by Mark Turner
Prototypical actors—human beings and many animals—are recognized as self—moving and as capable of sensation. Self—movement, like all movement, is recognized by means of dynamic image schemas: we recognize an event of self-
HUMAN MEANING Q. 21
movement when we recognize it as conforming to an image schema of self- movement. It is more difficult to say how we recognize sensation by actors other than ourselves, since we can have only our own sensations, not theirs. We can perceive their movements but we cannot perceive their sensations. We must infer their sensations by analogy with ourselves: they appear to move in reaction to sensations just as we would. We recoil when startled; we track a visual stimu- l.us; we turn from an unpleasant smell. They appear to do the same things. We see the catjump backward in surprise or move when it recognizes a bird, and we infer the cat’s sensations from its movements. Recognizing objects (other than ourselves) as having sensations depends in this way upon recognizing them as self-moving: we can infer their sensations from their self-movements. This is already parable: We see a small spatial story in which an actor other than ourselves behaves in certain ways, and we project features of animacy and agency onto it from stories in which we are the actor.
Prototypical objects can be moved. Objects that are prototypical actors are perceived as able to move themselves and able to move other objects. If actors move objects, what moves the actors? What is the source of their movement? One answer that has come up historically is the soul. The soul is what moves the body. The body is the object the soul moves as a consequence of its own self- movement. In On the Soul, Aristotle surveys theories on the nature of the soul, showing that in nearly all of them, soul is regarded as having movement and sensation. His survey testifies to the antiquity and durability of recognizing actors as movers and sensors. This abstract concept of the soul is created by a para- bolic projection. We know the small spatial story in which an actor moves a physical object; we project this story onto the story of the movement of the body. The object projects to the body and the actor projects to the soul. In this way, parable creates the concept of the soul.
When Aristotle writes of self-movement, he appears to be thinking of move- ment complexes, because something that is self-moving uses its capacity for self- movement often, making the trajectory of its movement irregular. A horse, for example, does not move the way a cannon ball moves or the way an apple falls from a tree or the way a ball rolls down a smooth incline: the horse moves here and there, to one side and the other, moving its head this way and that. The movement of a person or an animal looks like a complex of many movements, resulting in a complex traj ectory. In short, the image schema for recognizing the self-movement of an actor is more detailed than the image schema for recogniz- ing the “self-movement” of the ripe apple’s fall to the ground.
We detect se[f-movement by an object when we recognize an image schema of movement not caused by external forces. We detect animacy when this image schema is a complex of a number of movements. We detect caused motion when
22 .8 THE LITERARY MIND
we recognize a complex dynamic image schema in which the motion of one obj ect causes the motion of another object. We detect animate agency when we recognize an image schema of animacy combined with an image schema of caused motion, as when a baby reaches out (animacy) and picks up the rattle (caused motion). The causal object in an image schema of ani mate agency is usually rec- ognized as an actor.
These recognitions do not stand up scientifically. We know that the wind may move variously and blow the leaves in subtle and varied patterns, or that the acid may eat the metal violently and erratically, thus fitting image schemas char- acteristic of actors, yet we do not want to place the wind and the acid in the same category with human beings and animals. But our reluctance to do so shows only that when we acquire a sophisticated scientific knowledge, we discount the validity of some of our recognitions. For virtually the entire history of human cognition, it has seemed plausible to regard the wind as an honorary actor because although it lacks sensation, it has the image schemas of animate agency. To the intelligent newborn child, the ouncy voice-activated mobile above the crib that moves when the child vocalizes may seem to be an excellent candidate for actor.
RESEARCH ON IMAGE SCHEMAS
The term image scbema was proposed by Mark Johnson, but the notion has a long lineage and many current cousins. Here, I review some of the most salient research. In “Further Reading on Image Schemas” I list some general introduc- tions to image schemas as well as the specific works I cite in this section.
IMAGE SCH EMAS IN TH E B RAIN. It is relatively easy to see image schemas at work in behavior and language. To walk in the rain, we must go ozctsz'a’e our /Jouse-container so we will not be under a roof that stops the rain from filling down onto us, and we must move along a pat}; out of doors.
It is harder to locate image schemas at work in the brain, but there are early indications. The cerebellum, for example, has traditionally been recognized as a specialized part of the brain suited for neuronal group patterns whose activation results in sequences of precisely timed and coordinated movement, like throw- ing a curve ball or touch—typing a common word or playing a theme on the piano. What we would like to know is how such brain patterns for spatial movement are connected across modalities: When we see someone throw a rock at a win- dow, the visual image schemas according to which we recognize and ur1der— stand the event are presumably connected to the kinesthetic image schemas according to which we perform the event, the auditory image schemas that belong to the event, and the tactile image schemas of touching the rock. Theo-
HUMAN MEANING Q. 23
ries of connections between such image schemas have only recently been devel- oped and remain speculative. Antonio Damasio has proposed a neurobiologi- cal model of “convergence zones” that might have something to say about such cross—modal integration. His model “rejects a single anatomical site for the integration of memory and motor processes and a single store for the meaning of entities or events. Meaning is reached by time—locked multiregional retro- activation of widespread fragment records. Only the latter records can become contents of consciousness.” Because a higher—order convergence zone is cross- modal, it offers a site for activating different neuronal patterns corresponding to the identical image schema across different modalities.
The most specific evidence of image schemas in the brain comes from reports of what are known as “orientation tuning” columns. The primary visual cortex responds to moving bars of light in an interesting way: A given neuron will have a preferred “orientation tuning”—it will respond best to a bar at a given angle. Other neurons in the column appear to have the same preferred stimulus, so that the column constitutes a neuronal group of cells that fire together in time in an organized manner to recognize a line at a preferred angle. Different orien- tation columns prefer different angles. In this way, orientation tuning columns work like neurobiological image schemas for structuring certain kinds of visual experience and for understanding it. These orientation tuning columns in the primary visual cortex are connected to neuronal groups in another, separate visual map, known as V2, and these two connected visual maps respond coherently to the same preferred stimulus, which suggests that image schemas in primary visual cortex are coordinated with analogous image schemas in V2.
Gerald Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection offers a suggestion for a general neuroscientific explanation of image schemas. In simplistic outline, it has the following logic. A sensory sheet (like the retina) projects to various regions of the nervous system (called “maps”). For any particular map, repeated encounter with a stimulus results in changes in synaptic strengths between neu- rons in the map, thus forming up (“selecting”) certain neuronal group patterns in that map that become active whenever the stimulus is encountered. For any particular stimulus object, there will be many neuronal group patterns in many maps. (For example, there are different m
aps for different modalities, like vision, and for different submodalities, like form, motion, and color.) These various neuronal group patterns in the various maps are linked through another hypo- thetical neurobiological process Edelman calls “reentrant mapping”: a given stimulus will result in activity in many maps, and these activities are linked reinforcingly through “reentry.”
For example, an image schema for containerwould be a coordinated dynamic interaction across neuronal group patterns in various maps that arose through
24 ..;‘3 THE LITERARY MIND
experiential selection and reentry during encounters with a great variety of things that gradually came to be categorized as containers exactly because we take ‘them to share this dynamic interactional image schema. The image schema itself needs no translation: it is meaningful, when activated, as corresponding to this category.
It would be a mistake to overwork or overinterpret these beginning results. It is not clear how to connect the evidence for image schemas in the study of the mind to the evidence for image schemas in the study of the brain. Perhaps the neurobiological analogue of an image schema is not one neuronal group pattern but rather the complex interaction of several neuronal group patterns in differ- ent sites, all coordinated. The best evidence to date of the specific nature of image schemas still comes from the study of language.
IMAGE SCHEMAS IN BASIC-LEVEL CATEGORIES. Outside the neurosciences, psychological studies are beginning to provide evidence for the role of image schemas in categorization and cognition. Psychologists Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn Mervis and a range of associates have made insightful discoveries in the last fifteen years concerning the conceptual categories of concrete objects. Rosch and her colleagues showed that there is one level of abstraction around which most information is organized. They call it the “basic” level—the level of con- cepts like dog, table, car, tree, house, bicycle, spoon, and girqfle. The basic level, essentially, is the level at which we partition our environments into objects with which we interact in small spatial stories: clmir, door, knifie, ball, rock. Rosch pre- sents evidence that the basic level is the highest level at which category menIbers share overall perceived shapes and the highest level at which members call for similar interactional motor patterns. Since these overall shapes and these inter- actional patterns are image schemas, Rosch’s work provides evidence for the role of image schemas in structuring perceptual and conceptual categories. Although the tradition of research on “basic-level” categories is controversial, none of the controversy detracts from this essential point.
IMAGE SCHEMAS IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. In a 1992 article in Psycljological Rew'e=w called “How to Build a Baby: II. Conceptual Primitives,” Jean Mandler presents evidence for image schemas from clinical experiments in developmental psychology. She claims that infants develop concepts of animacy and agency on the basis of image schemas. The image schemas she proposes are closely equivalent to those we have considered above.
Mandler attempts to explain how the developing infant might go from form- ing discriminable perceptual categories: to using them for thought. She proposes that certain kinds of perceptual information are recoded into forms that repre- sent meanings. This recoding produces a set of image schemas that serve as con-
HUMAN MEANING Q. 25
ceptual primitives (in the sense of being foundational, not in the sense of being atomic, unitary, or without structure). She proposes that infants form an image schema of self-motion (“an object is not moving, and then, without any forces acting on it, it starts to move”), of animate-motion (motion with an irregular trajectory), of self-moving animate (a complex combination of the previous two), of caused motion (a trajector impinges on an object and it then moves), and of agency (a combination of the image schemas of animacy and caused motion, in which an animate object moves itself and also causes another object to move.)
Mandler, in essence, proposes a general psychological process whereby per- ceptual experience is redescribed “into an image-schematic form of representa- tion” used in building concepts.
NARRATIVE AND THE BODY
At conception, an individual human being carries an individual genetic endow- ment (genotype) that arose under evolutionary pressures of selection and that guides her individual brain as it develops in its changing environments. That genotype cannot determine the fine specifics of point—to—point wiring and activity in the individual brain, but it can (and must) contribute to setting up a nervous system thatwill reach certain target values under experience. That geno- type must do this because of Darwinian pressures: Genes that lead to less com— petent brains will be selected against. The genes implicitly provide target values for the developing brain. Those values derive implicitly from the history of selection on our ancestors. The particular target values that have arisen in our species are, at a minimum, stable regulation of homeostasis and metabolism, dispositions toward survival and reproduction, bodily movement in space, per— ceptual categorization, and the recognition and execution of small spatial stories. The combined operation of genetic influence and necessary experience of the sort inevitable for any normal human infantwith a human body in a human envi- ronment leads to the ability to recognize and execute small spatial stories.
Seen in this way, narrative imagining, often thought of as literary and optional, appears instead to be inseparable from our evolutionary past and our necessary personal experience. It also appears to be a fundamental target value for the developing human mind.
.59 3 Eu. BODY ACTION
But Apollo took from them the day of their return on’)'co‘zp 6 roiow d¢ei7».£*co vocnuov fiuup
Homer; the Odyssey
IN TH I s c H APTE R and the next, we will begin to map the basic parabolic terrain of the everyday mind. We will look at fundamental and extremely common patterns of parable that are essential to everyday thought, reasoning, and action, and that show up in literary examples for the reason that literature takes its in- struments from the everyday mind. We will see some extremely basic abstract stories and some extremely common projections of those stories. Any single detail of these many related projections may look as if it could interest only the spe- cialist, but taken together, these details provide an overall picture of the impor- tance of parable in the everyday mind.
We begin by looking at stories that involve actors engaged in bodily action. Often a spatial story has no actor. The small spatial story of a wall’s collapsing from age, for example, has no actor. Often a spatial story has many partial or potential actors and many intricate events that are brought about by no single distinct actor. The story of a bridge’s giving way after years of use is such a story. Unfamiliar or complicated event-stories like these are easy to grasp by projec- tion from simple action-stories we already know. Parable, by projecting simple action-stories onto unfamiliar or complicated event-stories, extends the range of action-stories.
Parable extends story through projection. One type of extremely fundamental projection projects action-stories onto event-stories. George Lakoffandl named this general pattern EVENTS ARE ACTIONS. An action is an event with an actor.
26
BODY ACTION 6.». 27
EVENTS ARE ACTIONS guides us in projecting familiar action—stories onto event- stories with or without actors. EVENTS ARE ACTIONS is a special case of parable: The Source story is an action—story; the target story is any kind of event—story, including action-stories.
We can observe an example of this kind of parable in the first few lines of the Odyssey, where Homer refers to the thoughts of Odysseus and to the sad fates of his shipmates as they sailed homeward toward the island of Ithaka:
Many were the men whose cities Odysseus learned and whose minds he came to know,
Many were the cares he suffered inwardly upon the sea, Hoping for his own life and the return of his crew.
He could not Save them, although he wanted to.
Their own blind folly destroyed them.
Idiots, t
hey ate the cattle of Apollo.
But Apollo took from them the day of their return.
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The shipmates, returning from the Trojan War, sailed toward Ithaka with Odysseus, but in their wanderings they died at various times and in various ways. None of them made it home to Ithaka. This is a complicated spatial story of a journey, structured by the image schema of a directed path from a source (Troy) to a goal (Ithaka). For each of the shipmates, the progress along the path halts before the goal is reached. Many events of death occur in the elaborate story of this journey, with no single clear agency responsible for all of them. Homer chooses to present this complicated spatial event—story of ajourney through par- able: He projects onto it a simple spatial action—story in which there is one actor, Apollo, who is responsible for all these deaths. The source story is an action- story not of ajourney but rather of an actor’s physical manipulation of an object: Apollo, god of the sun, “takes” “something” “away from” the shipmates. What he takes away is conceived as an object: “the day of their return.” This looks highly literary, and of course it is, since this parable intricately projects a story of physi- cal manipulation onto a story of a journey. But parabolic projections occur in literature because they are already indispensable in the everyday mind.