Physics, Maths, and Metaphor

September 8th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Mathematics, Metaphor, Nunez, Rafael, Physics |

The language of both rational and naive physics make extensive use of metaphor in its conceptualisation of abstract entities such as energy, particle etc. A significant difference in the discourse of these two physics (over and above any difference in their application) is that rational physics is underpinned and consequently legitimised by the digital logos of an apparently non-metaphorical transcendent mathematics. However, as Nunez et al (1999, 2004) and Lakoff and Nunez (2000) point out, the apparent transcendent status of mathematics is something of an illusion, and maths is itself ‘grounded’ in embodied metaphor. This does not disturb the significance of rational physics, or undermine the robustness of its findings, but it does indicate that the validity of rational physics is due not to inherent relationship to a transcendent disembodied knowledge. Rather, the coherence and efficacy of rational physics is a result of its referring to and resting on a single limited set of metaphors; those which we use to conceptualise mathematics.