One thing that I noticed in the text on page two was a paragraph describing how a team of researcher apparently fixed the design of a paintbrush by designing metaphors and the metaphor that ended up saving the day was “a paintbrush is a kind of pump” which stood out as ridiculous to me as I annotated. First of all I thought “a pump? I can’t even tell what connotation of the word they even mean. the act of pumping? the thing you use to blow air in a tire? a water pump?”. Than when later in the text it is revealed that it is referring to a water pump and the connection is that they are both things that move water it still felt a little irrelevant and reaching to far until I thought about it a Little. Comparing a paint brush to a pump with the context of fixing the design of the paintbrush makes sense because when you fix a pumps design you think about how you can move water the right way, and the solution they found which was designing the brush so there was air between the bristles fits the way of thinking that you use to design a pump. A second thing I noticed was on page 4 and was the question “why are metaphors not reversible”. After some reflection I realized the reason that you can’t reverse a metaphor is because most metaphors have a subject which put in a certain context by what it is compared to. The non-subject is usually something that is well defined and has a specific connotation to put the subject in a specific light so for example something like “consciousness” usually wouldn’t make a great non-subject since consciousness isn’t something simple or well defined.
Camden,
Your annotations look amazing! I can see that you are comfortable engaging the text as a believer, doubter, scholar, and writer. Well done! Keep that up!
I’m so impressed that you tackled the challenge of explaining why metaphors don’t often work in the reverse. You’ve offered a lot of insight through your observations.