The power of metaphors

Steven Pinker

Try explaining anything, especially something complicated, without using a metaphor. You can do it, but it my not be easy. And  it may not be as easy for another person to follow your explanation.

To make difficult ideas easier to understand we all use metaphors. And so it is that cosmologists talk about a big bang and black holes, economists talk about crashes and bull markets, Christians talk about being born again, broken-hearted lovers talk about being, well, broken-hearted. Metaphors are the way most of us make sense of things. We use so many metaphors, in fact, that usually we are not even aware of them.

In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker mentions the many metaphors used in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: "the Course of human events," "dissolve the political bands," "the Laws of Nature," "the causes which impel them," etc.

Everything, it seems, can remind us of something else. Human events follow a course like a river. Government controls can seem like physical restraints. Nature seems governed by laws. Some causes don't just appeal to us but seem to push us, impel us to take action.

The best writers, the best teachers, the best preachers, the best explainers may be those who use the best metaphors.