Re: Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your
1,674 views · Published 19 November 2007 · 8:21 · Indexed 28 October 2026
Channel: Jackies1979 · 2007 · People & Blogs
a little but far-reaching mistake in the part of his talk dealing with simile vs. metaphor.... here are the comments that were judged to be poor by one person each: He makes the same mistake that philologists made for a long time till a philosopher (Goodman) came along and explained that in fact metaphor does not reduce to simile but that simile reduces to metaphor. and Even his "normal people", if starting to say that Juliet is warm like the sun, would be somewhat on the same level as the hardcore metaphor poet, as she just does not literally warm like the sun, does not at all nurture in the way the sun does and does certainly not radiate like the sun in a literal sense; so this part is simply misguided. A metaphor is not a simile without "like", but a simile is a metaphor with "like".... so in this response I wish to explain why you simply don't "instantly form the links" (as Vilayanur said) when you are using a simile such as "Juliet is radiant/warm/nurturant/... like the sun"
