Energy in Metaphorland

July 1st, 2007 Fred McVittie Posted in Energy, Metaphor, Newton, Isaac |

The landscape of metaphor through which our thoughts move is a shifting, unstable terrain, with its own laws and properties different to the real world of lived experience. In some ways Metaphorland is simpler; there is no quantum uncertainty or relativity effects, no dark matter or eleven dimensional superstrings, all that is there is Newtonian and embodiable, everything is medium sized and everything moves at medium speed. In other ways Metaphorland is truly alien however. The constancies and solidity of the real world are absent here, and the objects mix and move, roiling and turning like the currents of the ocean.

Some entities here have particular status, and the nature of these objects, and of their particularly shape-shifting abilities, is significant. One such entity is that which we refer to as ‘energy’. Energy as it exists in Metaphorland has no corrolate in the real world, where it refers simply to a set of relations. In the real world you can’t touch, taste, smell, or hear energy, but here where metaphors live it has a very real existence and that existence is completely available to the metaphorical sense. In fact energy in Metaphorland has two forms of existence, and the exchange between these forms is a key currency here. These two forms can be understood as ENERGY IS FORCE and ENERGY IS SUBSTANCE. When it is a substance it flows from one place to another, sometimes moving sluggishly and almost congealing to a solid, at other times turning volatile like superfluid Helium. As a substance we can hold it in our hands and contain it in vessels and pipes. We can swap it for other entities and use it to move our machines and printing presses. When energy is a force we feel it against the surface of our skin and altering our balance, urging us in one direction or another. It pushes us around and pushes around the other objects of the metaphorical world.