Surfaces and Essences

Home > Other > Surfaces and Essences > Page 102
Surfaces and Essences Page 102

by Douglas Hofstadter


  Simmons, Curt, 325

  simplification, as key drive in mathematics and physics, 440

  simulation, see mental simulation

  single-member categories as no different from multiple-member categories, 39

  “sitting right there”, 140–141

  situations: constant real-time encoded of, 161; doing the thinking in math problems, 432; evoking categories, 45–47, 450; lacking clear boundaries, 33, 161; multi-categorizability of, 188; possessing both superficial and deep aspects, 342–344, 515; see also analogy-making, remindings

  sixty, pointless analogy involving, 281–282, 285

  size changes, adults’ naïve view of, 295

  size, role of, in encoding of situations, 163

  skunk caused by stench, thanks to Maxmell’s equations, 411

  slippages, conceptual: between opposite concepts, 276–277, 356–357; in caricature analogies, 321–326; cascade of, 357; due to conceptual proximity, 270–278; engendering conceptual broadening, 150; in level of abstraction, 186; in me-too analogies, 144, 146–148, 151; riding on coattails of other slippages, 276, 357; role of, in creativity, 186–187, 249–256; triggered by esthetic pressures, 350–351, 352, 354, 357; unintended, from one person’s name to another’s, 224

  Smith, Peter, see Peter miswriting year

  smoking causing impotence, 362

  smurfs, limited vocabulary of, 108

  snag, outflanking of, in Copycat domain, 356–357

  “sniffing” the crux of a math problem, 450–451

  Snoopy the cat, caricature analogy involving, 319

  snow shadow, photo of, 206

  snuoiqers versus iggfruders, 11

  “so to speak”, to indicate honorary category members, 64–65

  soccer played with a bowling ball, 318

  Socrates, 16; of snails, the, 222

  solutions of polynomials, formal symmetries of, 446–447

  sound choice mediated by word choice, 25

  sound particles/light particles analogy by Einstein, 461; see also light waves/sound waves analogy sound-quantum hypothesis, 461

  sound waves, Doppler effect for, 469–471

  sounds versus noises, 126

  source–target paradigm in psychology experiments, 339–340

  sour grapes situations: category of, 29–30, 113–118, 310; contrasted with silver lining situations, 117–118

  space/space-time analogy, 498–499

  Spalding, Thomas, 436

  Spanish language, 369, 522

  speaker/driver analogy, 73

  special relativity, see relativity, special

  spectrum: blackbody, 455–459; defined, 455–456; of ideal gas, 457–459

  speech errors: blatant when placed in frames, 261; collecting of, 261; no extra insights in analyzing one’s own, 264; rampant on Web, 261; revealed by hesitations, phonetic distortions, etc., 263, 269, 281; translation of, 379; see also errors, lexical blends

  spider, as occasional member of category insect, 58

  spilling the beans as a category, 96–97

  spinning universe, 487

  Spitz, Mark, 154–155, 367

  square roots of negative numbers: analogy to ordinary numbers, 442; fear of, 442–443

  squares, as questionable rectangles, 234–238, 255

  staircases, negotiated by analogy, 507, 509, 516

  Stargell, Willie, 325–326, 383

  statistical approach to machine translation, 372–374

  staying on the surface versus going into depth, 344

  stealing, conceptual halo around, 106–107

  stereotypes: of analogy-making, 135–136, 392, 521, 529; of creativity in physics, 452; efficiency of, 466; as overhasty categorizations, 527–528; shallowness of, 346

  Stevens, Wallace, 38

  sticks for stirring coffee, absurdity of, 317, 321–322

  strange mass: analogous to energy, 479; mutating from one form to another, 479; versus normal mass, 476–485

  Streep, Meryl, of spitting, the, 222, 360

  strings, alphabetic, 347

  string/wire conceptual conflation, 277, 278

  “study” versus “office”, 47–49

  stupidity, not the same as ignoring most of the world, 426–427

  subgroups, nesting patterns of, 447

  subjectivity: of analogies, 522–526; of categorizations, 522–526

  subscripts/exponents analogy, 169–170, 174

  substitutions, Lagrange’s theory of, 446, 447

  subtraction word-problems, various strategies for solving, 421–422, 425, 429–434

  suburban sprawl likened to marginal or metaphorical uses of a word or phrase, 62, 65–66

  Sue (fictional Tim’s fictional mother), 34, 37, 38

  sunset, as seen by astronomy students, 389

  “superficial”: meaning of, 340; pejorative versus neutral connotations of, 344

  superficial features: guiding perception only in one’s domains of incompetence, 340; experts’ blindness to, 343–344; role played by, in memory retrieval, 171, 343; versus deep features, 340

  “superfluid” Copycat analogy, 352

  superimposing of instances creating more abstract concept, 23, 35, 334, 336–337, 521–522; see also schemas

  surfaces: bad reputation of, 344; as cues to depths, 345–346; as royal road to essences, 344–346

  surfaces versus essences: proverbs about, 102; of certain proverbs, 102, 106–107

  surface/depth correlation, 345–346

  surface/depth distinction: merely a surface-level contrast, 344; nonexistent for novices, 341–344

  surgeon riddle, 293

  surgery, mathematical notion of, 426

  survival: as dependent on rapid analogy-making, 506–507; as dependent on rapid categorization, 79, 505–506

  SUV/search engine analogy, 402

  swerves in discourse space, 72–73

  swimming pool/black body explanatory analogy, see black body

  “swimming pool table” analogy, 455, 457–458; see also black body/ideal gas analogy

  sword of Damocles, as a category, 95–96

  syllepses, see zeugmas syllogisms, 15–16, 193, 437

  symbol-manipulation recipes, role of analogy-making in the evocation of, 451

  symmetry: abstract forms of, 446–447; as an ideal kind of analogy, 357

  synopsis of the book, 29–32

  syntactic slots as categories, 68–70

  —T—

  tags for photos, as analogues to encodings of experiences, 172

  tail wagging the dog concept, 120–121

  tango rote memorization as member of category boat on tracks, 521–522

  Tartaglia, Niccolò, 438

  taste, good versus bad, see good taste

  technical terms, originating in everyday world, 395–400

  technology, understood through homey analogies, 394–400

  technomorphism, 404–407

  telephone-answering gaffe, 175

  “temps”, distinct concepts associated with the French word, 78

  Thagard, Paul, 330

  Thank you! situations, 46–47, 74

  “that” as mediating me-too analogies, 148–149

  “the” as naming a category, 76

  “theorem” of set theory applicable to subtraction word-problems, 431–434

  “there”, as mediating analogies, 23, 140–143, 156, 366

  “There Is No Word” (Tony Hoagland), 133

  thermodynamics, as bedrock of physics, 458

  thinking, non-logical nature of, 258, 307–312

  “thinking outside the box” and “thinking different”, as recipes for creativity, 248–249

  thirteen types of cubic equations, 439–440

  “thirties, the”, as a single historical precedent, 332, 334

  Thor/Scott resemblance, 181–182, 224

  thoughts, blended together, see biplans, lexical blends three fifties versus fifty threes, 414–415, 422


  three stars/Nobel Prize analogy, 462

  three subtractions versus one subtraction, 429–434

  throwaway analogies, see me-too analogies, banalogies

  thumb/big toe and thumb/little toe analogies, 516

  thumb/little finger analogy, 350–351

  thumb #1/thumb #2 analogy, 350, 515, 516

  Tim, developing the concept of mother, 34–38, 48

  “time”, concepts associated with the English word, 77–78, 82–83

  time: described in terms of space, 63; negative amounts of, 441

  time perception versus price perception, 429–434

  “timeless essences” of experiences, 172–174

  titmice conflated with mice, 385–386, 387

  toe/finger analogy, 464

  toe-stubbing in Copycat domain, 356–357

  Tom, who saw a cigarette “melting”, see Sander, Tom “too”, as the name of a category, 76

  total rote recording of events, 172, 174, 348

  Towers of Hanoi puzzle, naïvely misconstrued, 294–295

  tracks, as obstacle to train’s motion versus as enabler of train’s motion, 314–315

  trains, frame-blended with each other, 140–141, 366

  transculturation: in translation, 377–382; reasons to avoid, 379

  transfer in problem-solving dependent on superficial features, 340

  transforming acceleration away, 487

  translation: of Alice in Wonderland, 369–370; analogies as indispensable in, 370–372, 375–382; as decoding process, 368, 370; frame-blending’s role in, 367–368, 378–379; grammar’s key role in, 376–377; human approach to, 370–372, 374–377; by machine, 25, 367–377, 378; not necessarily entailing a loss in quality, 382; preservation of rhyme and meter in, 380–382; preservation of tone in, 370–372, 378, 381–382; statistical approach to, 372–374; superficial analogies used by machines for, 373, 375; transculturation’s role in, 377–382; understanding of meaning as indispensable for, 375–377

  translator #1/translator #2 analogy in publishing, 306–308

  traps: due to surface-level appearances, 345; due to unconscious preconceptions, 290–295

  trees versus forest, 93

  triage, for rapid categorization, served by analogy-making, 46

  tribe with dual meanings for words, 286

  triggering of memories via analogy, 18, 161; see also evocation, reminding, memory retrieval

  “trips” “placed in” “shopping carts”, 397–398

  trivial side show more fascinating than the main event, as conceptual skeleton of numerous situations, 162–166

  truck, members of Lenni’s category, 43

  true identity of objects, illusion of, 190–192

  Trump, Donald, 523

  truth, conveyed through falsity and analogy, 366

  Turkey as the Falkland Islands of Greece, 332

  Turner, Mark, 38, 335, 362–364, 365, 433, 443

  “turnip”, opacity to an English speaker, 232

  “turn the other eye”, contributing phrases in, 262–264

  Twain, Mark, 130; face of, 182–184, 520, 521

  Twain/Grieg/Einstein category, 182–184, 336, 520, 522

  Tweedledee, 436; see also Tweedledum Tweedledum, 446; see also Tweedledee Tweety, as potential member of category bird, 59–60

  Tylenol murders, conceptual sphere around, 246–248

  typefaces, 4–5, 241

  typicality of concepts, effects of, 390–391

  tyranny of analogies, 310–312

  —U—

  Ulam, Stanislaw, 502

  unconscious analogies, 259–281, 282, 285–286, 383, 386, 390, 403–407; see also categorical blinders, errors, fleeting analogies, latent analogies, naïve analogies

  understanding: as becoming used to something, 416; bypassing of, in machine translation, 368–370, 372–375; indispensability of, in human translation, 375–377

  undo, on-line concept of, frame-blended with physical world, 406

  undressing a banana, 39, 270; as flip of peeling off clothes, 126

  unfortunate incidents caused by trying to avoid them, category of, 524–526

  unification: as characteristic of Einstein’s analogies, 453–454; as key cognitive drive in mathematics and physics, 440, 441; see also cosmic sense of unity, Einstein

  universal concepts, 79, 80–81

  unlabeled concepts, see concepts

  unmarked meaning of a word, 193

  “unpacking” of a concept when needed, 50–52

  unsolvability via radicals of quintic equation, 446

  upwards leap as “recipe” for creativity, 247–252, 256

  —V—

  vacuum: in a given language, see lacunæ; as medium for waves, 212–213, 361, 455, see also black body

  vegetarianism, caricature analogy explaining logic of, 326

  vehicular shadow, 207

  verbal labels as merely hinting at categories’ nature, 94, 96–99

  verbs as names of categories, 39–42, 66–67, 399

  vertical refinement of category systems, 235–245

  “very”, as the name of a very intangible category, 75

  vibrational energy of atoms, quantization of, 456–457, 460

  Vietnam, as the Czechoslovakia of the 1960s, 334

  Vietnam War: decisions affecting the course of, 331–337; as hackneyed source for political analogies, 17

  Villani, Cédric, 500

  virtual desktop, paradox concerning, 401

  virtual world: as model for the physical world, 402–407; mouse moving things in, 252–253; understood by analogy to tangible world, 395–400

  virtuosity in memory retrieval, 110, 128

  virtus dormitiva, 248, 249

  vision and understanding, deep relation of, 286–287

  visual analogies: combined with functional analogies, 277–278; misleading, as central to an episode’s encoding, 169–170

  Vitruvius, 210

  Volkswagen on stump as Christmas tree, 253–254

  volumes suddenly perceived everywhere, 301–302

  —W—

  waiting room of a professional schema, see office visit

  wartime decisions: as opposed to domestic decisions, 337; role of analogy in, 17, 331–337

  water, as minimal beverage, 280

  watered-down, concept of, 280

  water waves, see waves

  wavelength, 210–213, 455, 459, 460

  waves : on a beach, 209; circular motion in water, 211; due to compression, 211, 213, 361; crisscrossing in blackbody cavity, 455–456; dispersive versus nondispersive, 211; Doppler effect for, 469–471; electromagnetic, 212–213, 455–460, 462, 469–471, 483 (see also light); frequency of, 210; gradual abstraction of concept of, 209–214; of hands, 209; hitchhiking on other waves, 213; interference of, 210; light understood as, 211–213, 361; longitudual versus transverse, 210–211, 213, 361; medium of, 210–214, 361; of moonlets in Saturn’s rings, 213; on the open sea, 209; period of, 210; quantum-mechanical, 214, 453; reflection of, 210; refraction of, 210; sound understood as, 210–213, 361; speed of, 209, 211, 213; of spin, 213; of temperature, 213; of traffic, 211; in vacuum, 212–213, 361; in water, due to gravity, 209; in water, due to surface tension, 209–211; of wheat, 209, 214; wrong guesses about, 361

  Way We Think, The (Fauconnier and Turner), 362–364, 443

  “we”, three senses of, 196

  Weaver, Warren, 368, 369–370, 372

  Web, World-Wide, as repository of speech errors, 261

  wedding-ring loss, me-too analogies based on, 146–147

  Weidemann, Christoph, request for water by, 280

  weightlessness, 491, 493–494

  where, carried from physical world to virtual world, 407

  Where there’s smoke, there’s fire situations, 102–103

  Wien, Wilhelm, 458, 459

  wine: analogies between types of, 245–246; expert understanding of, 244–246; fancy terms used by experts, 421; inaccessi
bility of, due to lack of corkscrew, 249; zeugma involving verbs for drinking red versus white, 13

  wires crossed, see errors, speech errors

  “with”, zeugmatically exploited, 6

  Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 55

  women as men, 193–194, 195; see also Madonna Woods, Tiger: as prototypical golfer, 49, 50; as transculturation of Zinédine Zidane, 379; of user-generated video, the, 222

  word choice: constrained by phrase choice, 25; constrained by thought choice, 26–27; made by conscious analogy, 45–46, 73; made by unconscious analogy, 18, 33, 39–43, 46–49, 66–76, 403–405

  word problems in mathematics, 414–434

  word/soldier analogy, 25, 26

  words: blended together, 266–268; evoked by airport scene, 33–34; far outnumbered by categories, 85; as opposed to concepts, 34; retrieved by analogy, 33, 39–43, 45–49, 66–76, 270–278; subterranean flavors of, 485; traps lurking in, 290–293; unlikely to trigger retrieval of episodes, 159

  “wrong” analogies in Copycat domain, 350–351

  —X—

  X-rays, 455

  xyz analogy problem in Copycat domain, 354–358, 360, 371, 477

  —Y—

  Yang, Chen-Ning, 453

  yesterday, semantic halo surrounding, 273–274

  you/me analogy, 155–156

  Young, Thomas, 212

  “your wife is very pretty” me-too analogy, 147–148

  —Z—

  z, special role of, in Copycat analogies, 354–358

  Zehe, Zora von, 464

  Zeigefinger, Zygmund, 464–465

  zeugmas: as revealing facets of concepts, 5–13, 19; used in text, 194

  zeugmaticity, sliding scale of, 8–9, 11–13, 19–20

  zeugmometer, 19

  Zhong, Chen-Bo, 289

  zigzags in discourse space, 72–73

  Zinédine Zidane/Tiger Woods analogy, 379

  zooming in: on a foot, 51; on a graph, 393; on a sabbatical year, 50; on the concept hub, 52, 54

 

 

 


‹ Prev