Surfaces and Essences
Page 98
E/hν (number of blackbody quanta) as analogous to N (number of ideal-gas molecules), 459
Earth: mapped onto Jupiter, 44–45; pluralization of, 44
eating, diverse styles of, and zeugmas, 9–10
eclipse: frame blend used to explain, 367; as a shadow, 204–205
Eddington, Arthur, 496
Edison/Franklin analogical conflation, 275
education and naïve analogies, 389–394, 411–434
educational system, failures of, 389, 391–394, 410, 412, 414–416, 418, 421
“ego the size of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon”, cultural knowledge required to understand, 128
Ehrenfest, Paul, paradox discovered by, 498
Eiffel Tower, exploited in caricature analogy, 322–323
Einstein, Albert, 109, 130, 132, 361: alleged abandonment of own ideas, 461; analogies by, 32, 452–499; as analogous to Ellen Ellenbogen, 468; as analogous to Gerhard Gelenk, 468; attacking fundamental questions, 488; attracting mosquito, 163, 165; belief in thermodynamics as bedrock of physics, 458; black body/ideal gas analogy by, 457–459, 463; deep faith in his own analogies, 459–463; discovering and interpreting E = mc2, 463, 465–485; discovering equivalence principle, 491–495; explanation of gravity by, 18, 489–496; face of, 183–184; finding analogy between gravity and Gauss’s geometry, 498; generalizing via intuition, 473–474, 477, 483, 484; guided by sense of cosmic unity, 468, 473–474, 480, 481, 484, 486, 495, 500, 501; handing weapons to his critics, 460; “happiest thought of my life”, 493–494; inner mental state of, 477–478, 480–481, 483–485, 491, 495, 498; learning to read, 109; likening gravity to fictitious force, 491–492; low-level analogies by, 454–455; magically combining two ideas of Galileo, 492; making an analogy between analogies, 495, 502; misled by his own analogy between gravity and electrostatics, 489–491; missing the analogy of 3-D space to 4-D space-time, 499; as “one smart dude”, 75; Poincaré’s letter of reference for, 501; pondering a rotating disk, 497–498; positing two types of mass, 476; quest for beauty by, 477–478, 485, 495, 500; rapid essence-spotting by, 454, 458, 463, 486, 501; refinding Wien’s analogy, 458; as salient entity, 320; sandwich-like name of, 215; seeing self as donkey, 454; of sex, the, 222; stereotype of, as superlogical thinker having no need to seek analogies, 453, 500; thought experiments by, 487, 491–492, 493–494, 495–496; transformed into world figure, 496; unification as characteristic style of thinking of, 454, 477, 485, 486, 491, 500, 501; word choices by, 454–455
electric field: due to moving magnet, 493; oscillating in vacuum, 212–213; vanishing thanks to shift of reference frame, 493–494 electromagnetic induction, 493
electromagnetic waves, 212–213, 455–460, 462, 469–471, 483; see also light
electromagnetism, as area of physics, 467–468, 485
elephant in a store window, 298
elephant in the room situations, 174, 514
elevators, use of by analogy, 23
Ellenbogen, Ellen, 463–464
Ellie, frame blend by, 364–366
email address/postal address naïve analogy, 385–387
embarrassed analogy-making computer blurting out apology, 401
embodiment and analogy-making, 287–289
emergence of a concept’s essence over time, 200–204
Emmas, category of, 226–227
emotions: key role of in encoding and reminding, 169–171; powerfully evoked by analogies, 310–312
emperors, as translation of cor(o)nets, 379–380
encoding of experiences: analogies at the very abstract level of, 354; based on features at surface and deeper levels, 163–166; constraints on, 171; in Copycat microdomain, 346–349, 353–354; enigma of, 161, 346. 348; errors caused by, 274–275; implausibility of clairvoyance in, 173–174, 353–354; involving local, global, abstract, and emotional aspects, 161–162, 169–171, 175; as opposed to total rote recording, 172; as unconscious act of selection, 165–166; at various levels of abstraction, 335
energy: behaving analogously to mass, 472; behaving analogously to strange mass, 479, 484; conservation of, 472; distinction between two varieties of, 480; liquid versus frozen, 480; mutating from one form to another, 479; possessing mass, 471–478, 482, 483–484; potential, 479–480; silently lurking in normal mass, 482, 484
energy/strange mass analogy, 479–480, 484
engines: for categorization, 15; for inference, 20; for searching, 25, 115, 220, 402; for translation, 369
English language: borrowings from French, 122; breakup of siblinghood in, 77; contrasted with Chinese, 12; contrasted with French, 8, 11, 77, 78, 79–80, 81–83, 89, 97, 101, 102, 113, 119–123, 465; contrasted with German, 8–9, 465; contrasted with Indonesian, 77; contrasted with Italian, 8, 11, 89; contrasted with Russian, 9–10
enrichment via impoverishment, 250
entropy calculations leading to light quantum, 458
equals sign: as denoting identity of two items, 407–409; as denoting operation + result, 407–411; invention of, 408; meaning of, in E = mc2, 473
equations: in advertising, 409–410; asymmetric conception of, 407–411, 474; causal interpretation of, 410–411, 474; as requiring interpretation, 473; turned around, 409–410
equivalence principle, 491–495; extended, 495–496
error, as category with blurry boundaries, 41, 281
errors: caused by real-time categorization pressures, 258, 261; caused by semantic proximity, 270–278; deep problem of explanation of, 264; due to frame blend of physical world with virtual world, 404–407; high-level analogies giving rise to, 268, 274–278, 280; versus children’s semantic approximations, 41, 270; as visible traces of subterranean processes, 259, 261; see also action errors, frame blends, lexical blends, speech errors
esprit d’escalier as a concept available to francophones but not to anglophones, 121
“essence”, double meaning of, in French, 291
essences: compression of situations down to, 261; hidden by surfaces, 114–115; revealed by caricature analogies, 317–318, 320–323, 326–330; revealed by repeated conceptual extensions, 200–204, 255, 295, 397–398
essence-spotting: in caricature-analogy creation, 321–322, 324–330; by children, 42; in Copycat domain, 350; as crux of intelligence, 125–127, 426–427, 452, 463; in deeply novel situations, as rare gift, 131; by Einstein, 454, 458, 463, 486; implausibility of instant carrying-out of, 173–174; made easy by prior placement of conceptual pitons, 131; role of expertise in, 174; as routine and unseen, 18; as secret of generalization in mathematics, 449; time taken in, 466
esthetics, in Copycat domain, 349–352, 355–357, 359–360, 353–364; as driving Einstein, 477–478, 485, 495, 500
“étudiant” as both gendered and generic in one sentence, 194
Euler, Leonhard, 210, 443, 449
Eureka moment, 250–252, 300–301
Europe/Asia analogies, 306–307, 334
Everest, Mount, 109, 320, 367
Everett, David, 109
everyday imagery versus grand historical precedents, 333–335
everyday life versus book-learning, 391–394
evolution of a concept as revealing its essence, 202–204
evolutionary interpretation of the lure of the superficial, 338
“exactly the same thing”, 143, 152, 153, 346, 347, 358, 364, 379, 399, 407, 495, 520
expectations embedded in “and” and “but”, 70–75
experiments on memory retrieval, flaws in, 337–340
expert knowledge and hierarchical levels of categorization, 236–246
expert-level versus novice-level categorization, 342–344, 346
expertise: in everyday life, 344; facilitating essence-spotting, 174; nature of, 238–246; precision and depth as keys to, 246
experts’ blindness to shallow features, 343–344
explanatory caricature analogies, 324–330
exponents/subscripts analogy by Doug, 169–170
ex post fac
to diagrams of a deep analogy, as casting no light on its creation, 160
extension versus intension of a category, 55, 244
extra force to explain anomalous motions in an accelerating frame, 488
extrapolation of one’s past experiences as an irresistible mental force, 305–307, 310–313
eyelash/eyelash analogy, 155–156, 517
—F—
F = ma, 410, 491
fables as labels of categories, 111–118
Fabre, Jean-Henri, 388
fabric internal to various letter strings, 353–354, 356–357
facial remindings, 181–184
fake boat and fake tango category, 521–522
Falen, James, 315
Falkland Islands War, Greece’s position in, 332
false hopes engendered by irresistible analogy, 313
fame leading to canonization, 221
familiarity, effects on categorization of, 390–391
Faraday, Michael, 493; of window-glass making, the, 222
far-fetched analogies, deliberate search for, as non-recipe for creativity, 251, 452
fathers encoded as disillusioners, 171
fatuity, gratuity, and vacuity, 282
Fauconnier, Gilles, 335, 362–364, 365, 433, 443
fauxthenticity, concept of, 176–178, 345
feminine and masculine rhymes, 380–381
Fenway (dachshund), analogies by, 180
Fermi, Enrico, 453
Ferrari, Lodovico, 445
Ferré, Léo, 221
Ferro, Scipione del, 438
Festinger, Leon, 115
fictitious forces, 488, 491–492
“fictitious” (negative) numbers, 440
fields, electric and magnetic: oscillating, 212–213
fields (mathematical), 447–448
films of events as constituting episodic memory, 172
filtering as ongoing perceptual process, 298–299
fine line separating simple from deep analogies, 45, 142–143
finger-pointing analogies, 140–143; see also index finger, heart, toe finger-wiggling analogies, 350–351, 515
Finlay-Freundlich, Erwin, 496
firewalls protecting us from hackers, spam, and viruses, 396, 398
first ⇒ last conceptual slippage, 356–357
first names as defining categories, 226–227
flashlight, two-headed, 470–471
fleeting analogies, vanishing before being noticed, 282, 285–286
floppy-disk icon, outmodedness of, 402
flow of discourse, psychology reality of, 71
fluid analogies in the Copycat domain, 348, 350, 352, 357
fly on screen, removal of using mouse, 405
Flynn effect on IQ scores, 10–131
Flynn, James R., 130
“folder”, old-fashioned definition of, 397
foot, internal structure of the concept, 51
forgetfulness, selective, as key ingredient of intelligence, 426–427
formal knowledge, inadequacy of, 389, 391–394
formal operations versus mental simulation in math, 424–425, 431
formulas conflated with understanding, 391–394
“4 is to 3 as 3 is to 2” proportional analogy, 438, 444
four-dimensional space: absurdity of, 443; as analogous to three-dimensional space, 444, 453
“Four score and seven years ago” translation challenge, 368–372
“Fox and the Grapes”, fable by Æsop, 112–114; see also poems in the text, sour grapes
fractional dimensions, 444
frame blends: of American and Chinese cultures, 367–368; of car driving and video-game playing, 405; of cemetery circuit and hotel circuit, 142; of computer world and physical world, 402–407; of conferences, 142; in Copycat domain, 359–360, 363–364; creativity manifested by, 360–364; defined, 358–359; of dominos toppling and countries falling to communism, 335; of drooping cigarette and drooping penis, 362; of emperor Napoleon and emperor penguins, 380; of grocery stores, 23, 156; of lecture hall and professor’s office, 142; in light/sound analogy, 361; of name-change upon marriage and year-change every January, 148; of plate-throwing woman and her mother, 367; in scientific analogies, 360–361; of solar system and atom, 142–143; subjectivity of, 363–364; of there situations, 140–143; of two trains, 140–141; as typical analogies, 364; underlying diagram of ballet-lesson problem, 432–433; in understanding of “dent”, 363; in understanding of films, operas, etc., 361; in understanding of “safe”, 362; used by authors in the text, 366–367; versus analogies, 363–364, 366–367
frames of reference: absolute, 487; accelerating, 486, 488; indistinguishability of certain, 466–468, 486–487, 492, 494–495; shifts between, 466–468, 469–471, 487–488, 492–494, 495–496, 497–498
framing of errors as making them easy to see, 262
Franklin, Benjamin, 109, 275
freedom-of-speech joke, 358
“freeing oneself from the known”, chimerical idea of, 313–315
French Academy (Académie française), 113
French fries: combined with orange sherbet, 352; portion of, likened to bagels in a batch, 308
French language: “A rolling stone gathers no moss” in, 102; bilingual data base involving, 372–373; borrowings from English in, 122; compound words in, 87, 89; concept of hair in, 77; concept of sibling in, 77; contrasted with English language, 8, 11, 77, 78, 79–80, 81–83, 89, 97, 101, 102, 113, 119–123, 465; different translations for “time” in, 77–78; “Four score and seven years ago” in, 369–372; grammar of, exploited, for high-quality translation, 376–377; idioms in, 97, 119; “Once bitten, twice shy” in, 105; proverbs in, 101, 106, 109; this book’s realization in, 377–382; zeugmas in, 8, 11–12
Fresnel, Augustin-Jean, 212
Freud, Sigmund, 132, 259, 362, 501
Freudian slips, 259
friendship crumbling to bits, 133
fringe members of categories, 14
Fromkin, Victoria, 259
frozen assets/liquid assets membrane, breaking of, 476–477
functional and visual analogies, reinforcing, 277–278
fund-raising in American universities, 109
Funes, Ireneo, lacking ability to abstract, 188
Funk & Wagnalls 1932 dictionary, 201, 396–397
furniture, fringe members of the category, 528
—G—
Galilean relativity, principle of, 466–468, 485, 486, 492
Galilei, Galileo, 130, 466, 471; compared with two-year-old Lenni, 45; extending the concept Moon, 43–45, 147, 210, 217; hypothetically admiring Einstein, 392; seeing not moons but quote-unquote “Moons”, 64; of the soccer ball, the, 222; using the Tower of Pisa to investigate falling objects, 493, 493; work on sound waves by, 210
Galois, Évariste: discovery of key link between polynomials and radicals, 446; group theory invented by, 446–447; killed in debate, 274, 448; opening the Pandora’s box of abstraction in mathematics, 448; of tobacco science, the, 222
Gauss, Karl Friedrich, 498
Gaussian primes, 448
gearshift, as perceived by novice versus by expert driver, 340, 343, 344
Gelenk, Gregorius, 464
generalization: of Doppler effect, 470; by Einstein, 467–468, 473–474, 484; of Galilean relativity, 467–468, 485; going hand-inhand with abstraction in math, 449; as irresistible drive in mathematics, 444, 447–449; of 3-D space to 4-D space-time, 498–499; of 2-D Gaussian geometry to 4-D geometry, 499; see also category extension
general relativity, see relativity, general
genericide, 217–218
genius: compared with child, 45; irrationality at the core of (Hoffmann), 501; spotting essences of important situations, 452; versus mediocrity, silly stereotype of, 452
genius of a given language, 120–124
Gentner, Dedre, 338, 436
genus versus species, 239, 242
geometrical interpretation, as
rendering abstract mathematical concepts more real, 443
George’s thesis advisor, judged by analogy with the reader, 157
German language, 6, 8, 9, 12, 369; compound words in, 87, 465
gestalt psychology, 349–350
“get”, broken into many concepts in French, 80
Gevrey-Chambertin Premier Cru Les Cazetiers Dominique Laurent 1996, 245, 256
Ghent, Admiral, definition of intelligence by, 125
Gibson, James, 278, 345
Gick, Mary, 436
gilding the lily in the Copycat domain, 352-353
gist-finding, see essence-spotting
gists, sacrificed through wanton acts of abstraction, 107
“give”, metaphorical use of, 6, 64–65
glass of water: conflated with one-dollar bill, 280; falling floorwards, 389
glass on shelf, as multi-categorized by Mr. Martin, 189–191
Glucksberg, Sam, 228
God is a sniper category, 168
Gödel, Kurt, 455
Goldstone, Robert, lexical blend by, 265
golf concepts, typical, 49–50
golf obsession, 301–302
golfer, as example of concept with halo, 49–50
Goodman, Nelson, 302
good taste versus bad taste in the Copycat domain, 349–352, 355–358; see also dizziness
Google Translate: performance of, 369, 374, 377; techniques employed in, 368–369, 372–374
“Google” versus “google”, 218
gotta situations, 42
grammar: as a domain for analogy-making, 69–70; mastery of, as crucial to translation, 376–377
“grand”, broken into two concepts in French, 80
Grand Canyon seen solely as color pattern, 163; see also Danny
grandmother, as marginal member of category mommy, 36–37
grandparents ⇒grandchildren conceptual slippage, 276, 356
grasshopper/human analogy, 387
gravitation/acceleration analogy, 491–492, 493–494, 496, 499
gravity: bending light, 496; having only relative existence, 494; as indistinguishable from acceleration, 491–492, 493–494, 496; as needing an explanation, yet unnoticed, 18; propagation of, across space, 489–490