MIND AS METAPHOR

“A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.” –Hamlet

Interesting find on BoingBoing. Someone at Stanford compiled a list of over 7,800 metaphors for the mind, and sumbitted it as a searchable dissertation.

Brad Pasanak: The Mind is a Metaphor

In my dissertation, Eighteenth-Century Metaphors of Mind, A Dictionary, I analyze a collection of over 7,000 metaphors that I’ve assembled from various electronic and traditional sources. I consider the tacit assumption, shared by a variety of scholars, that changing metaphors are indicative—if not productive or constitutive—of broader cultural change. In contrast, my research makes clear that, with few important exceptions, metaphors of mind in the eighteenth century display astonishing persistence in the face of revolutionary ferment and change.