Working → Effeciently Speaking → Loudly 

The adverb enhances the meaning of its associated verb by specifying the conditions under which actions are performed. Now, instead of temperamental or modal modifiers, consider using more elemental modifiers, natural substances, you know, metal, water, or geometrical figures, circles or lines. We use the property unique for each element to conduct a metaphorically extensive proposition. 

Water

• "The team approached the problem like water, adapting fluidly to every new challenge and finding paths around obstacles."

Metal

• "The team approached the problem like metal, standing firm and resilient in their resolve against the toughest challenges."

Circle 

• "The team approached the problem in a circular manner, continuously revisiting the same issues without finding a forward path."

Square

• "The team approached the problem like a square, building a solid and structured strategy that aligned every solution at right angles to the challenge."

Isn’t this such a common literary motif? 

Science places the essence of substance in its material properties; believing that, by analyzing its components, it may retrieve from the carcass of its object, its essence. But as Heidegger and Bergson before urged; that the true being of something is not to be found there. Strangely, it is found in the relation which that something has with another thing, it’s here where something truly acquires and reveals its being; in a nutshell, we need a background against which the concept in question can be represented, that serves the perfect contrast by which to allow the concept to be accentuated. This is explained by the Weber-Fechner law. Psychologist Wundt studied this phenomenon and wrote

“Every one knows that in the stilly night we hear things unnoticed in the noise of day” and “The stars which are brightest at night are invisible by day, and although we see the moon then she is far paler than at night. Everyone who has had to deal with weights knows that if to a pound in the hand a second pound be added,  the difference is immediately felt; whilst if it be added to a hundredweight, we are not aware of the difference at all”

“The sound of the clock, the light of the stars, the pressure of the pound,  these are all stimuli to our senses, and stimuli whose outward amount remains the same”

“What then do these experiences teach”

“Evidently nothing but this, that one and the same stimulus, according to the circumstances under which it operates,  will be felt either more or less intensely, or not felt at all, Of what sort now is the alteration in the circumstances, upon which this alteration in the feeling may depend? On considering the matter closely we see that it is everywhere one and the same kind. The tick of the clock is a feeble stimulus for our auditory nerve which we hear plainly when it is alone, but not when it is added to the strong stimulus of the carriage-wheels and other noises of the day. The light of the stars is a stimulus to the eye. But if the stimulation which this light exerts be added to the strong stimulus of daylight, we feel nothing of it, although we feel it distinctly when it unites itself with the feebler stimulation of the twilight. The poundweight is a stimulus to our skin, which we feel when it joins itself to a preceding stimulus of equal strength,  but which vanishes when it is combined with a stimulus a thousand times greater in amount”

W.James ‘The Principles Of Psychology’ (p534-6, 1890) ‘Henry & Holt edition’

“Wundt, W. (1863). Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Thierseele [Lectures on human and animal psychology]. Leipzig: L. Voss”

The Quran's view

In chapter 36, verses 37 to 40, the Quran gives an account of this same process using celestial mechanics. In only 3 verses, it explains how we cognition works. In verse 37, 

There’s also a sign for them in the night; how we strip from it daylight, so that they are left in darkness 

 وَءَايَةٌۭ لَّهُمُ ٱلَّيْلُ نَسْلَخُ مِنْهُ ٱلنَّهَارَ فَإِذَا هُم مُّظْلِمُونَ   36:37

And the sun travels or tends towards a fixed term, such is the rigour (or exactness) of the most exalted, all knowing.

وَٱلشَّمْسُ تَجْرِى لِمُسْتَقَرٍّۢ لَّهَا ۚ ذَٰلِكَ تَقْدِيرُ ٱلْعَزِيزِ ٱلْعَلِيمِ 36:38

As for the moon, we have ordained precise phases for it, until it ends up looking like an old curved palm stalk.

وَٱلْقَمَرَ قَدَّرْنَـٰهُ مَنَازِلَ حَتَّىٰ عَادَ كَٱلْعُرْجُونِ ٱلْقَدِيمِ 36:39  

It’s not for the sun to catch up with the moon, nor can the night outrun the day, for each travels in an orbit (or course) of its own.

لَا ٱلشَّمْسُ يَنۢبَغِى لَهَآ أَن تُدْرِكَ ٱلْقَمَرَ وَلَا ٱلَّيْلُ سَابِقُ ٱلنَّهَارِ ۚ وَكُلٌّۭ فِى فَلَكٍۢ يَسْبَحُونَ 36:40 

What we glean from this scheme is no more a celestial series of phenomena than a mental process, for the Quran lays no distinction between the two spheres. Celestial mechanics, for it, is a fixed and exact model showing the morphology of reason and understanding. It features the sun and moon, day and night as modules determining the relations between the different faculties of the mind.

It first posits the relation between the day and night, using the expression ‘stripping’ نَسْلَخُ , which is appropriate, and quite relevant as we shall see to the notion of preestablished harmony. If the universe is in fact established such that everything is formally linked with everything else, so that every element and being has its own allotted place in the grand scheme of the universe, then it makes more sense to use an expression such as ‘stripping’ or ‘peeling off’ to describe the first act of perception than say ‘forming’ or ‘coming into contact with’, which confirms prestablished harmony as a formal condition. 

Antinomies are the basis of perception

Life and death, hunger and food, waking and sleep, male and female, are all formal conditions and unities before any distinction is registered between them in experience; for experience and in-experience are themselves formally united. Experience is a process of differentiation, if not directly between ourselves and our objects, then between the objects themselves. This differentiation is only possible if the things between which there’s said to be difference, are formally and originally united. It’s In this sense the expression ‘stripping away’ or ‘peeling off’ نَسْلَخُ is to be understood.

So what modern cosmology calls ‘singularity’ expanded through what it calls the Big Bang, is true from a preestablished harmony standpoint. Now it becomes clear from the context which the expression denotes that the phenomena of day and night signify that first act of psychic differentiation. It shows the phenomena from a first person perspective. Now turn to the expression ‘Darkness’ مُّظْلِمُونَ, a term used in the Quran in the context of ethics, to mean ‘misguided’, yet used here to mean ‘darkness’. This is a common trait of metaphorically extensive concepts and of metaphorical extensity in general, that its concepts should be morphotic and adapted to their contexts, yet maintaining their essential form; the common denominator between darkness and misguidence is not difficult to see. 

In the process of understanding or analysis, it’s given that what’s analyzed or understood should be obscure at first, arcane and shadowy, and by gradual acquaintance and assimilation of the object, we grow more and more informed, and the object, less and less obscure and shadowy. Now does this not emulate the relation between night and day? And does not the process presuppose, as a condition of its possibility, having formally known, albeit not consciously, but ontologically, the object of the experience?, this is Kant’s idea of the pure concept, which is valid apriori, simply put, a program containing the general condition under which alone the category can be applied to any object (B178,179). This is Plato’s doctrine of anamnesis, which suggests, following a similar analytic process that we have knowledge of things before birth, and that in the aptly poetic phrase, ‘all-knowing is remembering’. 

See Part 3 for the elaboration