Continued with Parts I, II, & III.

Unlike the previous posts in this thread, this one actually considers the topic in light of the Qur’an.

Metaphor in the Qur’an _ why

How is it possible to comprehend a world which goes beyond human cognitive abilities and which can not be grasped by means of any kind of cognition available? The answer is: thanks to metaphor.

__ Sławomir Sztajer↓1

In dealing with expressions related to the divine, the subject of study becomes not a matter of one “thing” being “symbolized” as another in the manner of a literary figure. Rather, what is at stake is the way in which “things” are “captured” in language in a form which is necessarily symbolic due to the use of language itself. It is here that Paul Ricoeur’s maxim “metaphor gives rise to thought” has its meaning: in expressing something in language, thinking about that “thing” becomes possible.

__ Andrew Rippin↓2

… it is not enough for man to be told, “If you behave righteously in this world, you will attain to happiness in the life to come”, or alternatively, “If you do wrong in this world, you will suffer for it in the hereafter”. Such statements would be far too general and abstract to appeal to man’s imagination and, thus, to influence his behaviour. What is needed is a more direct appeal to the intellect, resulting in a kind of “visualization” of the consequences of one’s conscious acts and omissions and such an appeal can be effectively produced by means of metaphors, allegories and parables, each of them stressing, on the one hand, the absolute dissimilarity of all that man will experience after resurrection from whatever he did or could experience in this world; and, on the other hand, establishing means of comparison between these two categories of experience.

__Muhammad Asad↓3

The above quotes fully echo our esablished understanding of the metaphor with reference to religious discourse. In addition, they point us to reasons as to why we must not be surprised at finding the Qur’an filled with meaphor. In Qur’anic terms, these reasons are presented in the section below.

Metaphor in Qur’anic terms 

هُوَ الَّذِي أَنزَلَ عَلَيْكَ الْكِتَابَ مِنْهُ آيَاتٌ مُّحْكَمَاتٌ هُنَّ أُمُّ الْكِتَابِ وَأُخَرُ مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ ۖ فَأَمَّا الَّذِينَ فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ زَيْغٌ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ مَا تَشَابَهَ مِنْهُ ابْتِغَاءَ الْفِتْنَةِ وَابْتِغَاءَ تَأْوِيلِهِ ۗ وَمَا يَعْلَمُ تَأْوِيلَهُ إِلَّا اللَّـهُ ۗ وَالرَّاسِخُونَ فِي الْعِلْمِ يَقُولُونَ آمَنَّا بِهِ كُلٌّ مِّنْ عِندِ رَبِّنَا ۗ وَمَا يَذَّكَّرُ إِلَّا أُولُو الْأَلْبَابِ

 The key word here is mutashabih. According to the online Project Root List, its root shim-ba-ha means:

to be like, to resemble/assimilate/liken/imitate, to compare one thing with another due to an attribute connecting them or is common to them…, appear like another thing, ambiguous/dubious/obscure, comparison/similitude/parable/similie… With reference to the Quran is that of which the meaning is not to be learned from its words and this is of two sorts: one is that of which the meaning is known by referrinhgg to what is termed “muhkam“, and the other is that of which the knowledge of its real meaning is not attainable in any way or it means what is not understood without repeated consideration.*

 *this description raises technical issues of differentiating metaphor with its related devices which are dealt with later. 

 Thus while the guidelines for living and statements of belief are clearly stated, other explications about matters not directly available to the human senses are inevitably described in metaphor.

Apart from necessity, simplification and a persuasive and educative presentation are also a major reasons for use of metaphor in the Qur’an. As Alla Ta’ala reminds us, Qur’an is a book that addresses issues related to us, the humans -

 لَقَدْ أَنزَلْنَا إِلَيْكُمْ كِتَابًا فِيهِ ذِكْرُكُمْ ۖ أَفَلَا تَعْقِلُونَ

WE have certainly sent down to you a Book in which is your mention. Then will you not reason? [Al-Anbiya 10]

 - our natures, our creation, our destiny, our guidance. Metaphor, hence becomes a natural mode of communication, since it gives a text a humanly shape more closer to the hearts and thoughts of us mortal beings (see Part III for reference). Moreover, when reinforced with metaphor, the language  “mediates certain human experiences, ideas and ideals which would otherwise be inexpressible.”↓4.

ۚ وَيَضْرِبُ اللَّـهُ الْأَمْثَالَ لِلنَّاسِ ۗ وَاللَّـهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ

AND Allah speaketh to mankind in allegories, for Allah is Knower of all things. [An-Nur 35]

Allah ta’ala knows everything there is to know in all its complexity, intricacy and detail because He is the Creator of it all. For humans, given their limitations, some of it is presented in forms of examples: metaphorical snapshots of Reality in comprehensible terms…

 وَيَضْرِبُ اللَّـهُ الْأَمْثَالَ لِلنَّاسِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَذَكَّرُونَ

 GOD sets forth parables for people so they may take reminder. [in Surah Ibrahim 25]

… examples so beautiful, and forceful that those with the readiness to learn cannot but stop, and be immersed in reflection… 

… terms which return the tide of their and the surge of their feelings to the Source from which they and their world arose…

…except for those who are not willisng to know..

 وَتِلْكَ الْأَمْثَالُ نَضْرِبُهَا لِلنَّاسِ ۖ وَمَا يَعْقِلُهَا إِلَّا الْعَالِمُونَ

As Stallman puts it in his thesis: “This relational function of metaphor is typically not felt or highly valued by readers who seek to be purely objective.”↓5, i.e. to those who like to restrict themselves to the observable and immediate. 

Metaphor in the Qur’an _ how

As in the above ayahs, Qur’an directly refers to its use of metaphor. The word most commonly used for this purpose is ‘mathal’. While derivattives of the root letters mim tha lam are used for various meanings, its relevant derivatives are mithlun, mathalun, and mithaalun. According to the PRL’s reference to Lane’s Lexicon, mithlun means something that is alike, similar, analougous; a resemblance, semblance, a requital, an equivalent; mathalun means condition, state, a case, a description by way of comparison; and, mithaalun means a model, quality, mode, pattern, example. That these variations are cognitively related should be clear enough considering the nature of metaphor as established in Part I of this thread. To reinforce the point, here is the relevant entry from the an encyclopedia of the Qur’an:

MATHAL / MITHL / TAMATHIL

Mathala is a root verb that means to resemble, imitate, compare anyone with or to someone else or to bear a likeness. Mithl means likeness, like, similar or resemblance. Mathal is a noun meaning parable, likeness, similitude, like, reason or proverb.

Relevant search on tanzil.net will reveal that in the Qur’an the word mithlun tends to be employed when likening or equating something as something else as part of the general discourse; wherease the word mathalun is utilized to refer to more formally stated  ’examples’, parables, similitdues, and case descriptions. Using a simultaneous survey of both tanzil.net and M. Asad’s The Message(see note 3 below), I was able to come across various examples of the use of these words in relevant meanings.   

In the sense 0f ‘equal’:

يُوصِيكُمُ اللَّـهُ فِي أَوْلَادِكُمْ ۖ لِلذَّكَرِ مِثْلُ حَظِّ الْأُنثَيَيْنِ

 ALLAH enjoins you concerning your children: The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females; [in An-Nisa 11]

In the sense of similarity:

فَلَا تَقْعُدُوا مَعَهُمْ حَتَّىٰ يَخُوضُوا فِي حَدِيثٍ غَيْرِهِ ۚ إِنَّكُمْ إِذًا مِّثْلُهُمْ

 … SO do not sit with them until they enter into another conversation. Indeed, you would then be like them. [in An-Nisa 140]

In the sense of ‘example’:

وَيَسْتَعْجِلُونَكَ بِالسَّيِّئَةِ قَبْلَ الْحَسَنَةِ وَقَدْ خَلَتْ مِن قَبْلِهِمُ الْمَثُلَاتُ

 THEY bid you to hasten the evil before the good, yet examples have passed away before them. [in Ar-Ra'd 6]

In the sense of case description:

مَّثَلُ الْجَنَّةِ الَّتِي وُعِدَ الْمُتَّقُونَ ۖ فِيهَا

HERE is a description of the Garden promised to the righteous: therein… [in Surah Mohammed 15]

In the sense of ‘attribute’:

لِلَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالْآخِرَةِ مَثَلُ السَّوْءِ ۖ وَلِلَّـهِ الْمَثَلُ الْأَعْلَىٰ ۚ وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ 

In the sense of ‘sign’:

إِنَّ اللَّـهَ لَا يَسْتَحْيِي أَن يَضْرِبَ مَثَلًا مَّا بَعُوضَةً فَمَا فَوْقَهَا ۚ فَأَمَّا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا فَيَعْلَمُونَ أَنَّهُ الْحَقُّ مِن رَّبِّهِمْ ۖ وَأَمَّا الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا فَيَقُولُونَ مَاذَا أَرَادَ اللَّـهُ بِهَـٰذَا مَثَلًا ۘ يُضِلُّ بِهِ كَثِيرًا وَيَهْدِي بِهِ كَثِيرًا ۚ وَمَا يُضِلُّ بِهِ إِلَّا الْفَاسِقِينَ

 WELL, Allah is not ashamed to cite the similitude of a gnat or of something even more insignificant than this. And those who have believed know that it is the truth from their Lord. But as for those who disbelieve, they say, “What did Allah intend by this as an example?” He causes many to err by it and many He leads aright by it! but He does not cause to err by it (any) except the transgressors. [Al-Baqarah 26]

I have deliberately ignored the senses of similitude and parable over here as plentiful examples will be found in the relevant portion of the upcoming anthology of Qur’anic metaphors. 

Metaphor in the Qur’an _ the forms:

The above enumeration supplies us with two forms that metaphor takes in the Qur’an, but actually it comes employed with plenty of devices. According to the encyclopedic entry already referred to above, the two major kinds of forms are: apparent and hidden. I begin with the two already encountered and apparent forms of metaphor in the Qur’an.

 The first apparent form is the use of the word mithl as described and examplified above and seems to have less of a literary quality. The second apparent form is the explicit declaration of a similitude using the word mathal and might be a similie, a parable, or a case description. This form typically includes the conjunction ka in its syntaxt, literal for ‘like’. To refresh the readers, similie is a simple explicitly stated comparison while a parable is an extended story-like similitude containing a series of metaphorical relationships. Thus the first, third and fourth of the Qur’anic metaphor examples from Part I are parables. All three of them have the obligatory ka in them. Example of a likeness made explicit with mathal and ka but not extended into a parable is:

إِنَّ مَثَلَ عِيسَىٰ عِندَ اللَّـهِ كَمَثَلِ آدَمَ

INDEED, the example of Jesus to Allah is like that of Adam.. [in Al-i-Imran 59] 

Also:

مَثَلُ الْفَرِيقَيْنِ كَالْأَعْمَىٰ وَالْأَصَمِّ وَالْبَصِيرِ وَالسَّمِيعِ

THESE two groups are like the blind and the deaf as compared with those who can see and hear. [in Surah Hud 24]

Another apparent form involves the use of ka (as plain ka or as ka-anna كَأَنَّ or ka-ma كَمَا) without an accompanying mathal. These too are either part of general discourse likening or equating one thing with another without necessarily a literary significance; or, they are the prototypical syntatical construction a::b of a plain similie. An example of the latter follows:

ثُمَّ قَسَتْ قُلُوبُكُم مِّن بَعْدِ ذَٰلِكَ فَهِيَ كَالْحِجَارَةِ أَوْ أَشَدُّ قَسْوَةً

THEREAFTER, your hearts turned as hard as rocks or even harder [in Al-Baqarah 74]

A metaphor is in hidden form whereby the ‘likeness’ is not explicitly acknowledged by using ka, mathal, or mithl. Rather the target is simply said to be the source, or the source totally replaces the target with the latter usually inferable with reference to context. The source might be a word, an expression, or a narrative structure. In addition to the simple metaphor, it may appear as one of several devices such as metonymy, irony/humor, anthropomorphism, personification, parable, allegory, or symbolism.

Metaphor in the Qur’an _ the range:

In Qur’an, just like in general language, metaphors span the whole range of areas we have seen them parading in the previous posts. There are metaphors of the conceptual-structural and -ontological type. There are metaphorical extensions of root letter meanings, proverbial and idiomatic proclamations are clothed in metaphor. Attributes are often metaphorically stated. Many key concepts of the Quran are described through systems of related metaphors. I’m striving to represent this diversity in the upcoming anthology of metaphors.

وَلَقَدْ صَرَّفْنَا لِلنَّاسِ فِي هَـٰذَا الْقُرْآنِ مِن كُلِّ مَثَلٍ

AND We have certainly diversified for the people in this Qur’an from every [kind] of example,  [Al-Asra 89]

Topically too, metaphor covers a variety of topics in the Qur’an ranging from common idiomatic expressions, to depictions of psychological states, key living guidelines to descriptions of things of both this and that other world. Regarding descriptions of the afterlife, Qur’an directly teaches us that the described items have only a semblance to corresponding objects in this world:

كُلَّمَا رُزِقُوا مِنْهَا مِن ثَمَرَةٍ رِّزْقًا ۙ قَالُوا هَـٰذَا الَّذِي رُزِقْنَا مِن قَبْلُ ۖ وَأُتُوا بِهِ مُتَشَابِهًا 

WHEN they are provided with a fruit of the Gardens, they will say, “This is the same food as what was given to us before” whereas it is only in resemblance; [in Al-Baqarah 25]

In Mohd. Asad’s words “we are here reminded that the Qur’anic descriptions of what awaits man after resurrection are, of necessity, metaphorical, since the human mind cannot conceive of anything that is – both in its elements and its totality – entirely different from anything that can be experienced in this world”↓6.  This point does give rise to questions of interpretation which are briefly dealt with below.

Metaphor in the Qur’an _ interpretation:

Since the exact intention of the second kind of verses, i.e., the Mutashabihat, remains ambiguous and uncertain, therefore the correct method of their interpretation would be to harmonize them with the first kind, i.e., the Muhkamat. Then, the rule is that any interpretation of the Mutashabihat which goes against the first kind should be rejected absolutely and only the interpretation should be given credence which is not against the verses of established meaning.

__ Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi↓7

The language of the Qur’an must not be parsed, analyzed, and discussed as if it were a treatise of logic. A proper understanding of that language requires that it be seen as belonging to the living context which gave rise to it;

__ Mustansir Mir↓8

A significant aspect of these metaphors is that many of them encapsulate meaning which is gradually being unravelled with the increase in man’s knowledge.

__ Fauzia Tanveer Sheikh↓9

Several points on the relationship between metaphor and intrerpretation of the Qur’an may be made:

1. Incidence of metaphor in Qur’an does not lead to Qur’an being uninterpretable.

2. As a rule, all the ayahs of Qur’an, whether metaphor is involved or not, are interpreted with reference to: i) the historical context in which they arrived (when, where and why); ii) the broader context of Prophet Mohammed’s (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) life and sayings; iii) the general contexts of the then Arabic language usage, customs and history; and iv) the immediate context of the surrounfing Qur’anic ayahs and others topically related.

3. The special case of mutashabihat (including metaphor) is additionally dealt with the way so clearly described in Mariful Qur’an (quoted above).

4. The case of metaphysical descriptions is dealt with at face value: Allah ta’ala repeatedly describes the system of judgment and concequence; if the details of what is in store for us are necessarily or technically metaphorical does not make them less real just as the impossibility of our ever sensorily experiencing atoms and particles therein makes them any less real.

5. As for the topic of the nature of God the Almighty, Qur’an is clear on that point too:

لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْءٌ 

THERE is nothing like a likeness of Him; [in Ash-Shura 11]

Thus given “the impossibility of defining God even by means of a metaphor or a parable”↓[M. Asad, note 50 under 24:35]  the wise ones don’t even attempt to roam in that quarter.

6. Many ayahs of Qur’an metaphorically describing phenomenon of the universe (some, even those of the other world) are becoming more and more understandable with scientific accumulation of knowledge.

7. Qur’an’s reliance on metaphor does not question its veracity/authenticity. Treating metaphor as a reference to ‘fantasy’ was an attitude of old-times thrown clearly overboard by later and continuing researches in linguistics, cognitive sciences, neurology and related philosophies. See Part II of this thread for reference.

Postscript 

With the help of related literature and a surah by surah survey of the Qur’an, I’m attempting to compile an anthology of Qur’anic metaphors. I wish to present the range and diversity of metaphors in the Qur’an by organizing examples through various classifications. The anthology will, of necessity, also be presented as a thread of sectioned posts, InshaAllah.   

Notes

1. 2006. How is religious discourse possible? The constitutive role of metaphor in religious discourse. in Lingua ac Communittas, vol. 6, p. 51. Found online at http://www.lingua.amu.edu.pl/Lingua_16/SZTAJER.pdf

2. 2006. God. in The Blackwell companion to the Qur’an,  ed. by Andrew Rippin, Blackwell Publishing, p.224. Found online at http://sufibooks.info/Islam/Blackwell_Companion-to-the-Quran_Andrew-Rippin.pdf

3. 1980. Appendix I. in The Message of the Qur’an: translated and explained by Muhammad Asad. Found at http://arthursclassicnovels.com/koran/koran-asad10.html 

4. Andrew Rippin (2000),  The Qur’anic Symbolism of personal responsibility, in Literary Structures of Religious Meaning, ed. by Issa J. Boullata, Routledge, p. 117

5. Bob Stallman (1999), Divine hospitality in the Pentateuch: A metaphorical perspective on God as host. PhD Dissertation, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, p. 43. Found at http://eagle.northwestu.edu/faculty/bob-stallman/files/2011/03/2.pdf

6. in The Message as in note 3, Commentatory note #65 under 13:35

7. in Ma’ariful Qur’an, translated into English by Prof M. Hasan Askari and Prof M. Shamim, found at http://www.islamibayanaat.com/MQ/English-MaarifulQuran-MuftiShafiUsmaniRA-Vol-2-IntroAndPage-0-60.pdf)

8. (2000). Language, in The Blackwell companion to the Qur’an,  ed. by Andrew Rippin, Blackwell Publishing, p. 106. Found online at http://sufibooks.info/Islam/Blackwell_Companion-to-the-Quran_Andrew-Rippin.pdf

9. (1992). Nature imagery in Al-Qur’an. PhD Dissertation, Faculty of Advanced Integrated Stusies and Research, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad; p. 118

The irreplacability of a metaphor

The potential meaningfulness of metaphor does not yield to simple paraphrase, its meaning cannot be reduced to a nonmetaphorical, propositional format without loss. This is the reason for the enormous creativity that metaphor displays not only in poetic discourse: In ordinary everyday life it can restructure ingrained patterns of thinking. And in scientific contexts it can have a heuristic* function.

*heuristic= “serving to indicate or point out; stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation.” (dictionary.com)

The above ‘creativity hypothesis’ of the cognitive theory of metaphor (as summarized by Jakel↓1) mentions one of the reasons why metaphor is an irrerplacable part of any effective verbal message: it is has no simple substitute for meaning. Its meaning can only be elaborated, explored, interpreted, speculated upon to an extent; but it cannot be specified exactly and absolutely.

We need the metaphor in just the cases when there can be no question as yet of the precision of scientific statement.*

*see the last post for source

As the above quote from the previous post reminds us, we depend upon metaphor to express abstract or obscure phenomenon in terms of familiar, concrete and imaginable terms. As Andrew Ortony (↓2)  puts it, “somethings are by their nature not describable.” (p. 14), and it falls upon the metaphor to express the inexpressible.

My references so far may relegate the ‘irreplacibility’ of a metaphor to the way things are: we simply use the metaphor when we have no way around it, when we lack more straightforward ways of describing something. But that view is certainly wrong. Through a literary example, see how metaphor creates new worlds of meaning to whom no other effective entry might be possible other than through the metaphor itself:

Fursat mein sun shaguftgi-e-ghuncha ki sada

ye wo sukhan nahi jo kisi ne keha bhi ho

- 

When free, listen to the sound of the roses’ glee.

This is not speech that has been uttered.

The above is a Nasir Kazmi couplet, both in the original and in translation by me, from a previous blogpost. ‘Roses’ glee’ is a metaphor in itself (to be considered later here as an example), but right now i’m concerned with the ‘sound of’ part. The reader is forced to stop and try imagine what the sound of roses’ glee must be like. Upon analysis (which the readers of that pertinent post linked above may recall), the sound of roses’ glee most likely refers to the many messages of metaphysical nature the poet discerns in the sights and sounds of nature. Yet the interpretation is still open beyond the meaning already considered. And in terms of imagination, the metaphor forges new ground by inviting us to imagine an event that has never been experienced before. Philosopher Mark Johnson↓3 explains well what happens in such cases:

… one experiences the insight that two entire systems of implications… belong together in some fundamental way. The cognitive activity at this level… consists of the alteration of certain experiential structures (e.g. categorizations, concepts), such that one discovers a formal unity between previously unassociated things. 

We automatically associate sound with animate beings; that is the way we experience the world. When presented with Nasir’s couplet, however, we have to re-conceptualize sound as ‘a channel of communication’ or more precisely, as ‘a general aura of meaningfulness that emanates from all beings that have a purpose in their existence’ to get to the meaning of the verse. We similarly recast the flower as ‘an object created with a purpose’ from its foremost conception as ‘a part of the natural world’ or as ‘an object of beauty’.

This is not a rare phenomenon in the rarified arena of literature; more everyday examples abound. For instance, ‘my boss is a shark’ creates a new concept of ‘sharkness in humans’ that is different from both the literal shark and from the usual concept of brutality (for an elaboration of this example and the theory behind it follow the reference in Note 4. below).

The intensity of a metaphor

There is a sense of shock about a metaphor… which results from the clash of juxtaposed literal sense.

__ Paul Henle↓5

One puzzling aspect of the expressive capaciousness of metaphor takes the form of an image’s potential for focusing both thought and emotion in a particularly intense, economical way.  

__ Robert Rogers↓6

…by circumventing discretization [metaphors] enable the communication of ideas with a richness of detail much less likely to come about in the normal course of events.

and

… the emotive as well as the sensory and cognitive aspects [of the subject of metaphor] are more available [in mind], for they have been left intact in the transferred chunk [of meaning].

__ Andrew Ortony↓7

As Ortony explains so well in his essay, metaphor “lies much closer to perceived experience” in a significant way that makes it a particularly vivid phenomenon. We experience the world in a continuous and holistic fashion. Our stream of consciousness is a flow of sensations of all kind coming in simultaneously, whether at that time we are interacting with the outside world or going through our own ideas, emotions, or memories. We don’t experience things in a discrete, fragmented, one-by-one fashion as when we see concepts graphically displayed in a presentaion, or dissected frog parts laid out on a science lab table. Metaphor does the same by not spelling out the new grounds of meaning: it just poses an image before us and our attempt to apprehend it (holisticall, continuously) does the job. 

The following short poem by Emily Dickinson (found at bartleby) illustrates the point well:

It dropped so low in my regard

I heard it hit the ground,

And go to pieces on the stones

At bottom of my mind;

Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less

Than I reviled myself

For entertaining plated wares

Upon my silver shelf.

Without spelling out what ‘it’ was and why and how it came to be discarded from its high place in the author’s mind, the intensity of the mental event, the vivacity with which the poet experienced it, the emotions associated with the whole episode, and the strong sentiments with which the poet seems to regard in general the contents of her mental life, are all immensely clear from just one reading of the poem.

There is another reason for the vividness of a metaphor, and that is its compactness (Ortony, see notes for source): By juxtaposing two apparently unrelated objects in the readers’ minds (human emotion and a flower in one of Nasir’s examples) and forcing them to envisage a new kind of relationship between them, metaphors posit endless shades of meaning for the reader’s appreciation. For instance roses’ glee could be a reference to their beauty (smiling happy faces have been often likened to flowers), to the emotion that a beautiful sight such flowers create in us (a thing of beauty is a joy forever), to the purity associated with sights of nature, to the freshness of flowers, to their swaying on their stalks like children swinging gaily, to the pleasant sensation generated through their smell, etc. All these shades of meaning and more have been packed into a single two-word phrase, what Ortony calls the ‘compactness thesis’ of his theory.

The memorability of a metaphor

Compactness, vividness, and irreplacibility make for a memorable image: well-suited for educational purposes. In class-room, it were always the skillful lecturers who made the often remote-from-routine-life concepts of __ math, physics, medicine, psychology __ alive in our imagination so that we could picture them easily (and even enjoy the lecture!) that were more successful. Not possible without good metaphors:

The educational power of metaphors is thus twofold. The vivid imagery arising from metaphorical comprehension encourages memorability and generates of necessity a better, more insightful, personal understanding. But also, it is a very effective device for moving from well-known to the less well-known, from vehicle to topic.  

__ Ortony, (p. 17)

Humanliness of the literary metaphor 

Literature’s world is a concrete human world of immediate experience. The poet uses images and objects and sensations much more than he uses abstract ideas … The world of literature is human in shape, … where the primary realities are not atoms or electrons but bodies, and the primary forces are not energy or gravitation but love and death and passion and joy.

__ Northrop Frye↓8

Human beings become human through the acquisition of language, and the acquisition alienates humans from all those things language names. The name is a substitute for the thing, it displaces the thing in the very act of naming it, so that language finally stands even between one human being and another. Much of our poetry has been written to undo this situation, to remove the veil of language that covers everything with a false familiarity… 

__ Robert Scholes↓9

… literary metaphor depicts the themes that occasion it, communicating meaning imagistically by rendering it presentational.

__ Phillip Stambovsky↓10

The success of the  metaphor thus lies in recreating for us the lively vivid life in our reading experience which is so close to us. Thus it most effectively performs its fundamental function in literature: giving it the human shape we need to connect with it; and, as Stambovsky reminds us, performs it in the very manner so essentially familiar to us. This latter feature of the metaphor may be called intimation through a metaphor and is psychologically enticing and influential for the reader…

Intimation through metaphor

There is a unique way in which the maker and appreciator of metaphor are drawn closer to one another. Three aspects are involved: (1) the speaker issues a kind of concealed invitation; (2) the hearer expends a special effort to accept the invitation; and (3) this transaction constitutes the acknowledgment of a community.

__ Ted Cohen↓11

Perhaps the reason why so many metaphors have a peculiarly poignant beauty is because each of them kindles in us momentarily a dim memory of the time when we lost the outer world–when we first realized the outer world is outside, and we are unbridgeably apart from it, and alone. Furthermore, the mutual sharing of such metaphorical experience would seem, thus, to be about as intimate a psychological contact as adult human beings can have with one another.

__ Harold Searle↓12

Some authors even believe that the force of a metaphor’s image can lead to an exchange of material from the unconscious to conscious mind in the reader (in Rogers, p. 11). We must now consider what exactly constitutes this force; what is it in a metaphor that leads to such influence. Let us see.

The metaphor can be disclosive in the sense of being an eye-opener, helping us to understand hidden relations between the [target and source].

and  

Poetic devices and imaginative literature do not necessarily provide us with new information. What they do best is to give us insight into the (tacit) knowledge we already possess.

__ Snaevarr↓13

Both Snaevarr and Stambovsky associate certain terms with metaphorical comprehension that help us realize how metaphor induces an intimate connection with the author, the subject-matter, and, potentially, the world at large. Snaevarr argues how, when we understand a metaphor, we go through the same process of ‘seeing something as something’ involved in many instances of purely sense-based perception. For instance, when an object (such as a cat) is before us, typically, we merely notice what it is. Here our knowledge/concept of the object helps us quickly recognize it: perception nearly depends here on pre-existing knowledge. But when an ambiguous oil painting is presented before us and, while appreciating it, it suddenly ‘dawns’ on us that it depicts a beautiful cat: that is what Wittgenstein↓14 called ‘seeing as’.

from wikipedia 

An easy-to-relate example would be of the famous Necker cube which can be seen either as a cube projecting away from us on its northeast side or as a cube projecting on its southwest side. This kind of seeing-as is internal and spontaneous: external descriptions do not necessarily lead us to see the two different possible cubes in our mind, it has to come from within. There is also a kind of filtering and ‘foregrounding’ involved. When our mental image switches from one possible cube to the other, the first one seems to disappear and certain features of the new cube seem to ‘lighten up’ in the image. The same happens when the meaning intended by the metaphor dawns on us. The metaphor foregrounds a part and when we appreciate it a new meaning dawns on us, or an old obscure or forgotten meaning lightens up with new significance, or a subtly familiar one is brought into explicit focus.

When applied to less visual material, such a seeing-as is better termed ‘insight’: understanding the inner nature of things. The process of insight is both intuitive (that is, it does not involve conscious reasoning) and spontaneous. It also has the quality of an ‘enlightment’ and is often (specially in problem solving) sudden. It gives a feeling of familiarity with the subject in question by suddenly casting it for us in a new light (in the above stated ‘seeing as’ fashion) that we were not able to appreciate before (see famous cognitive psychologist Herbert Simon‘s paper for good descriptions of both intuition and insight). The kind of effective lectures I mentioned before created this in us: a feeling that now we really knew the topic, we knew how things really worked, how it really feels. Good metaphors achieve the same effect. Perhaps that is why:

Metaphors which provide insight into an unknown, transcendent, or mysterious subject thus can have an extremely powerful effect on those who accept them.

__ Stallman↓15 

As Snaevarr clarifies, what metaphor really does is to lighten up a piece of tacit knowledge we already possessed. The most comprehensive definition of tacit knowledge that I could find online is that it is:

Unwritten, unspoken, and hidden vast storehouse of knowledge held by practically every normal human being, based on his or her emotions, experiences, insights, intuitions, observations and internalized information. 

Indeed the feeling of intimacy and closeness will not be produced if we did not realize that the metaphor focused us on a thought or feeling we were familiar with but had never been consciously aware of. For instance consider the following verses by Nasir Kazmi, in translation by me along with the original Urdu in Roman script:

On the town’s vacant station

A passenger must have alighted

[shehr ke khali station per

koi musafir utra hoga]

_

 Hear it immersed in the depths of heart

No song is indeed a song of glee…

[dil ki gehrayion mein doob ke dekh

koi naghma khushi ka naghma nahin]

_

Shivering, the long nights put to us a haunting question

Their laden sound-like silence hisses answers…

[ye thitri hue lambi raaten kuch poochti hein

ye khamushi-e avaaz numa kuch kehti he]

_

In your lane all day

I pick the pebbles of grief

[teri gali mein sara din

dukh ke kankar chunta hoon]

_

From the nameless reaches of the islands of memory

The waves of your voice still reach

 [yad ke benishan jazeeron se

teri avaaz arehi he abhi]

These verses conjure up in us strange unspeakable feelings (and certainly many more shades of the atmosphere related to) respectively, lonely change or movement through life; the sombre sadness associated with awareness of existential realities that give rise to creative expression; introspection on the nature of our existence that typically transpires in the dark and silent moments of night before we fall asleep; the rambling recall of the many pleasures of a friendship after it has terminated; and the persisting subconscious connection with a long lost love… experiences we have all encountered in life, directlyor indirectly. That is why we relate to them and their author, and feel affected by them.

Metaphors are closer to emotional reality for the same reasons that they are closer to perceptual experience. To say of an unexpexted event that it was a miracle is to say far more than that it was inexplicable: it is to express joy, admiration , wonder, awe and a host of other things without mentioning any of them.

__ Andrew Ortony↓16

Remember that tacit knowledge encompasses a great number of sources such as bits and pieces picked up incidentally, subconsciuosly or by implication; by engaging in non-verbal skills; through general observations and readings; and knowledge of internal states personally experienced or understood through empathy. That is why, metaphor is a powerful and often the sole means of expressing our internal states. And ”the particular ability of imaginative literature to disclose the unique, not least the uniquely personal” (Snaevarr, p. 361) most probably depends on metaphor.

The psychological power of metaphor

If a new metaphor enters the conceptual system that we base our actions on, it will alter the conceptual system and the perceptions and actions that the system gives rise to.

__ Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 111

In their book Metaphors We Live By (1980), Lakoff and Johnson make the case of how metaphors do not just represent our perception of common realities, they have the power to create realities themselves. For instance, the prevalence and conventionality of the metaphor “argument is war” not only represents but also reinforces in turn a culture of argumentation where it is viewed as competitive rather than as a cooperative social exercise; whereby it is supposed to be won or lost rather than as taken to be a means of forwarding consensual decisions.

Consider the example of a fresh metaphor: ‘problems are solutions’, where solution is used in the chemical sense of the word. Actually, the authors took the metaphor from a real example of their Iranian student who thought that the expression ‘the solution of my problems’ was metaphorical. The student visualized “a large volume of liquid, bubbling and smoking, containing all of your problems, either dissolved or in the form of precipitates, with catalysts constantly dissolving some problems (for the time being) and precipitating out others”. The metaphor is not actually in use anywhere, but, as Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate how this metaphor creates a new, more profitable view of ‘problems’ than is currently prevalent. In this new view, derived from the new meaning constructed by the metaphorical comparison of real-life problems with a chemical solution, problems are accepted as a more or less recurring part of life. We use certain catalysts which temporarily solve some problems but the same process, or the disturbance in the combinations of catalysts created by a single-instance usage may lead to the precipitation of some other problem. “Rather than direct your energies toward solving your problems once and for all, you would direct your energies toward finding out what catalysts will dissolve your most pressing problems for the longest time without precipitating out worse ones. The reappearance of a problem is viewed as a natural occurence rather than as a failure on your part to find “the right way to solve it”.”

In contrast the more current view of problems as puzzles reinforces the expectation that there is one solution to each problem, that once applied, it will make the problem go forever. Recurrence of the problem implies a failure on the part of our ability to solve it. While the problem lasts, a state of confusion and frantic attempts to solve it and resolve it continue. Etc, etc.

Similarly, James Geary mentions research to the effect that when finance journalists use ‘agent metaphors’ to describe stock market behavior (such as ‘prices climbed higher’, or ‘the market fought back’) “an enduring internal goal or disposition” is inferred with the implication that the trend “is likely to continue tomorrow” (p. 31). In fact, it is in this sense of metaphor’s effects that scholars such as Lakoff and Johnson have highlighted the political, or let’s say, ideological power of metaphor…

The ideological power of metaphor

The people who get to impose their metaphors on the culture get to define what we consider to be true.

__ Lakoff and Johnson↓17  

What therefore is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a nation fixed, canonic and binding;

 __ Friedrich Nietzsche↓18 (in James Geary, p. 116)

Indeed we are familiar with presidential candidates, regimes, or factions in society popularizing and reinforcing ‘pet metaphors’ in their followers’ minds to ingrain their preferred sets of attitudes — their ideology. Similar examples can be given from the domain of religion. The budhist’s wheel of life and the muslim’s Straight Path are presented metaphorically, binding important aspects of their faith, creating their spiritual reality for them, defining the meaning and purpose of life to them, and motivating important attitudes and behaviors in each.

[This is not the place to argue, however, on the absolute relativity (or not) of truth (a topic with which this blog though is very much concerned and is yet to present a full-fledged treatment of the problem; though the topic has been touched upon in various posts).]

After having explored the concept of metaphor, establishing its power and significance from the point of view of both the sender and receiver of a communication, we are now set to see how the topic relates to the Quranic corpus. It’s easy to find all kinds of metaphors in Qur’an; important systems of extended conceptual metaphors that present, educate, and penetrate to the heart and mind of it’s readers; beautiful, visualizable, and novel, original metaphors that capture the sentient nature of its target audience and leave lasting and powerful impressions; metaphors so original and absolute as they must be for depicting realities beyond the periphery of ordinary human perception.

I feel excited at this point of my journey in the realm of the Metaphor. For these past few months, having thought about familiar metaphors from the Quran against all my developing understanding of metaphors in general now makes me feel as if I am approaching the great universe of the Qur’an with fresh eyes.

Till then, fi aman-i Allah

Notes

1. Olaf Jakel (2002). Hypotheses revisited: The cognitive theory of metaphor applied to religious texts, metaphoric.de, vol. 2, pp. 20-42. Found at http://www.metaphorik.de/02/jaekel.pdf

2. Ortony, A. (1975). Why metaphors are necessary and not just nice. Reprinted in Cultural Metaphors: Readings, research translations, and commentary, Ed. M. J. Gannon, 2001, Sage Publications. Found at http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Ih0BUezsl6kC&printsec=frontcover

3. Johnson (1980), taken from Bob Stallman (1999), Divine hospitality in the Pentateuch: A metaphorical perspective on God as host. PhD Dissertation, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, pp. 40-41. Found at http://eagle.northwestu.edu/faculty/bob-stallman/files/2011/03/2.pdf

4. Sam Gluckseburg (2008). How metaphors create categories — quickly. In Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed., Ed. Raymond W. Gibbs. Cambridge University Press. Found at ftp://ftp.turingbirds.com/ai/The%20Cambridge%20Handbook%20of%20Metaphor%20and%20Thought.pdf

5. Paul Henle, (1958), Metaphor. Reprinted in Philosphical Perspectives on Metaphor, Ed. Mark Johnson, 1980, University of Minnesota Press, p. 102

6. Rogers, R. (1978). Metaphor: A psychoanalytical perspective. University of California Press, p. 7. Found at http://books.google.com/books?id=zxH3W27COqgC&printsec=frontcover

7. (1975), from Cultural metaphors, pp. 16-17

8. N. Frye (1964) found in Phillip Stambovsky’s (1988), The depictive image: Metaphor and literary experience, University of Massachusetts Press, p. 50.

9. Scholes (1985) in Stambovsky, 1988, p. 89.

10. Stambovsky, 1988, p. 3

11. T. Cohen (1978) from Stallman (1999), p. 44

12. Harold Searle, Collected Papers on Schizophrenia. Quoted in Rogers, 1978, p. xi

13. Stefan Snaevarr (2010). Metaphors, narratives, emotions: Their interplay and impact, Rodopi, Amsterdam, p. 83 and p. 360 respectively.

14. Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is credited with this conceptamong many others he theorized upon in his now classic Philosophical investigations. For a simple explanation of his concept read point 1 of this lecture presentation: http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/teaching_staff/ahmed/WittgensteinPhilosophicalInvestigationsLecture15.pdf

15. Stallman (1999), p. 41

16. in Cultural metaphors, p. 17

17. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors we live by. Originally published by University of Chicago Press. Found online at: http://www.pineforge.com/upm-data/6031_Chapter_10_O’Brien_I_Proof_5.pdf

18. in James Geary, (2011), I is an Other: The secret life of metaphor and how it shapes the way we see the world, Harper Collins, p. 116.

Continued from Part I

The significance of Metaphor

The word metaphor consists of two Latin roots: ‘meta’ which means over, and ‘pherein’ meaning ‘to carry, to bear’; thus literally meaning ‘to carry over’. Thus the essence of a metaphor lies in the carry over of meaning, and as we consider the true purport of this ‘transfer of meaning’ concept we realize that the significance of metaphor underlies much broader areas of life than mere literary effectiveness.

Indeed, historically, metaphor was considered only a rhetorical device: a way of embelleshing (or adorning) the language to make the presentation of an idea more beautiful, effective, and vivid. However, scholars have come to acknowledge the almost universal presence of metaphor in all our speech and even thought, coming to much broader conclusions about the nature, function, and power of metaphor in human culture. Detailed analysis of the current theory of metaphor reveales that metaphor is a part and parcel of our thought processes. It’s neither unique nor restricted to any ‘special usages’ in literature.

As Lakoff and Turner claimed in their seminal paper titled Metaphors We Live By (1980) studying metaphors may be ”one of the more fruitful ways of approaching fundamental logic, epistemological and ontological issues central to any philosophical understanding of human experience.”

We, unfamiliar readers, cannot fully appreciate the significance of metaphor unless we first consider the theoretical underpinnings of the concept and what current scholars in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive scientists have to say about it. Apart from that, and as a pretext, overviewing the omnipresence of metaphors in our life will help us realize just how broad the topic is, rather than being restricted, as traditionally thought, to the area of effective language skills.

The ubiquity of metaphors

We don’t realize when we speak but we are using metaphors all the time. Most of our speech is made of idiomatic expressions of some sort or another. A majority of those involve metaphor. To fall in love, to burn in anger, apple of the eye, hand in hand with, flying colors, sunny smiles, radiant beauty, snail mail, black death, dove as a symbol for peace, heart as a symbol for love, color red as a symbol for danger, all of these are specific examples of metaphor in various means of communication.

Apart from idiomatic expression, the very roots of words are pictorial, transfering meaning from something concrete and picturable to some other situation which may or may not go on to become so abstract that the combination loses it’s metaphoric significance (see dead metaphor in the last post). Examples of such words in which metaphorical origins are still obvious are: coinage, leggings, leap-frog, to moonlight, yardstick, heading, etc. For examples in which the meaning has become more abstract and conceptual we have to look into their etymology to reach their pictorial origins. For instance the word diverge comes from the latin di for two and vergere for ‘to incline’. Thus the literal meaning of ‘diverge‘ is to incline in two different directions. Similarly, the word delineate, meaning to outline and to portray, consists of de: completely, and lineare: to draw lines. The word confront consists of com-: together, and frontem: forehead; leading to the originally prevalent meaning of ‘to stand in front of’. Further metaphorical application lead to the current meaning of: to present with, to oppose, to find in one’s way, etc.

Traditionally, metaphor has been associated with literature. However, in his book, I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way we See the World, James Geary presents examples of use of metaphor in common cultural enterprises such as advertising, finance, politics, entertainment, science and innovation. Stock exchange, the great depression, dead cat bounce, ‘fringe’ benefits, are some examples of metaphorical description of things related to finance, economics, and business. In advertising, personification of products is metaphorical since the intention is to imbue the product with some valued or desirable characteristics of humans/animals. Thus Explorer, Warrior, Mustang, Cougar, Jaguar are all metaphorical names of cars. In politics, slogans in times of war and conflicts, floursihing desrcriptors used to describe world or national affairs, and the metaphors used in politicians’ addresses all exude and cast certain meaning on the subject situation through the associations and implications of the metaphor.

Fields of science and innovation are again rife with metaphors. Talk of “first line of defense”, engulfing microphages, cells, transportation and carriage in the blood, assimilation, genetic transmission, inheritance, transcriptions, genetic code, neuronal triggers and wiring, killer T-cells, imprinting, the food web, lock-and-key position, chemistry, half life, (chemical) affinity, catalysts, electric current and flow of heat, black holes, dark energy, the big bang, space-time curve, dwarf and supergiant stars, spectrum, and many more↓1.

Metaphors enhance understanding and organize knowledge

We need the metaphor in just the cases when there can be no question as yet of the precision of scientific statement.

__ Black, (1962)↓2

In summarizing tenets of a cognitive theory of metaphor, Jakel Olaf (2002) wrote that metaphors commonly form ”coherent cognitive models: complex gestalt structures of organized knowledge” that serve as “pragmatic simplifications of an even more complex reality.”  An example is the concept of ‘commucination’ whose metaphorical nature was illustrated by Reddy (1979)↓3. We conceive of communication as sending of ideas from one person to another through the use of language. This conceptualization entails equalizing ‘idea’ with an object, with ‘language’ as their container.

In Metaphors We Live By↓4, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) explain: “Metaphor is one of our most important tools for trying to comprehend partially what cannot be comprehended totally: our feelings, aesthetics, moral practices, and spiritual awareness.”

This fact holds not just for ordinary experience but also for the scientific endeavor to understand the world. According to one scientist, Eugene Garfield: “metaphor enters into the communication of scientific ideas and at times influences the formulation of scientific problems and the ways in which problems are conceptualized and approached.” For instance Frued’s ‘topography of the mind’ uses a submerged iceberg as a metaphor for the levels of consciousness in human thought. Current cognitive science deploys a model of human mind as a computer to understand it’s working. The heart has long been viewed as a pump and blood as a transportation mechanism. The interiors of an atom have long been conceptualized as a ‘planetary system’ with electrons floating and revolving in orbits around a nucleus. Patterns of food consumption across animal species have been conceptualized as a web. Immunse system has been conceptualized as an army lined for defense of the body and deploying attack when foreign agents infiltrate the body.

The reason for this dependence on metaphor is that a majority of the concepts we utilize in scientific endeavor and in philosophy are abstract, not concrete. As such they are not directly observable or accessible by the human senses. Their presence must be inferred through their discernable characteristics which serve as ‘indications’ pointing to the underlying ‘hypothetical construct’. Thus in defining an emotion such as an anger we refer to the visible effects of anger and describe them metaphorically: a red face, a warm skin, etc. In referring to something as anxiety we rely on the metaphorical expression of butterflies in the stomach.

Furthermore, applying metaphor to scientific theory guides further quest for knowledge; an example of how  is the theory of light waves. Scientists applied to light the metaphor of water waves and wondered about the medium in which light waves propogate, given the fact that water waves do not exist outside of its medium. Thus scientific models, essentially metaphorical in nature, not only help us think about abstract phenomenon beyond our sensorial grasp, they also help us organize our understandings into a visualizable and manipulable form, ultimately becoming vehicles of further generation of knowledge. I will explore this power of metaphorical constructions further in the next post, InshaAllah, as this current part is devoted to understanding the nature of metaphor.

Metaphors and the human conceptual system

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in The Metaphorical Structure of the Human Conceptual System, have classified human concepts into metaphorical and non-metaphorical. Examples of the latter include spatial orientations (down, near, etc), ontological concepts (person, substance, etc), and structured experiences and activities (eating, moving, etc.). In contrast, the three type of metaphorical concepts described by the authors are:

i) Orientational metaphors: ”These structure concepts linearly, orienting them with respect to nonmetaphorical linear orientations.” (p. 196). For instance in statements ‘higher no. of mistakes’, ‘at the height of power’, ‘feeling down’, ‘high intellectuality’, etc have the metaphorical structuring of ‘more’ in terms of the spatial orientation of up (and vice versa for ‘less’ and ‘down’).

ii) Ontological metaphors: “These involve the projection of entity or substance status on something that does not have that status inherently.” (p. 196). Examples include Reddy’s example of language as container of ideas which themselves are conceptualized as objects to be contained. Expressions such as ‘getting something out of one’s head’, ‘empty-headedness’, ‘clear one’s head’, etc imply the metaphorical view of ‘mind’ as a container.

iii) Structural metaphors: “These involve structuring of one kind of experience or activity in terms of another kind of experience or activity.” (p. 196) Examples include understanding as seeing in ‘I see what you mean’, and life as gamble in “taking one’s chances’.

As such these metaphors have rationally derived entailments just like non-metaphorical ones. Thus given the metaphor of time as a resource, some of its entailments show in the following expressions: ‘spend time wisely’, ‘it will cost me too much time’, ‘investing one’s time’, ‘profitable use of time’, etc.

Thus some of our very basic semantic concepts are metaphorical. Thus categories are viewed as containers: we place items in and out of them. Linear scales are viewed as paths with quantites measured along the path.

Metaphors, symbols, isomorphisms, and structural mapping

Lakoff further elaborated the process underlying the metaphorical representation of concepts. They call this process structural mapping. Before I come to that, however, I would like to relate the nature of metaphor with concepts I have learned from Hofstadter’s iconic Godel, Escher, Bach regarding the construction of meaning in the human mind.

According to Hofstadter, patterns of neuronal activation (one neuron activating and leading to the activation of another and so on and so forth) become associated with chains of bits of information in the real world giving rise to symbols in our mind. Thus when we associate certain sounds with certain shapes (letters of alphabets) connected in our brains through neurons linking up one bit of inforation in the brain area for sounds, with the pertinent paired information in the brain area for shapes, these are ‘signals’. It is when these signals are chained to for a pattern of sound which refers to some object in the real world (such as the sound pattern ’table’ referring to the actual table), that a symbol is formed. Meaning, Hofstadter stresses, is not contained in the symbol (call it the sound pattern or the underlying neuronal pattern); rather, it lies in the association with the real-life object.

The concept of metaphor is similar to this symbolization process. Indeed, Lakoff, in his 2008 article on the neural basis of metaphor↓5, relies on the same phenomenon of neural circuitry that Hofstadter relies (as explained in laymen terms above) for his own concepts. Again, the value of metaphor lies not in the target or source stimulus alone, it lies in the comparison (a kind of association) between the two. More importantly, it is the reading of one thing onto another that redefines metaphor as type of symbol, hence a central vehicle of thought. When we read ‘cat’ we recall the real life cat we are familiar with. When we read ‘the poem is a diamond’ we read features of diamonds__’pricelessness’, ‘value’, ‘brilliance’, ‘an object of beauty and admiration’__onto the poem. This phenomenon of carrying meaning from one level of data onto another was referred to as isomorphism by Hofstadter. Again the meaning lies in the ‘carriage’ or ‘transfer’ of attributes from one level onto another, an assertion that clearly reminds one of the definition of metaphor.

Now the kind of isomorphism that exists between the target and source stimuli of a metaphor was elaborated as ‘structural mapping’ by Lakoff (1993)↓6. According to Lakoff there is one ot one correspondence between features of the target and source domains. This idea is excellently elaborated by the example presented by Lakoff himself (p. 217):

Times are things.

The passing of time is motion.

Future times are in front of the observer; past times are behind the observer.

Along with his students, Lakoff identified a general mapping scheme which underlies our metaphorical understanding of several “states, changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes and means” (p. 220), which he called as ‘event structure’:

States are locations (bounded regions in space).

Changes are movements (into or out of bounded regions).

Causes are forces.

Actions are self-propelled movements.

Purposes are destinations.

Means are paths (to destinations).

Difficulties are impediments to motion.

Expected progress is a travel schedule….

Long-term purposeful activities are journeys.

Different parts of this mapping schemes are evident in expressions such as ‘leaving life’, ‘achieving milestones’, ‘overcoming obstacles in one’s way’, ‘reaching maturity’, ‘stagnant career’, ‘moving ahead in life’, etc.

More on metaphor and meaning

 I want a naturalized theory of meaning: a theory that articulates in nonsemantic and nonintentional terms, sufficient conditions for one bit of the world to be about (to express, represent, or be true of) another bit.

Fodor (1987)↓7

… every single sentence may give rise to an open array of interpretations which go well beyond the encoded senses. Some of the best examples of this are … creative metaphors.

Sperber and Wilson (2008)↓8

People are simply unwilling to be silent about what they cannot talk about — they use metaphor instead. [And] while [metaphor and literal comprehension] clearly differ in linguistic analysis, in terms of psychological processes their underlying continuity should be emphasized.

Kintsch (2008)↓9

The discussion using Hofstadter’s concepts and the quotes above make it clear that as far as cognition is concerned, the case of metaphor is neither special nor limited. Human thought can never be direct: we can never access reality directly in a pure sense__ a much discussed topic on this blog. What cognition does is approximately represent some part of the outer world internally, supported by the underlying physical base: the brain. Metaphor is one way how that happens. When metaphor is used explicitly in communication (as apart from it’s implicit presence in our conceptual system), it may be viewed as an endeavor to create the same cognitive scenario in the audience’ mind as in the communicator’s.

In the words of Sperber and Wilson (2008, p. 87): “[Paul] Grice characterized a speaker’s meaning as an overt intention to cause a certain cognitive effect in an audience … A speaker’s meaning is … [thus] a mental state. The mental states of others cannot be simply perceived or decoded, but must be inferred from their behaviour, together with background information. … speakers intend their audience to discover their meaning, and provide evidence to that effect, in the form of communicative behavior.”

 Thus what matters in communication is not the nature of the input, but it’s relevance in guaging the speaker’s intention or it’s relevance to the context of communication such that it succeeds in eliciting a cognitive effect in the audience’s mind. “The input may answer a question the individual had in mind, it may raise or settle a doubt, suggest a hypothesis or a course of action, confirm or disconfirm a suspicion, correct a mistake. … The greater the cognitive effects produced by processing an input, the greater its relevance… [Also] the smaller the processing effort required to achieve these effects, the greater the relevance. (p. 88)”

 Therefore, as Sperber and Wilson (2008) clarify, as far as construction of meaning in the audience’s mind is concerned, literal meanings go through the same process as non-literal ones. It is by referrence to the context and to non-verbal and non-literal cues in the communicating situation that the reader’s mind arrives on the right interpretation back and forth between literal and non-literal connotations. Indeed these two authors propose a continuum of verbal communications ranging from ‘literal’, as in ’I have a diamond’, through ‘loose’, as in ’I have some carbon’ (with ‘carbon’ applied to the same literal ’diamond’), to metaphorical, as in ‘This poem is a diamond’ applications of the same verbal inputs.

Summary and Post-Script

In summary, metaphor is not merely a linguistic device for creating pretty images in literature. Merely considering the omnipresence of metaphor across human media and culture is enough to persuade us of this point. Metaphor is part and parcel of the human conceptual system. It is a necessary fall-back mechanism for understanding the world and for communicating that understanding to others, for the simple reason that we can neither access the outside world directly nor communicate our internal states to others directly. Indeed, the research on how parts and cells of the brain represent the world, and theories on meaning construction support this point. Moreover, metaphor is not even unique or special when compared with more literal ways of expressing throught: the same context- and association-based processes underly comprehension of both literal and nonliteral expressions.

There is much more on the nature and significance of metaphor. How it generates emotion, it’s relationship with beauty, it’s link with imagination and it’s powerful hold on human culture. Contrasting and comparing metaphor to similar devices such as similitude and analogies also sheds further light on the nature of metaphor and how it works. However, this post was devoted to a basic understanding of it and for reinforcing it’s deep and irrefutable link with human cognition, given the fact that Quran relies primarily on metaphor for its beautiful and heart-rending messages.

So, fare well until Part III. 

Notes

1. Those unfamiliar with any of these terms and wishing to know more, please find them on wikipedia. Two links other than that have been inserted in place.

2. Quoted in the online Chapter 2 of the PhD dissertation by Bob Stallman.

3. From Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Conceptual metaphor in everyday language. The Journal of Philosophy, 77 (8), pp. 453-486. Available online: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/lakoff.johnson80.pdf

4. Available for online study: http://www.pineforge.com/upm-data/6031_Chapter_10_O’Brien_I_Proof_5.pdf

5. Lakoff, G., (2008), The neural theory of metaphor, in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, 3rd ed., edited by Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., Cambridge University Press. The book is available online at: ftp://ftp.turingbirds.com/ai/The%20Cambridge%20Handbook%20of%20Metaphor%20and%20Thought.pdf#page=100

6. George Lakoff (1993), The contemporary theory of metaphor, in Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed., edited by Andrew Ortony, printed by Cambridge University Press. Available online at: http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/203/lakoff_ps.pdf

7. in Mark Johnson, 2008, Philosophy’s Debt to Metaphor, The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, p. 49

8. A deflationary account of metaphors, in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, p. 87

9. How the mind computes the meaning of metaphor, in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, p. 141

 Life is made to move at its own pace…

Zarina, born on 9th of this month, is the sweetest possible blogging break I could imagine..

A blessing from Allah subhanahu, a miracle of creation, a lesson in patience, a natural stimulus for strange resources of love, care, gentleness, and sweetness in her caretakers…

I was busy working up the publicable version of Part II of my latest blogging thread on metaphors, when she signalled her coming almost as a surprise for someone like me who was going through the whole experience for the very first time in life.

I will InshaAllah finish my work on it and post it within two weeks if possible.

Until then, remember me and my daughter in your prayers…

JazakAllahu khair.

Welcome back to the Qur’an Cycle!

The ayah I’m inspired with today is one of the many of Qur’an which use metaphor as a device for presenting a concept. Although familiar for students of language and literature, ‘metaphor’ is a now well-developed topic in both psychology and philosophy and it is taking me a long time (I started work on this topic way back during Ramadaan) to amass, collate and selectively integrate and present the multitude of illuminating information on this ‘new’ topic __ new not just for me, I’m sure, but for the majority of my readers as well.

Here is the subject ayah:

أَنزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَسَالَتْ أَوْدِيَةٌ بِقَدَرِهَا فَاحْتَمَلَ السَّيْلُ زَبَدًا رَّابِيًا ۚ وَمِمَّا يُوقِدُونَ عَلَيْهِ فِي النَّارِ ابْتِغَاءَ حِلْيَةٍ أَوْ مَتَاعٍ زَبَدٌ مِّثْلُهُ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللَّـهُ الْحَقَّ وَالْبَاطِلَ ۚ فَأَمَّا الزَّبَدُ فَيَذْهَبُ جُفَاءً ۖ وَأَمَّا مَا يَنفَعُ النَّاسَ فَيَمْكُثُ فِي الْأَرْضِ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللَّـهُ الْأَمْثَالَ

What’s in a metaphor? ↓1

According to Janet Martin Soscike’s working definition (1985) “metaphor is that figure of speech whereby we speak about one thing in terms which are seen to be suggestive of another.”↓2

In common descriptions, a metaphor is seen as having two components: vehicle and tenor. In the above example from Quran, زَبَدًا رَّابِيًا  is the vehicle being the main figure of speech utilized. The tenor, as clarified in the ayah itself, and confirmed by common tafaseer such Ma’ariful Quran, is Falsehood (actually, false beliefs).

In linguistics, the terms vehicle and tenor are replaced by ‘source’ and ‘target’, respectively. 

The commonality between the target (or tenor) and source (or vehicle) may be referred to as a ‘ground’.

[Click the picture to view large version at original source.]

Types of metaphors↓3

Metaphors are widespread. Some are so common that we don’t even notice the figure of speech or visualize anything pictorial __ our focus goes directly onto the target rather than the source. Such metaphors may be labelled as dead metaphors.↓4 An example is the use of the word ‘fall’ in the expression ‘falling in love’.  Sometimes, a part of an image/figure is used as a metaphor (submerged metaphor). For instance in the Quranic ayah numbered 64, Sura Al-Maida, hand, a part of body, is used to refer to the generosity of God. Sometimes the part itself is used as a source to refer to a whole target (synechdochic metaphor) for instance meaning ‘car’ when saying ‘I like your wheels’.  

An extended metaphor is like a series of related or hierarchical metaphors such as ”the world is a stage metaphor” in Shakespeare where men and women are also mentioned as ‘actors’. In a compound metaphor, the figure of speech is further qualified through adjectives or adverbs (for example ‘the car screeched in hated anguish‘). When the subject is clearly understandable from the context or from familiarity, the metaphor may be merely implied rather than stated explicitly. For example saying ‘we are burning today’ on a very hot today will be  well-understood.

Not in all cases is the similarity between the target and the source very obvious such as in the example of ‘rose and love’. Or in the Qur’anic subject ayah of the post. Such an absolute metaphor↓5 makes people think hard about it’s meaning, has the potential to become a permanent ‘image’ in people’s mind associated with distinct, broad and significant phenomenon of life (such as the use of ‘light’ for ‘truth’). The powerful image may be the only source of expressing the complex of ideas. Finally, an original metaphor represents an important message from the author that should be understood in terms of the author’s situation.↓6 Although the use of metaphor as a linguistic device is certainly widespread in the Qur’an, our Book is rich in both original and absolute metaphors.

Source

Metaphorical devices

The essence of the concept of metaphor is that it is a pictorial way of expressing a quality of an unstated and intangible entity by stating (or by implying) it’s similarity/equality with a visualizable object. As such parable, similitudes, allegory, synecdoche, catachresis, metonymy are all special cases of metaphors↓7.

A parable uses metaphorical language in a short story form to present a clear, unambiguous, and usually moral, lesson. An allegory is a more general narrative type using any form of literary or artistic presentations and relying on figurative, symbolic representation (hence metaphorical) to present usually several lesson points. It’s interpretations may be unambiguous or less so.

A similie presents the comparison/likeness between two distinct entitites more explicitly by juxtaposing them, commonly through the use of words such ‘like’ or ‘as’, though other ways of presenting the comparison are also possible. Some metaphors rely on metonymy in which a thing is not called by it’s own name rather than by something intimately associated with it. When the associated thing is a specific part of the former, whole thing, this is a special case of metonymy called as synecdoche.

Finally, catachresis is an intended or unintended misapplication of a word to a situation where it does not logically belong; it’s the contrast that sets the scene for a vivid and highly pictorial metaphorical presentation. An example would be ‘to fly down the stairs’. Such a metaphor is then called a mixed metaphor.

This post might turn into a dry textbook type if I don’t rescue it with some Quranic examples. I’ll try to analyze the examples in light of the typologies considered. May Allah Ta’ala guide me.

Some Qur’anic metaphors

وَمَثَلُهُمْ فِي الْإِنجِيلِ كَزَرْعٍ أَخْرَجَ شَطْأَهُ فَآزَرَهُ فَاسْتَغْلَظَ فَاسْتَوَىٰ عَلَىٰ سُوقِهِ يُعْجِبُ الزُّرَّاعَ لِيَغِيظَ بِهِمُ الْكُفَّارَ

… THEIR likeness in the Gospel, is like a seed that sends out a stalk, then makes it firm, and it becomes strong and rises straight upon its stem, gladdening the cultivator’s heart, in order to fill the unbelievers with dismay. (in Al-Fat’h, 29)

1. One of the beautiful metaphors in Quran, this ayah is about the companions of the Prophet (salla Allahu alaihi wasallam) on how their example was described in the original Gospel of Hazrat Isa’s (Jesus). The metaphor begins with the conjunction ك (with fat’ha on it) meaning ‘like’; thus it is in the category of a similie. The main source is ‘seed’ developed further in the ayah thus becoming an ‘extended metaphor’. At a pure literary level, we might interpret every single element of the extended metaphor, attributing a target to each feature of the process of the seed’s growing up (such as it’s standing straight, it’s gaining strength, finally it’s becoming a strong trunk, etc.). According to Mariful Qur’an, however, it seems, that the interpreted meaning of the overall metaphor is the growth in numbers of the believers and followers when Prophet Mohammad (salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam) started preaching his religion. As such the metaphor might be viewed as a compound one, in which details are added to amplify the main source.

 يُكْشَفُ عَن سَاقٍ

ON THE day when the Shin shall be exposed. (in Al-Qalam, 42)

2. Apparently, this metaphor looks like a synecdoche, but that is not the case. In context, the ayah refers to the Day of Judgement when people will be called upon to bow down on the day of this Exposure, but those who never bothered to bow down in the world will be revealed here by being unable to do so again over here. According to Tafseer Ibne-Katheer, the pertinent ahadith in both Bukhari and Muslim reiterate the metaphorical concept of Shin exposure without elaborating it more explicitly. However, both the context of the ayah and according to a hadith with weaker sources, the Shin refers to the Exposure of our Lord the Al-mighty’s Light. Or it could be some other Attribute of His, according to Mariful Qur’an.

Also, according to an interpretation by Hazrat Ibne Abbas (razi Allahu unh), the meaning refers to the bone-renching terror of that hard day (this interpretation is shared in both the linked sources). This last meaning is also supported by reference to Arabic idiom, since shins are bared by lifting up of one’s garment when one is running away on a day of intense calamity↓8. By similar token, the Attribute or Light interpretation also gains support since women were supposed to cover till their shins, and in both situations (assuming former to be the target, and the latter to be the source) have the commonality of laying bare something meant to be otherwise concealed. Overall, this review informs us that this is certainly an original metaphor, the true meaning of which is only with the Author of the words, Himself.  

مَّثَلُ الَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ أَمْوَالَهُمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّـهِ كَمَثَلِ حَبَّةٍ أَنبَتَتْ سَبْعَ سَنَابِلَ فِي كُلِّ سُنبُلَةٍ مِّائَةُ حَبَّةٍ ۗ وَاللَّـهُ يُضَاعِفُ لِمَن يَشَاءُ ۗ وَاللَّـهُ وَاسِعٌ عَلِيمٌ

لَا تَعْمَى الْأَبْصَارُ وَلَـٰكِن تَعْمَى الْقُلُوبُ الَّتِي فِي الصُّدُورِ

… IT IS not the eyes that are blind, but it is the hearts in the bosoms, that are blind. (in Al-Hajj, 46)

5. There are two metaphors in here, both absolute. Heart is a well-known idiomatic reference to ‘sense’, ‘affect’, and ‘feeling’. Blindness is also a rather common representation of the state of senselessness, lack of insight, and affective insensitivity.

 In the next post, InshaAllah, I will follow with the theory of metaphor which will be the heart of this thread. I intend to return to the subject ayah and consider it’s interpretation in light of our understanding of how a metaphor works for us. Our Beautiful Qur’an is full of beautiful metaphors. I intend to streamline my current thread with an anthology of Qur’anic metaphors. The examples shared here were presented as an introduction.

Notes

1. For a very interesting introduction on metaphors in communication and language: http://www.macmillandictionaries.com/MED-Magazine/June2009/53-LA-Metaphor.htm

2. In Metaphor and Religious Language, Cross Reference: a study of metaphor. Ch 2

3. I’ve only considered here types which are pertinent to our context of ‘metaphor in Qur’an’.

4.Other than common sources this study of problems in metaphoric translation and it’s application to the Qur’an lists a lot of typologies.

5. Sources: Wikipedia, Changing Minds, & About.com.

6. According to Newmark (1988) in above.

7. Wikipedia is the source for all the definitions in this section.

8. Refer to the site Linguistic Miracle, devoted to a study of the linguistic beauty of the Qur’an.

In:

A COMMUNITY OF THE SPIRIT↓1

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street,

and being the noise.

.

Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.

.

Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.

.

Open your hands,

if you want to be held.

–

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd’s love filling you.

–

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

.

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

–

__________________

A QUATRAIN↓2

How long will we fill our pockets

Like children with dirt and stones?

Let the world go. Holding it

We never know ourselves, never are air-born.

_______________________

The essence of our nature is “experiential”. We experience things at first hand in such a way that the emotional, sensorial, social, intellectual, and linguistic sides are enmeshed with each other↓3. The ’pragmatic’ world however teaches us to think purely in intellectual terms: concepts, logic, and language. Thus we come to dissociate subject matters of study from the daily reality of our lives and from the intricacies of our personality,  and from the way we are actually designed to experience the world. Subject matters which are all connected to the reality of ourself and our world, which lead us to significant questions of the meaningfulness of our lives, they are experienced as ‘dry’, ‘boring’ or ‘pedantic’ by many a student for these reasons.

Even those supposedly at the highest levels of intellectual development come to emphasize rationalism and intellectualism at the expense of the social, emotional, and intuitive sides of our nature possibly because of the natural association of language with the former approaches to life. And perhaps also becuase of the illsuion of certainty which logic creates. The social-emotional side of experience does not deal with ‘arguments’ and ‘logic’, rationalism does. Also the apparent comfort of the unemotionality of dry reason may be a source of refuge for these scholars who having lost touch with their affective intuitions must now feel all the more perturbed recasting ‘the big questions of the world’ in purely intuitive and experiential terms rather than (‘safely’ and ‘distantly’) dissecting and pruning them according to their own scholarly specializations.

And thus the majority of us remain confined in the ‘jail’ of this rationality, never having the strength to step out and experience the huge possibilities of meaningfulness and deeper ecstasies of life once the shackles of pure reason are thrown away.

______________________

QUIETNESS↓4

Inside this new love, die.

Your way begins on the other side.

Become the sky.

Take an axe to the prison wall.

Escape.

Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.

Do it now.

You’re covered with thick cloud.

Slide out the side. Die,

and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign

that you’ve died.

Your old life was a frantic running

from silence.

.

The speechless full moon

comes out now.

__________________

In:

THE THREE BROTHERS AND THE CHINESE PRINCESS↓5

—

                              The fire under the kettle is the appearance.

The boiling water is the reality.

                                                                The beloved is in your veins

though he or she may seem to have a form outside you.

—

________________________________

In:

AN AWKWARD COMPARISON↓6

—

Language does not touch the one

who lives in each of us.

_______________________

 We become so conditioned by the ways of this world, we never realize that the access to the mysteries of the more actual reality is on the side of experience we abandoned many many years ago: the inside. There are several commonalities between death and our inside. One of them is silence. The silence of death is obvious. Our inside is indeed silent in terms of it’s nature being pre-verbal. Intuition, emotion, and the phenomenon of simple ‘immersion’ in some experience (in contrast to consciously thinking and analyzing it) are ‘holistic’ in nature: they can’t be broken down into components and laws (in contrast with, say, language which has parts of speech and rules of grammar). They are also intransferable. One’s inner experience simply cannot be translated ‘as is’ for other’s perfect understanding, or transmitted somehow into their minds. Thus our inner experience is as uniquely ours and only ours to go through as death will be.

On the other hand, the ‘worldly’ knowledges possess both these characteristics and hence often succeed too perfectly in capturing our conscious lives int their hold. Just like death will finally remove this curtain of wordly ‘outside’ experience and we will realize what we could not see before, reconnecting with our silent inner experiecne can achieve the same before the time of death arrives. May be it’s this potential of this inner side of things and the superficial comfort and time-passing quality of the outer wordly side of life that many of us literally run away from any moments of silence. Movies, games, gossip, shopping, feasting, drugs, fashion, or illicit meetings with the other sex, anything will do so as time alone (= time with oneself, when inner voices become less avoidable) will not have to be confronted.

__________________

When once, however, the inner mirror has come clear of the breath of the outer world, recognizing the truth is not that difficult:

MYSTICS KNOW↓7

Since wisdom is the true believer’s stray camel*, he knows it with certainty

               from whomsoever, he may have heard of it,

And when he finds himself face to face with it, how should there be doubt?

               How can he mistake?

If you tell a thirsty man — ‘Here is a cup of water: drink!’–

Will he reply? — ‘This is mere assertion: let me alone, O liar, go away.’

Or suppose a mother cries to her babe, ‘Come, I am mother: hark my child!’ –

Will it say? — ‘Prove this to me, so that I may take comfort in thy milk.’

When in the heart of a people there is spiritual perception, the face and voice

               of the prophet are as an evidentiary miracle.

When the prophet utters a cry from without, the soul of the people falls to

               worship within,

Because never in the world will the soul’s ear have heard a cry of the same

               kind as his.

That wondrous voice is heard by the soul in exile — the voice of God calling, ‘Lo, I am nigh.’

*A reference to a saying attributed to Hazrat Ali (razi-Allahu unh): “The faithful seek the knowledge of God which they possessed in past eternity and recognize it immediately when found.”  

_______________________

Notes:

1. Translated by Coleman Barks, in Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets: RUMI, p. 32-33

2. Translated by Andrew Harvey, in above, p. 60.

3. Even neuroscientists have now studied the brain to the extent of realizing that the brain indeed works in such a ‘holistic’ fashion. There may be separate brain areas specializing in certaint types of experience (for instance vision, sound, language, emotions, etc) but they are all interconnected and are working together whenever we are learning something somewhere. [Readings on topics such as 'neural circuits' and 'plasticity of the brain' will lead any reader to authentic primary sources.]Psychologists have studied a small part of this phenomenon called as learning by conditioning: When the emotional or social sides are vivid, we come to associate them forever with the new conept we have learned. For instance, reading a certain poem may always give happy feelings not just because it talks about a peaceful moment in life but beause we used to read it in our childhood in some pleasant family circumstance. Similarly some topics are forever emotionally aversive to us because of the negative attitudes of the teacher.

4. Translated by Coleman Barks, in same as 1 & 2, p. 69.

5. Translated by above, in above, pp. 111-8.

6. Same as above, p. 139.

7. Translated by Reynold Nicholson, in same as 1, 2, 4, 5, & 6, pp. 132-3.

On having no head

The second piece of the anthology is a ‘charmingly childish’* narration of how one day in the Hamalyas, the author↓1  discovered (or rather realized) that he had in fact no head on his shoulders! In his own words, the discovery (or rediscovery) was an ultimate outcome of pondering a question for a long time: “What am I?”

*according to editors of the anthology, in their commnetary following the original piece.

If there was no head, what was there?:

It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snow-peaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

Indeed imagine not having grown up mentally, only developing the sharpened skill of seeing. And what would you have seen? No, you won’t see a head on your shoulders!

We conclude the presence of this head by comparing ourselves with others who have two sets of limbs and an overall physique similar to ours, and who speak, walk, eat and generally live like us. And based on this comparison, we deduce, that if they have a head, we must have one too. For although we can see our heads in the mirrors, can the testimony of a mirror (in a way, an optical illusion) be trusted?

This is the apparently naive explanation of the author. It’s not a philosophical explanation, rather it’s intuitive, describing things on an strictly ‘as is’ basis rather than distorting the first native experience of the world through rational logic. When we are born we have no idea of how the ‘uppermost part’ of our body looks. Our view is just like those film camera views when the directors are trying to show things from the ‘eyes’ of a particular character. Again, no head is visible in that view, only the body and limbs. And in place of the head is the view, the scene, itself.

In the author’s own words:

It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind … It was a ceasing to ignore something which (since early childhood at any rate) I had always been too busy or too clever to see.

The essence of this way of thinking really is: that the experience we go through at first hand must always be fundamentally different from all others. Yet, in this subjective experience lies a greater and more peaceful unity with the external world, than in reliance on logically deduced objective experiences.↓2(the anthology editors who comment on every piece seem to have interpreted it slightly differently).

All twoness—all duality of subject and object—has vanished.

The subject and the object: dichotomous, complementary, or uniform?

A duality or dichotomy refers to “two mutually exclusive, opposed or contradictory groups (such as): a dichotomy between thought and action”. Such dichotomies or dualities are of concern in nearly all major fields of knowledge. In human sciences and philosophy, often such dichotomies are subject of much debate as to their respective significance in some area and as to how much in distinction &/or opposition they stand with respect to each other. Examples include wave-particle duality, mind and matter/body, good and evil, creationism vs evolution, etc. Complement is what supplies the lack of another entity; literally, something which makes another thing complete, whole, or perfect. Uniformity may refer to an overall sameness, homogeneity and regularity.

In philosophy, the subject-object problem is concerned with delineating what is objective and what is subjective in our experience. As a starting point, we can think of ‘objects’, different beings in the universe, being perceived by an observer: the ‘subject’.  Thus on the face of it, the two entities appear to be dichotomous. However, we encounter various problems when we attempt to further elaborate this basic premise. For instance, if we depend on our own sensory experience to perceive an object, discerning only those properties which our capacities enable us to, can we really know the object objectively, as it really is?↓3 This also relates to the ‘observer vs the observed’ problem in physics epitomzied by the uncertainty principle so recently discussed on this blog. And then, to what extent our own properties (i.e. the subject’s) affect what has been observed?  

Thus, the way we actually experience the object (or the universe) certaintly seems to unify us (the subject) with it (the object). This is despite the fact that, through logical analysis, we may feel certain that the object (or the universe) has its own reality independent of our sensibility of it↓4, and also despite the fact that the total dependence for our own experience on our own devises of sensation and perception may also lead us to doubt whether ‘it’s all in the head’ or not↓5. Perhaps it’s best to say that what is out there complements what is in here (in me and in you), and that they are unified into one experience by the device of the mind which has no way to see the separation of the two.

Now, let us return to the original piece for further deliberations:

On regaining the pure nativity of one’s original perspective on the world:

What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking … as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories … like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming.

—

I had been blind to the one thing that is always present, and without which I am blind indeed—to this marvellous substitute-for-a-head, this unbounded clarity, this luminous and absolutely pure void, which nevertheless is—rather than contains—all things.

—

…no arguement can add to or take away from an experience which is as plain and incotrovertible as hearing middle-C* or tasting strawberry jam.

— *a note in music

There arose no questions, no reference beyond the experience itself, but only peace and a quiet joy, and the sensation of having dropped an intolerable burden.

—-

These quotes let us infer four different aspects about the experience.

i) Our intuitive experience is pre-verbal; language is not involved. All thinking and speaking is learned from the world. The nature of the kind of thinking and speaking we learn from the world is rational: we learn to associate features with specific objects, objects with specific categories. We usually learn not to cross-over between concepts. As we grow older our creativity dies down since we are taught to think in terms of what’s rational and familiar, not what’s new and different.

ii) The ‘burden’ of all this rational knowledge and way of thinking tends to bury our own sources of pre-verbal thought (let’s call them intuition and the freshness and naitvity of creativity) farther and farther beyond the boundaries of conscious life. Whereas, the fact remains that this intuitive thought is as basic and primary to us as ‘tasting jam’ or hearing a melody.

iii) The burden is not just metaphorical, it’s literal: The more thought we put into issues, the more we experience generally negative emotions and the more the issue (that we have been thinking on) seems like a ’pressure’ or ‘full of stress’. The most peaceful moments of our lives are indeed those when we are simply submerged in an experience rather than caught in the tangles of thought.

iv) Hence, the sense of joy and peace on having reconnected with one’s innate perspective on the world: that the whole world is unified by the fabric of first-hand experience. It’s the artifact of logic that ‘divides’ the world into things and categories and hierarchies, and into I and it. This is this and that is that. The author has replaced it with the original ‘I≡universe≡reality’ kind of experience that would have remained in our consciousness if we had not been trained otherwise by the rigors of reason.

In addition to explaining how we come to loose the freshness of our inborn perspective, these conclusions also touch upon another commonly discussed ‘duality’: nature and environment. However, the whole discussion might remain a heady philosphical or incomprehensibly mystical narrative if not made plainer.

How the world conditions us

The best way to clarify the subject is to recast it in terms of a famous (though not very widely known in mass media) person-centered theory of personality by Carl Rogers. In addition to becoming more familiar, an additional advantage in speaking in terms of this theory is that a lot of general psychological insights abour how life works might be gained.

In Rogers’ theory, the counterpart of the ‘native perspective on things’ is a process called ‘organismic valuing’. The counterpart for ‘the perspective the world imposes on us’ is ‘conditions of worth’. Before coming to these concepts, however, we must first consider what Rogers meant by conditional and unconditional positive regard.

When we give a person our trust and acceptance, with an expression of genuine positive sentiment towards them, despite their shortcomings, faults and mistakes, they have recieved ‘unconditional positive regard’.

On the other hand, when we treat a person based on how they behave, and how well they perform tasks, we are treating them with conditional positive regard: we love them when they are good to us, and neglect or mistreat them when they are incapable of goodness. In a way, we expect them to ‘conform’ to our standards of behavior; if they don’t meet those standards they are somehow worthy of inferior treatment.

These standards that others must meet to obtain our regard are what Rogers called as the conditions of worth.

Typically, learning takes place through the application of these conditions on the growing child. The child is given the impression of being a ‘bad child’ and treated with various forms of punishments (at the very least, the withdrawal of positive objects such as attention, praise or toys), when he/she fails in behaving as expected. It is the incentives of parents’ love and attention (positive regard) that prompts the child to learn speech, get toilet-trained, and learn to eat with manners. If parents are not very mindful of the balance in their attitude (specifically, in giving the child a steady sense of unconditional positive regard through all the ups and downs of child development) the child might well loose the innate interest and ‘fun’ in learning and exploring new things. As such, the child will learn to do every new thing just to obtain someone’s regard or to avoid someone’s punishment. That is also how many children come to despise any new learning, except what they learn from play-at-will.

Many a children have ‘discovered’ that playing with a certain child was ‘bad’ given his/her background; that someone we never thought of as good or bad is now definitely good or certainly bad since we have heard some of our elders announce and reinforce that; that even thought the idea that an act of dishonesty is unjust and harmful makes perfect sense, whether it’s ok to engage in it or not depends on who does it. Thus even when children have received noble and valuable guidelines for living at a formal level, they are more often than not negated by actual conditioning.

In adulthood, the primary forms of conditions may be replaced by other more sophisticated ones: money, power, status, achievement, renown and fame, and a luxurious life. Even though we come to experience them as our own needs, their common sense definitions contain the sense of comparison with ‘others’: more money than others, power over others, satus higher than others, achievement better than or different from others’, renown and fame among others, more luxury and comfort than others…. Our life is reduced to nothing but a race for meeting more and more worthy conditions of being.

What we loose in the process

What we loose in the process is our own pre-verbal, intuitive, and emotionally tinged sense of things—what Rogers called as ‘organismic valuing’. According to Rogers, all organisms (humans or lower) have a tendecy to develop as fully as possible. For lower organisms, this is restricted more or less to the physical sense: body needs and survival. For humans however, there is an additional dimension called as self-actualizing. This tendency refers to our innermost urge to realize all the possibilities of experience and capacity innate to us. This urge creates in us ‘organismic valuing’: an inner voice (of course, experienced as a feeling rather than a thought) that tells us that some things are superior and make us more content and peacefully satisfied from the inside than some other things, without anybody’s commentary as a go-between. In cases where conditioning has been rather foolproof, we never even come to realize that there are whole undiscovered, and unexplored sides of us suppressed beneath the life of society-imposed ‘values’ we are pursuing.

This rosy existence is unfortunately uncommon. We remain pressurized by the need to do more for others and for ourselves as our worth has been attached to certain objects valued by our society. We have to force ourselves to ways of behaving and thinking that are inferior in our own eyes, but suit others. We have to hide our true inclinations, attitudes, and opinions on grave matters of character and way of life so that they don’t meet with censure, ridicule, indifference, bigotry, or plain misunderstanding. Our happiness comes to reside solely in other’s being happy with us; moments of peace, contentment, and joy that originate solely from inside are few and far between.

And buried deep beneath the compost of all the negated inner and intuitive knowledge of good and right, bad and wrong, must be that original and fresh perspective on the world: of being at one with the whole universe, of experiencing the whole universe at first hand.↓6

Where do our innate knowledge and perspective come from

Scientists may call it nature; but nature means what is there already existing before worldly learning takes place. Hence ‘nature’ is not an answer to the above question; if used, it’d merely be a ‘circular’ definition. Nature is what has been created by God:

فِطْرَتَ اللَّـهِ الَّتِي فَطَرَ النَّاسَ عَلَيْهَا

 … this (faith) being the nature designed by Allah on which He has originated mankind. (in Ar-Rum, 30)

According to the Ma’ariful- Qur’an, English version,  two interpretations of ‘nature’ are derivable from sources. One is that nature here means Islam, in reference to the following Ahadith in Sahih Muslim, Book 33, Chapter 6:

There is none born but is created to his true nature. It is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Majoosi… (#6423)

and:

Every new-born babe is born on the millat, and remains on this until his tongue is enabled to express himself. (#6427)

According to the second, equally acceptable interpretation, “Allah Ta’ala has bestowed the capability to every human being to discern his Creator and believe in Him”. Once this capacity is allowed to develop, it will ultimately lead the person to submission to God in the form of Islam. In fact, Maulana Taqi (the author of the Tafseer) presents arguments clarifying that the meaning that resonates with both the context of the full ayah and the ahadith quoted above is this second one:

All children are born with the natural instinct to perceive and identify the truth through an observation of their environment; however, once they develop the skill of speaking (which actually means the ability to understand logical concepts and think accordingly) their conscious development falls dependent on the teachings of their respective social environments.

Where does it all fit in the subject-object problem?

 In Qur’an the world has been described many times as a thing of play and pastime:

وَمَا هَـٰذِهِ الْحَيَاةُ الدُّنْيَا إِلَّا لَهْوٌ وَلَعِبٌ

… the life of this world is nothing but a passing delight and a play… (in Al-Ankabut, 64)

And it’s objects a vehicle of deception:

وَمَا الْحَيَاةُ الدُّنْيَا إِلَّا مَتَاعُ الْغُرُورِ

THE worldly life is no more than a deceitful possession. (in Al-i-Imran, 185)

And it has indeed succeded in deceiving a majority of the people:

وَغَرَّتْهُمُ الْحَيَاةُ الدُّنْيَا

 … and they have been deceived by the life in this world… (in Al-An’am, 70)

And the real life will be the one to come after:

وَإِنَّ الدَّارَ الْآخِرَةَ لَهِيَ الْحَيَوَانُ 

… whereas, the life in the hereafter is indeed the real life: if they but knew this! (in Al-Ankabut, 64)

Even research in astrophysics has progressed to the point that some authors have speculated on the ‘tentative’ and ‘image-like’ nature of this world. According to Michael Talbot, in his book The Holographic Universe:

… there is evidence to suggest that our world and everything in it. . . are also only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time.

The interesting part is that the way we experience it, we are never in a position to ascertain whether this world is a literal inter-play of light and other energies. All our experience tells us directly is the uniqueness of one’s own window on the world — a window we cannot share with anyone else, nor can we ever succeed in ‘peeping’ out from any one else’s window. What we call red, is what we have heard others calling red and teaching us to do the same; we are not even sure (by direct experience) that what looks as red in our eyes looks the same in anyone else’s eye or not!

On the other hand, the tangibility of the objects of this world is also directly experienced by us. So we can’t be inherently sure of any ‘philosophical idealism’ either (the idea that we experience nothing but what our minds make up). Moreover, at the level of daily life, questions of what is good and bad behavior, what is just and unjust, etc affect us more though deeper deliberations do have their effect.

We also get a similar attitude from the Qur’an. While, at least at the meaningful level, the belief in the transience of this life (meant to be ever inexplicable at the level of this world and this humanity) is a direct corollary of the belief in a more real and eternal life; pondering too much on ‘how to explain it all in terms understandable to us’ won’t serve us in any practical matters:

هُوَ الَّذِي أَنزَلَ عَلَيْكَ الْكِتَابَ مِنْهُ آيَاتٌ مُّحْكَمَاتٌ هُنَّ أُمُّ الْكِتَابِ وَأُخَرُ مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ

فَأَمَّا الَّذِينَ فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ زَيْغٌ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ مَا تَشَابَهَ مِنْهُ ابْتِغَاءَ الْفِتْنَةِ وَابْتِغَاءَ تَأْوِيلِهِ

وَمَا يَعْلَمُ تَأْوِيلَهُ إِلَّا اللَّـهُ ۗ وَالرَّاسِخُونَ فِي الْعِلْمِ يَقُولُونَ آمَنَّا بِهِ كُلٌّ مِّنْ عِندِ رَبِّنَا

وَمَا يَذَّكَّرُ إِلَّا أُولُو الْأَلْبَابِ

He it is Who has revealed the Book to you; some of its verses are decisive, they are the basis of the Book, and others are allegorical; then as for those in whose hearts there is perversity they follow the part of it which is allegorical, seeking to mislead and seeking to give it (their own) interpretation. but none knows its interpretation except Allah, and those who are firmly rooted in knowledge say: ‘We believe in it, it is all from our Lord’; and only people of who are wise take heed.  (Al-i-Imran, 7)    

This wisdom is again pre-endowed; the same inner wisdom that begins to loose its voice pressured by the outward-imposed ‘lessons’. Attempts to scientifically analyze and study this wisdom will again fail; one cannot expect the ‘subject’ to turn back on itself and to study itself ‘objectively’. This wisdom is our side of the reality: our window of the world, whether blurred termporarily by the conditions of worth; or, open and receptive and accepting of all the mysticalities of the world, humbly accepting its own and the world’s true nature for what it is.  

This wise consciousness could well be the primary fact of life; that elusive insightfulness that imbues with belief on and certain and intimate knowledge of the only Source deservant of that belief. Interestingly, I stumbled upon but last night on an online ‘course on the consciousness‘ by a Professor Emeritus in physics, in the University of Virginia, Stanley Sobottka. It resonates nearly perfectly with the above conclusion:

Because most scientists of all types are mentally wedded to a belief in an external reality, they are unable to see an alternative picture. In particular, they are unable to see that Consciousness, rather than external reality, is the fundamental Reality. Thus, they persist in attempting (and in failing) to create an objective theory of Consciousness. When the contents of Awareness try to objectify Awareness, it is like a puppet trying to “puppetize” the puppet master, a picture on a movie screen trying to “pictureize” the actors, a shadow striving to “shadowize” the object that is casting it, or humans trying to “humanize” God.

The problem of trying to create an objective theory of subjective experience has been labeled the “hard problem” of consciousness by David Chalmers… In fact, there is no hard problem for those who are aware they are aware.↓7  

Notes

1. D. E. Harding was a mystical writer on the nature of self and reality.

2. The commenting editors have not articulated this angle. To read the chapter along with the commentary, click this link.

3. Read “the problem of substance” on the pertinent wikipedia page. I mentioned a relevant example formerly in Prophetic revelation and subjectivity.

4. A view called as philosophical realism.

5. The issue is examplified by this famous question that if there is no one in the jungle to hear a sound produced, can we say that the sound was really there? Yes is the answer given by subjective idealists who say, in essence, that the mind makes the world (or the subject makes the object).

6. This idea, of course, is not part of Rogers theory but links this psychological discourse with the more philosophical one we began with.

7. For flow reading I have removed internal hyperlinks in the quote pointing to sections in the course which have already elaborated in various points in here. I have also removed the cross-reference to David Chalmers. To see the original go to the section of the course here: http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/new_page_13.htm#9.6. 

Related posts from this blog:

On scientific speculativeness vs certainty of Divine knowledge: Assumptions vs Certainty (Synopsis)

Note that all the related links noted down in the above-linked post page are relevant to this discussion as well.

Also, more on mysteries of consciousness ordinarily hidden from our perception: Outrageous Sensations: What can we learn from LSD?

I have found many extracts from Rumi’s spiritual outpourings that expand and illuminate on the current topic of this blog.

My interspersed commentary is an attempt to both link the extracts and make them more accessible to readers. Note that any underlining in the excerpted poetry is mine.

Rumi on the true versus the weak sources of real knowledge↓:

1. A QUATRAIN

Ignorent men  are the soul’s enemy

Shatter the jar of smug words

Cling for life to those who know

Prop a mirror in water, it rusts

———-

We are coming straight from a discussion with the upshot that how science, despite all the progress it has incurred, must still fall short on revealing the true nature of this world and the truest guidelines for human living. It’s the divine which makes up for this lack in our lives, not the human. The wordy lectures and papers of the self-claimed ‘learned’ men while ‘informative’, actually tell us nothing about what we really need to know.

____________________________________________

2. A QUATRAIN

Reason, leave now! You’ll not find wisdom here!

Were you thin as a hair, there’d still be no room.

The Sun is risen! In its vast dazzle

Every lamp is drowned.

—————-

From:

3. STORY WATER

—

Water, stories, the body,

all the things we do, are mediums

that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them,

and enjoy this being washed

with a secret we sometimes know

and then not.

————

4. From

GOD IN NATURE

—

Ascend from materiality into the world of spirits, hearken to the loud voice of the universe;

Then thou wilt know that God is glorified by all inanimate things: the doubts raised by false interpreters will not beguile thee.

———————–

5. From

IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE

—

Come, recognize that your sensation and imagination and understanding are like the reed-cane on which children ride.

The spiritual man’s knowledge bears him aloft; the sensual man’s knowledge is a burden.

God hath said, Like an ass laden with books: heavy is the knowledge that is not inspired by Him;

But if you carry it for no selfish ends, the load will be lifted and you will feel delight.

____________________________________________________________________

God with His Brilliance and Actuality certainly pales any other source of enlightenment and illumination possible. Not only that, Our Creator’s mysterious workings and intricate powers seem to have enmeshed themselves with the fabric of the ‘apparent’ world created for our temporary existence. Such that the closest possible examination of any corner or pattern on the tapestry of this world either blinds us (given the Dazzle of the Source of things). Burdened by the contradictory and mutative conclusions from our observations and the enigma of explaining what we can see and can’t see in the terms of our limited understanding, we remain ignorant and indifferent to the Light. Or, we experience a touch of the dazzle ourselves in form of awe, wonderment, a sense of being in the presence of the Sacred, and a sweet and submissive urge to bow down our heads before this Source.

______________________

6. A QUATRAIN

Body of earth, don’t talk of earth

Tell the story of pure mirrors

The Creator has given you this splendour –

Why talk of anything else?

—————-

From:

7. IF YOU DON”T HAVE

—

you’ve carved a wooden horse

riding and calling it real

fooling yourself in life

though only a wooden horse

ride it again my friend

and gallop to the next post

you’ve never really listened

to what God has always

tried to tell you

—————–

In the physical world, every level of existence (such as the cultural, the individual, the biological, the chemical, and the subatomical) requires it’s own set of explanatory processes and phenomena. How can we claim to deduce understandings of how this world was created by restricting ourselves to the level of this earth? This will never be possible, unless we stop taking the things of this earth as the end of the road, as the literal reality itself. We must take them instead as signs, pointers or mirrors to the deeper nature of things at a level far far beyond the earthly. Instead of restricting ourselves to the details of this earth, we should move ahead to what this detail signifies: the magnificence, the splendour, the sublimity of how it all came to be.

_____________________

8. A QUATRAIN

I have lived on the lip

of insanity, wanting to know reasons,

knocking on a door. It opens.

I’ve been knocking from the inside!

—————–

And so external observations are not the end of the road for the one earnest seeker of the Truth. After you’ve completed your observations, then, like Ibrahim, you must close the door of externality and turn on the fountain of contemplation from within.

___________________________

From:

9. THE TRUTH WITHIN US

‘Twas a fair orchard, full of trees and fruit

And vines and greenery. A Sufi there

Sat with eyes closed, his head upon his knee,

Sunk deep in meditation mystical.

‘Why,’ asked another, ‘dost thou not behold

These Signs of God the Merciful displayed

Around thee, which He bids us contemplate?’

‘The signs,’ he answered, I behold within;

Without is naught but symbols of the Signs.’

—

—————–

God has already planted the germs for recognizing the truth within us. When we trun inwards, rather than remaining blinded by the tangled mechanisms of the outer world, we come to access and reinstill these germs.

_________

From

10. THE TREASURE-SEEKER

—

That which is real is nearer than the neck-artery, and you have shot the arrow of thought far afield.

The philosopher kills himself with thinking. Let him run on: his back is turned to the treasure.

Most of those destined for Paradise are simpletons, so that they escape from the mischief of philosophy.

While the clever ones are pleased with the device, the simple ones rest, like babes, in the bosom of the Deviser.

————————

The huge enterprise of science is not even needed to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Those who know the art of looking within (rather than remaining stuck on the without) for answers, even if they lack the material sophistication of the externalists, have more easily acquired that personal and intimate connection with our God that we either are magnetically attracted to or crazily run away from.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I finish with an ayah and a quatrain…

إِنَّمَا يَخْشَى اللَّـهَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الْعُلَمَاءُ 

OF ALL His servants, only such as are endowed with [innate] knowledge stand [truly] in awe of God. (in Sura Fatir, 28)

11. A QUATRAIN

I know nothing any more, except

That knowing you, I know the source

Of Knowing ; this fire-spring you pull me in

Sometimes, where ‘you’ and ‘I’ burn.

Notes

All translations have been taken from the Rumi edition of the Everyman’s Library of Pocket Poets. In order of appearance of quoted poems, here are the translaters with page number references.

1. Andrew Harvey, p. 60
2. Andrew Harvey, p. 62
3. Coleman Barks, p. 86
4. Nicholson, p. 128
5. Nicholson, p.130
6. same as 2
7. Nader Khalili, pp. 76-7
8. Coleman Barks, p.84
9. Nicholson, p. 93
10. Nicholson, p. 96-7
11. Andrew Harvey, p. 163

Starting with Part I of this post, I began with ayah 42 of Surah Yusuf which clarifies a distinction between worldly knowledge based on human-dependent capacities and the divine knowledge which comes directly from the Creator of the universe. The key distinction is of doubt. All human knowledge, by it’s very nature, must contain a portion of doubt in it. Consequently, Part II and Part III of this post were devoted to a survey of sample sciences with an overview of the issue of uncertainty in the sciences from different angles.

This post attempts to round-off this broad topic, by presenting certain delimitations of the survey, and by offering some key explanations, and by asnwering certain questions that must arise in a reader’s mind. 

What the uncertainty survey is not meant to be 

In-depth: Of course, that is never possible in such ‘general reading’ blogposts. The concern is not just about the length of posting, but also about the technicality of the subject. It was important to present the concepts as close to laymen terms of understanding as possible.

Systematic: Now this point is important. With ‘systematic’, I’m referring to the various scenarios of uncertainty covered through the survey. That one scenario was presented under the head of one type of science doesn’t restrict it to that science. All angles of doubt actually pertain to all sciences more or less.

For instance, the issue of sampling (whom, and where, you observe in the study?) is as important in biological sciences as in the social/behavioral ones. Making observations on animals and then applying them on humans may be the only way in much of medical science research, but it leaves wide open grave questions on how far we can trust conclusions based on organisms fundamentally different from us, mammals or not. The same holds even for physics. If an experiment proves hypotheses in a European lab, an Asian lab is not correct in ‘building upon’ the results of it before first repeating the original experiment and confirming the findings. If they ignore this step, and this is common (as Richard Feynman lamented in his lecture on the issue of integrity of science↓1), doubt will remain as to whether their follow-up experiment really leads to reliable conclusions.

Similarly, the fact that I mentioned measurement uncertainty in the section on physical sciences, doesn’t lessen the issue’s significance for sciences I surveyed before. In fact, measurement uncertainty rises manifolds as you move down on the scale of the ‘concreteness’ of your subject. That is, the less ‘tangible’ your subject (for instance brain activity is less tangible than the weight of an object), and the more ‘conceptual’ your variable (for instance ‘intelligence’ is more conceptual and abstract than ‘heart rate’), the greater rise there will be in doubt of accurate measurement. We have already seen how physicists have to agree on definitions of common physical quantities such as kg or metre and they even review and revise their definitions in the quest for further accuracy. In social/behavioral sciences, even the ‘agreeing’ part is difficult as the definition of any abstract concept often depends on one’s perspective, preference, and on what and how you choose to emphasize things. There are but few undebatable definitions in these fields.

Scholarly: Readers may have noticed the lack of references in portions of the post where a general discussion on doubt was presented rather than presenting a specific example such as cholesterol. Although, many general readers may be unfamiliar with the topic or its various angles, the issue is well-known and basic for any student of science. University departments emphasizing research as much as theory feed their students well on the relevent fields of knowledge: research methodology and statistics. Textbook stuff. Websites on the topic, however, are also of the technical, rather than layman, type that is why I refrained from linking to them.

Deprecative: Pointing out problems with the very roots from which the fountain of scientific knowledge springs forth is not meant to belittle the vast quantity of achievements humans have aquired, particularly in the last two centuries. They have discovered countless phenomena harnessed for therir advantage such as X-rays, electricity, and semiconduction. They have left their footmarks on the moon; acquired evidence of life from Mars, and have collected enough astronomical observations to formulate theories on both the beginning and end of the universe. They have eradicated numerous diseases from the face of the earth, and have invented numerous medical technologies to help in diagnoses, surgery and research.

And yet, to date, plenty of areas remain in which human knowledge is certainly speculative even in the case of wide-spread theories and beliefs. Pick any topic in medicine and psychology and, more often than not, (such as link between a food item and a disease, a personality trait and marital discord) and you will find plenty of negative as well as positive findings. Even where positive findings exceed the negative ones, the nature of the evidence remains speculative and formulated theories fail in explaining away many contradictory findings (as we have seen in the case of cholesterol). You will notice that the broader, the complicated, and the more abstract the variable, the more difficult it is to be measured, to be controlled and observed in experiments, and to obtain consistent findings about. As the ultimate and the truly dependable source of knowledge, science as a method does and will remain defective.

Indeed, you will attest that true advancements have been made only in two areas pertinent to the human condition: in theoretical knowledge and in living comfort or luxuries. Health levels _ physical, societal, environmental, and mental __ keep steadily declining.

Physical sciences may be defended here with the majority of the blame for declining healths levied on the more human sciences. Yet, there have been plentiful hints and even theories around which suggest that there is more to reality than is apparent to the physicist eye and that the true reality may be cloaked by this ‘physical’ layer of reality for us the observers↓2.

Why doubt must be there

Doubt must be there given the nature of things. Whether deep beneath the human skin, or deep within the seed of a fruit, or deep under the earth we walk on, or far far away among the stars that blink at us, things are plainly beyond our direct (and certain) observation. We can tear up the human body and confirm the presence of a heart and liver in it, but it’s not the same when we try to observe how DNA really works, and how light interacts with atom, and how the brain creates ‘a mind’. We must create technologies to capture some of the ‘signs’ which ‘point’ to the deep mysterious workings of things. We must speculate on what signs really show, and what signs are the best ones (the accurate, the measurable, the comprehensive and the reliable ones) to point to a variable not directly observable↓3.

Doubt must be there because you cannot manipulate every situation according to your scientific vigor to remove as much doubt from your conclusions as possible. You can seat people in a lab with high noise, and more people in a lab with low or no noise, and compare how much they can concentrate on a math task; but you cannot make people divorce their wives to observe how divorce effects the future development of their children. And you cannot control the kind of education people have while growing up, to see the quality of their later lives. And you cannot perform experimental surgeries on their brain areas, to see how altering the brain physiology affects their personality or intellectual functioning. Thus you simply have no choice but to take huge liberties with the amount of control you exert in an experiment, or to put up with merely observing two things occuring together, or to conduct experiments on non-humans and assume the conclusions can be applicable to humans, or to just plainly record observations or conduct interviews and try to conclude stuff from that alone.

Doubt must be there because even in cases where these problems do not arise and a nice, neat experiment is possible, the global scientific community is simply not organized or efficient enough to systematically repeat already conducted experiments around the world. At least that would help establish the consistency of the derived conclusions before assuming they readily apply to whole humanity. Numerous research topics have indeed received such attention but more often then not, this is a serious problem in the ‘spread’ of ‘knowledge’ around the world and its firm establishment as ‘certain facts’ in the public mind.

Doubt must be there since (as the uncertainty principle establishes with such finality) no matter how perfectly and ideally you carry on with research on a given ‘lucky’ topic, the influence of the ‘observer’ cannot be ruled out from what is being observed. Even the best of measuring technologies must be handled and interpreted by humans. And even if we designed robots to conduct each and every step of the research process (so that experimenter bias and weakness will not affect subjects, or will not make it a different experience for every other subject) what will observations made in such an artificial situation (of absolute handling by robots) tell us about the human situation? For, as Heisenberg’s principle highlights, the observer effects do not arise from the humanity of the observers, they arise from the situation of being observed.

To quote:

If we take Heisenberg’s view for granted, strict causality is broken, or better: the past and future events of particles are indeterminate. One cannot calculate the precise future motion of a particle, but only a range of possibilities. Physics loses its grip. The dream of physicists, to be able to predict any future event in the universe based on its present state, meets its certain death. 

And (from the same source):

If in an exact science, such as physics, the outcome of an experiment depends on the view of the observer, then what does this imply for other fields of human knowledge? It would seem that in any faculty of science, there are different interpretations of the same phenomena. More often than occasionally, these interpretations are in conflict with each other. Does this mean that ultimate truth is unknowable*?

 *underlining is mine

Howcome the public and the practitioners remain ignorant of the uncertainties

… it is the paradigm itself that guides the scientific process, so when these anomalies do appear the tendency has been to force them to fit the current theory, to explain them away, or to simply overlook them. (p. 6 Mythbusters: Cholesterol)

When a theory gains popularity in the public through media, such as in the case of cholesterol-heart disease link, a lot of processes follow that ensure that the above happens. It’s human nature to keep face, to maintain repute, and to wish to bask in the glory of ‘human progress’. As the Neuroskeptic blog quotes from a published study on the effect of popularity on the research process:

In highly competitive fields there might be stronger incentives to “manufacture” positive results by, for example, modifying data or statistical tests until formal statistical significance is obtained. This leads to inflated error rates for individual findings… We refer to this mechanism as “inflated error effect”.↓4

 There may also be an increase in positive findings just because of the fact that a lot of researchers wishing to partake in the potluck start testing the popular hypotheses; alternative hypotheses get neglected or forgotten __ a phenomenon the above cited authors call “multiple testing effect”.

When negative findings are found, human nature again comes into play: It’s an age-old tendency of researchers in general that they tend to publish positive findings more often than negative findings. Negatively conclusive studies (results of these studies have contradicted the hypothesis/theory) are somehow treated as not worthy of reporting although they are ‘findings’ as much as positive ones. This is a well-known bane of research called as ‘publication bias‘.

It is worth noting that the pressures that often drive researchers to these errors are not just psychological. In many cases funding and grant for research projects depends upon the apparent worth of the study being conducted; usually, further and further research building upon a popular theory gets funded easily rather than ideas that ‘go away from the mainstream’ or that are clearly ‘dissenting voices’. In medicine, pharmaceutical companies are a huge factor in channelling research in well-beaten tracks: investments of millions behind drugs and treatments (such as cancer-preventing sun screens) springing from the popular theory are at stake. The best resource for insights on how popularity in media distorts the truly scientific research process is a book I have already referred to in Part II of this post: Fragile Science: the reality behind the headlines by Robin Baker.

The facility of advanced measurement technologies, statistical softwares, and computer aids in research seem to be encouraging the bias of scientists towards findings of their liking. So much so that the number of published papers that are later retracted (i.e. taken off) by the journal  after being challenged or closely scrutinized has been increasing in recent years↓5.

Being ignorant and unscientific, popular media itself might promote wrong leaps of rather ‘expansive’ conclusions from its own reading of research: conclusions which are false, baseless, and create a rosy picture of ‘human scientific power’ in the public mind. For an example, where results of primitive fMRI (brain scanning) studies were wrongly promoted as an advance in mind-reading technology by popular media, go to this Neuroskeptic blogpost.

Target of such rash attitudes on the part of researchers, investing companies, and sensationalist media are not just the general public but practicitioners of professions as well. Research is in focus for the academic side of the professional fields: the university departments and the research institutes. Professional degrees’ students (such as medical students) may get a basic know-how of how research works, but they are fed all of their knowledge not as findings of research but as textbook-published theoretical statements about their field. After getting their degrees, they get immersed in the throes of practice: that’s what motivated their studies in the first place __ generally interested in only new findings (that come with the background just described), with no hint of the ups and downs of the process through which those findings came by.

Why scientists sometimes make claims and promote them as near-certain truth despite all the doubt inherent in the very mechanics of their profession

Some reasons I have already quoted, but those reasons focused on ‘pressures’ on the researchers’ psyche. Here my focus is on deliberate promotion and belief-making that some scientists engage in: beliefs such as “the God delusion“, and “the evolution, not creationism” idea.

The two examples I have quoted above (they are same actually) are theories: conclusions derived from research in areas that are riddled with huge gaps in knowledge, difficulties of doing experimental research, measurement uncertainties, as well as the kind of researching pressures already described. In your mind try to apply all the uncertainty scenarios to the situation of ascertaining facts about the reality of the universe from observations collected from the comparitive variation and living patterns in various life forms; such that many of those life forms are not even directly observable today, only their fossils are available.

These scientists promote their theories by referring to divince sources of knowledge as ‘human constructed beliefs’. How come, when they are aware of the pitfalls of their own research and even admit the huge gaps of knowledge and the impassable difficulties of their methods, they promote their own ‘science constructed beliefs’ as the Certain Truth replacing the Divine?

An apt comment in the Qur’an springs to mind:

بَلْ كَذَّبُوا بِمَا لَمْ يُحِيطُوا بِعِلْمِهِ وَلَمَّا يَأْتِهِمْ تَأْوِيلُهُ

IN FACT, they deny what is beyond the reach of their knowledge, whose explanation has not reached them yet. (in Sura Younus, 39)

Some more pertinent commentary from the Qur’an:  

أَمْ جَعَلُوا لِلَّـهِ شُرَكَاءَ خَلَقُوا كَخَلْقِهِ فَتَشَابَهَ الْخَلْقُ عَلَيْهِمْ

… have those whom they associate with Allah in His Divinity ever created anything like what Allah did so that the question of creation has become dubious to them? (in Ar-Ra’d, 16)

And:

بَلِ ادَّارَكَ عِلْمُهُمْ فِي الْآخِرَةِ ۚ بَلْ هُمْ فِي شَكٍّ مِّنْهَا ۖ بَلْ هُم مِّنْهَا عَمُونَ

STILL less do they comprehend the life to come. In fact they are in doubt about it. Still more, they are blind to it. (An-Naml, 66)

And:

فَإِنَّهَا لَا تَعْمَى الْأَبْصَارُ وَلَـٰكِن تَعْمَى الْقُلُوبُ الَّتِي فِي الصُّدُورِ

Verily, it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it is the hearts which are in the breasts that grow blind. (in Al-Hajj, 46)

And so, many scientists commit the same kinds of prejudice and bigotism in their attitudes that they accuse religions of promoting.

Notes

1. Read the last chapter (“Cargo Cult Science”) in Richard Feynman’s autobiographical memoirs “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!”.

2. See my previous blogposts Outrageous Sensations and The Enjoining Light, as well as the synopsis of Michael Talbot’s book: The Holographic Universe.

3. To read more on the topic, see hypothetical construct on wikipedia.

4. Statistical significance means a conclusion with enough percentage of confidence interval that is accepted in that particular field. An inflated error rate entails that conclusions get wrongly labelled as ‘positive’ (i.e. confirming the hypothesized effect of a on b) more often than they should be.

5. See: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/why-are-scientific-retractions-increasing/

Post Script

This sprawling post covered a major theme of the blog: the inadequacy of science in the quest for definite answers on the nature of the world and reality. To complete the argument initiated in this thread, however, will require many sister posts of perhaps same comprehensiveness. Following topics must be elucidated to make a complete case for the certainty of Divine knowledge and the contrasting failure of science-promoted no-God propoganda:

• Irrefutable evidence of the Divinity of the Quran and the authenticity of prophethood.
• Review of research in evolution with the same truly objective perspective as some researchers have applied in cholesterol and other cases.
• A more developed discussion of why scientists and general people ignore the weaknesses in their own theories while staying indifferent or ‘finding faults’ with the Divince sources of knowledge.

May Allah Ta’ala bring these necessities to realization. Ameen.

Previously related in this blog:

Continued from Part II.

In the last part of this post, I gave an introductory idea of the meaning of doubt or uncertainty in sciences. Then I proceeded with a selective survey of fields of knowledge organizing them in levels from areas with the most doubt in their conclusions upward. Briefly, I covered parasciences, social sciences, behavioral sciences, and biological sciences. In this post I intend to end my survey with physical sciences and mathematics.

Given the depth and breadth of this topic this overview is very general and needs clarifications. There is also a need to be more aritulate on how this survey relates to the initial idea (that certain knowledge comes only from the Divine). Hence I have decided to end this post with a final section, Part IV, to be presented as a concluding synopsis.

Now let us continue with the survey.

Physical sciences

I have selected two fields for my sruvey: physics and meteorology. Being pertinent to inanimate things, one might assume that such scienes should be free of doubt. However, uncertainty pervades even the very basic task of measuring physial quantities such as length, and air pressure – an issue which is definitely even more stronger in case of the non-physical sciences, particularly the socio-psychological domains.  

Am I measuring it accurately?

A lot depends on the answer to this question for a scientist. Measurements are the building blocks on which the high rise of scientific progress is construted: observations taken, experiments planned, hypotheses tested, ultimately paving the way for theories. For practial purposes, a 0.1% or lesser inaccuracy of measurement will not make a differene in real life, but will do so in research — which, in physical sciences today ranges from the nano-scale of subparticles making up electrons and protons, through the global variables of hurricane velocity and the density of ozone layer, all the way to observations of astronomical proportions such as the desplacement of stars, and the velocity of a meteor coming towards earth.

An idea of how relative our standards of measurement are (even such common every-day quantities such as length and weight), requiring constant research to keep them as accurate and uniform in time as possible, will be gained through the following examples:

1. “ The international prototype of the kilogram, an artefact made of platinum-iridium, is kept at the BIPM↓1 under the conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889 … It follows that the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram is always 1 kilogram exactly, m() = 1 kg. However, due to the inevitable accumulation of contaminants on surfaces, the international prototype is subject to reversible surface contamination that approaches 1 µg per year in mass. For this reason, the CIPM declared that, pending further research, the reference mass of the international prototype is that immediately after cleaning and washing by a specified method”

2. “From 1889 to 1960, the metre was defined to be the distance between two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in the vault beside the Standard Kilogram at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris.

   This replaced an earlier definition as 10^-7 times the distance between the North Pole and the Equator along a meridian through Paris; unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value of the circumference of the Earth.

   From 1960 to 1984 it was defined to be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton-86 propagating in a vacuum.

   It is now defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.” (From the online Hyper Dictionary)

3. “A measurement process such as this one (i.e. measuring metre through the platinum-iridium prototype), which runs for decades, should have dimensionally stable control standards, but completely stable materials are rare and perhaps non-existent.”↓2 [The underlining is mine].

This relativity of measurement seems to exist because, in order to establish a standard for the unit of a quantity (for instance, the standard for 1 kg, 1 lt, and 1 sec, etc), we must rely on certain other substanes (such as the platinum-iridium rod) which are subject to change over time (such as erosion, or loss of mass through radiation) or on other quantities (such as the speed of light) which in turn are subject to uncertainty of measurement.

Of course, a special twist to the scenario is added by the famous special theory of relativity, which showed (and was proved through later experiments) that measurement of quantities such as time, length and weight, depends upon the frame of reference of the observer.

The vagaries of predicting weather

 A recent series of catastrophi weather events in the US history have prompted me to include this area of science. Just this last weekend, those of us living in the western side of the world were harrassed by the certain looking possibility of horrific and massive damages from Hurricane Irene. It’s size alone was one-third the length of the entire east coast of the United States, and it was expected to (and certainly did) sweep that entire coast-line even upwards into the Canadian side of the coast. It did, but it turned out to be much more slower and certaintly less horrifying than it was predicted to be; however, it did cause huge damages in certain areas and through some of its features which were being highlighted to a lesser degree by the forecasters.

Source.

Weather forecasting has been traditionally performed using numerical weather prediction. As wikipedia explains, even in the modern day:

Manipulating the vast datasets and performing the complex calculations necessary to modern numerical weather prediction requires some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Even with the increasing power of supercomputers, the forecast skill of numerical weather models extends to about only six days. Factors affecting the accuracy of numerical predictions include the density and quality of observations used as input to the forecasts, along with deficiencies in the numerical models themselves.

 The problems are really aggravated by the fact that even small differences in observing or predicting conditions on a day can lead to widely different forecast predictions for the follow-up days. This is because weather systems are of such massive and time-dependent nature, they exhibit a strongly sensitive dependence on the initial conditions↓3. That is, even short-term future scenarios in weather can vary hugely depending upon the set of currently existing conditions. As a result, meteorologists have switched to a different form of forecasting called as ensemble forecasting, requiring multiple predictions from the same set of initial data. Each prediction is made along with an estimate of it’s accuracy (actually, uncertainty in the accuracy of the prediction), but even that doesn’t help ensure freedom from the errors: “Sometimes the atmosphere behaves more chaotically, and small errors amplify rapidly. At other times the various forecasts stay within a narrow range, therefore they can be treated with more confidence”↓4.

Uncertainty at the very core of physics

I have mentioned this type of uncertainty in a biographial post before. It’s the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle I’m talking about. I quote directly from the webpage I’ve linked the principle to:

“… the position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly, at the same time, even in theory. The very concepts of exact position and exact velocity together, in fact, have no meaning in nature… Ordinary experience provides no clue of this principle. It is easy to measure both the position and the velocity of, say, an automobile, because the uncertainties implied by this principle for ordinary objects are too small to be observed…”

 And:                                                                                                                                                                             

Any attempt to measure precisely the velocity of a subatomic particle, such as an electron, will knock it about in an unpredictable way, so that a simultaneous measurement of its position has no validity. This result has nothing to do with inadequacies in the measuring instruments, the technique, or the observer; it arises out of the intimate connection in nature between particles and waves in the realm of subatomic dimensions.

Source:

Every particle has a wave associated with it; each particle actually exhibits wavelike behavior. The particle is most likely to be found in those places where the undulations of the wave are greatest, or most intense. The more intense the undulations of the associated wave become, however, the more ill defined becomes the wavelength, which in turn determines the momentum of the particle. So a strictly localized wave has an indeterminate wavelength; its associated particle, while having a definite position, has no certain velocity. A particle wave having a well-defined wavelength, on the other hand, is spread out; the associated particle, while having a rather precise velocity, may be almost anywhere. A quite accurate measurement of one observable involves a relatively large uncertainty in the measurement of the other.

In other words (from my own post linked above):

What this law in physics boils down to is, that the position of one of the smallest particles that we are made of cannot be firmly located [if we are trying to measure it’s velocity at the same time. In layman terms, an electron assumes its position when it is being observed. And when its not being observed noone can predict its location. Rather, its in a state of ‘suspension’, its literally not there; however, as soon as it is observed it (magically!) assumes a specific position in time and place! Wow!

In a way, this uncertainty is the same kind which taints all of science, only Heisenberg states it much more outrightly with a sense of finality of the impossibility of measurement of two quantities at once that is rare in other sciences: As soon as we perfectly control one variable for an experiment/measurement, we totally loose our grip on another.

Source

It was Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle from which quantum physics sprang forth (the theory that assumes that an atom behaves like a wave and a particle at the same time. Interestingly, this theoretical arena challenges Einstein’s theory of general relativity which helps explain all the observable phenomenon at the astronomical scale. Conversely, quantum physics explains today everything known about the subatomic level of things (the particles and subparticles in an atom). And yet, when considered together, both the theories cannot be right at the same time!↓5  

This puzzle, although interesting and worth considering, is beyond the scope of the current post, however.

Mathematics

The queen of sciences, mathematics is certainly not free of uncertainty of doubt, despite being considered the most ‘tight’ and ‘rigorous’ of all fields of knowledge.

Given the current specialization and sophistication of it’s subfields, the trend these days is that published mathematical proofs of theorems are so prolonged and complicated that it may take a great amount of reviewer time to confirm or refute them. The result is that the publishers and critics have began talking in terms of percent of certainty of a proof being correct↓6.

 The more interesting seed of doubt in the domain of maths however is the idea, that if a system set out to represent all the mathematical statements there were (such as a computer), there will be one true statement which would be unprovable by the system. This is the Gödel’s incompleteness theorem which I attempted to present in my review of the book  Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. According to wikipedia, the theorem unsettles the foundation of mathematics  ___ those subfields of the queen of field that search for the ultimate basis on which math statements can be called as true.  Gödel essentially proved that there are limits to what we can expect from a tightly logical system.

Thus not even the apparently most rigorous of sciences is free of uncertainty and doubt.

____________________________________________________________________________

A synopsis tying the various threads of this prolonged post as well as presenting certain important clarifications will be presented in the fourth part of this post.

Notes 

1. The BIMP is the International Bureau of Weights and Measures responsible for maintaining the current system of measurement units universally adopted (suh as kiloggram and metre). The above passage has been taken from their website at the following page: http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/kilogram.html

2. In a research paper found at: 

http://ts.nist.gov/MeasurementServices/Calibrations/upload/4998.pdf

3. In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_forecasting

 4. In http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap13/ensemble.html

5. See: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/greene-universe.html

6. See: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/mathematical_uncertainty/