revisiting the meaning of the word “empirical” in our society’s name: what would goethe have...

Revisiting the meaning of the word “empirical” in our society’s name:

What would Goethe have to say about it?

Gerald C. Cupchik

University of Toronto

Lecture available at: www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik

THE CHALLENGE OF METAPHOR

Metaphors in Print Ads

Metaphors in Television Commercials

MP4

VOB

Metaphors on Film

Metaphors in Design

Merging Form and Function…

Synaesthetic Metaphor

Heterogeneous pairs:

New Brain (visual, auditory)

+

Old Brain (tactile, olfactory, taste)

Heterogeneous pairs were more energizing than homogeneous pairs.

Roaring Chill

Bright Perfume

Aching Darkness

Pictorial Metaphors

Baseline image Literal pairingMetaphorical pairing

“Learning-oriented problem solving seemed to be intrinsically motivated and meaning focused – participants were driven to think because they

wanted to understand. The effort towards discovery was therefore satisfying in and of itself.”

Metaphor as Problem Solving

COMPLEMENTARY PROCESSES IN COGNITIVE POETICS

Writing and Poetic Performance

“On one particular night I looked out the front window and it must have been dusk, but the sky was so big and there was this tangerine glow because the sun was setting. I went and got my notebook and then sat with this view of the sky and hand-wrote the poem. I just started to describe what I saw and the poem just fell out. I could hardly write fast enough to keep up with the ideas coming to mind. Emotionally I put the isolation I was feeling right into the poem…”

Writing

Performance

“The experience was filled with many different emotions – anxiety and excitement. I was feeling uptight, but not scared because I knew I’d practiced the poem before. Once I began speaking I was thinking about how I was expressing the words – questioning myself…. But the audience was so warm and open that I relaxed and went beyond what I’d practiced, tried out new ways of expressing certain parts of the poem.”

Spontaneous Writing

Described actions of writing .96

Writing was meaningful .87

Writing was spontaneous .66

Conscious and Intentional Writing

Reported writing strategies .94

Writing not spontaneous -.50

Spontaneity and Intention when Performing Poetry

Described actions of performing .95

Performance was spontaneous .94

Performance was intentional .94

Described positive emotions .87

Performance was meaningful .82

Oriented to the poem .59

Poetry Reception

Skating

“I reminisced for

days etched in a time

before my own

as we skated

on ice laid bare

yesterday…”

“… cedars, blunted with age

rounded our movements

as we circled – laying blades in their honor…”

Global Absorption

Imagined actions of main character .92

Emotional intensity .76

Imagined bodily sensations .76

Absorbed in poem .74

Imagined main character .67

Liked the poem .59

Fresh emotions in response to poem .57

Identified with the poet .50

Digressions into the Self

“My brother got this for me – I’m from Oslo in Norway – and it was a small watch-maker who was very old-fashioned – the shop the same place I bought my first wrist watch when I was 6 or 7 years old and he’s been sort of the family watch-maker.”

“The design of the building gives it splendour. I could go there everyday. There are stories in there you know... you see all the different aspects of that building - it is sort of like humanity through the ages.”