Metaphors as conceptual scaffolding

Enhancing the Quality of Knowing through Integration of East-West metaphors (Part #12)

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The question is what metaphors inherent in eastern cultures will provide scaffolding for what forms of science that may be surprising, unrecognizable, or even incomprehensible in the West?

For example, in the sections above, two sets were presented:

• 3-fold: stasis; dynamic; and pattern of connectedness
• 4-fold: property and possession; dispossession and resettlement; from field to journey; from possession to embodiment

Does the pattern of relationship between the trinity of gods of Hindu culture, for example, provide more clues to ways of understanding the relationships between stasis, dynamism and connectedness? Or if not, is this pattern understood differently in ways that give greater weight and credibility to such relationships than emerge from equivalent cultural archetypes in western cultures? For science, is the way in which threeness is typically understood in the West (see the triadic paradigm of Paris Arnopoulos, 1993) constraining the development of insight into the structure of the atom (electron, proton, neutron), for example? Are there other qualities to threeness that are better understood and more credible to eastern cultures? The same question may be asked of sets with larger numbers of elements (see Patterns of Conceptual Integration, 1984).

The question for science grounded in eastern cultures is in what way their pantheons, or pluralistic frameworks for complex dynamics, will enable the emergence of patterns of insight in which diversity is held more appropriately than within frameworks in which western style unity is emphasized.

Irrespective of the degree of credence attached to pantheons, or to other "non-scientific" patterns of organizing understanding, it is useful to recognize that as metaphors they provide a form of scaffolding (or matrix) for the organization of insight. In so doing, they may enable the emergence of "scientific" understanding. They have been widely recognized as vital to scientific creativity. The comprehensible is used to provide scaffolding for the incomprehensible or the not-yet-known.

Especially intriguing is that by shifting the focus of insight from individual set members to the set as a whole, the issue of whether identity is carried by a static, a dynamic, or a relationship of connectedness (using that example) may now be addressed in terms of all three together. Namely, when is any particular perception appropriate and how are the transformations between one perception and another achieved within a coherent framework? The focus is now on the complementarity between the explanatory emphasis associated with each member of the set.

In this light the adaptation by the developer of the Bell helicopter, Arthur Young (Geometry of Meaning, 1978) of the 12 measure formulae of physics into a 3x4-fold set -- that he also matched with the traditional zodiacal signs common to East and West -- is an example of the manipulation of sets in ways that merit further exploration (see adaptation of these results to sustainable strategies and dialogue Characteristics of phases in 12-phase learning-action cycle, 1998).

	Property Possession	Dispossession Resettlement	Movement between fields	Embodiment
Stasis
Dynamic
Connectedness

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