The Sensory Basis of Meaning
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based on empirical research, that infants form feeling-images which organize
the understanding drawn from their experience. Feeling-images are built out
of primary material from the infant’s Sensorium, for the purpose of giving
structured meaning to the child’s experience.
For example, while handling objects, children become acquainted with the
physical sensation of force: In order to move objects, exertion is required, and
this exertion is not random but tied to the direction in which the object is
moved, as well as the resistance encountered. Such a feeling-image takes root in
the infant’s psyche and matures over the years. Feeling-images are not visual,
but are structures of feeling formed of muscular sensations recollected from
experience and buttressed by schematic visual images. The feeling-image of
force and resistance is the scaffolding on which later concepts are formed.
Infants observe their surroundings closely, and pick up on repetitive phenomena. As an example, it is clearly evident that liquids behave very differently
from solids, and young children notice that water flows—that is, moves in a
very distinctive and eye-catching way. A feeling-image of flow is quickly established, and remains in place for life. The philosopher Mark Johnson has said
that “the idea of flow, as in water flowing through a pipe, is used to understand electric currents, the conduction of heat in a medium, and the same
image has a productive role in vector calculus”. Similarly, the feeling-image of
force underlies the ideas of effort, coercion and resistance, and is the root of
the scientific notion of force vectors, represented in physics by arrows having
direction and magnitude.
You may have noticed that what is happening in each of these examples is
that the meaning dwelling in a feeling-image is extended metaphorically to new
situations which have the same structure. The elementary schema of liquid flow
provides a large number of common expressions with their meaning, which
is immediately understood on account of its congruity with the elementary
image of a flowing liquid. There is no confusion when one speaks of the flow
of traffic, the flow of time, or the flow of goods in commerce.
Linguists have shown that metaphor is a very powerful means of extending
the meanings which dwell in feeling-images. Meaning arises when sentences
activate composite feeling-images in mind. This happens unconsciously, and so
rapidly that we’re not aware of it. The way this works has been studied in detail
over the past couple of decades by cognitive scientists, and a vast literature is
devoted to it.
One more example of an image schema, which has been thoroughly studied,
is the container schema. Infants gain experience of containers—such as bottles,
cups and boxes—from their earliest days. Structurally, a container has an inside,
an outside and a boundary. It instantiates the ideas of in and out, which play
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based on empirical research, that infants form feeling-images which organize
the understanding drawn from their experience. Feeling-images are built out
of primary material from the infant’s Sensorium, for the purpose of giving
structured meaning to the child’s experience.
For example, while handling objects, children become acquainted with the
physical sensation of force: In order to move objects, exertion is required, and
this exertion is not random but tied to the direction in which the object is
moved, as well as the resistance encountered. Such a feeling-image takes root in
the infant’s psyche and matures over the years. Feeling-images are not visual,
but are structures of feeling formed of muscular sensations recollected from
experience and buttressed by schematic visual images. The feeling-image of
force and resistance is the scaffolding on which later concepts are formed.
Infants observe their surroundings closely, and pick up on repetitive phenomena. As an example, it is clearly evident that liquids behave very differently
from solids, and young children notice that water flows—that is, moves in a
very distinctive and eye-catching way. A feeling-image of flow is quickly established, and remains in place for life. The philosopher Mark Johnson has said
that “the idea of flow, as in water flowing through a pipe, is used to understand electric currents, the conduction of heat in a medium, and the same
image has a productive role in vector calculus”. Similarly, the feeling-image of
force underlies the ideas of effort, coercion and resistance, and is the root of
the scientific notion of force vectors, represented in physics by arrows having
direction and magnitude.
You may have noticed that what is happening in each of these examples is
that the meaning dwelling in a feeling-image is extended metaphorically to new
situations which have the same structure. The elementary schema of liquid flow
provides a large number of common expressions with their meaning, which
is immediately understood on account of its congruity with the elementary
image of a flowing liquid. There is no confusion when one speaks of the flow
of traffic, the flow of time, or the flow of goods in commerce.
Linguists have shown that metaphor is a very powerful means of extending
the meanings which dwell in feeling-images. Meaning arises when sentences
activate composite feeling-images in mind. This happens unconsciously, and so
rapidly that we’re not aware of it. The way this works has been studied in detail
over the past couple of decades by cognitive scientists, and a vast literature is
devoted to it.
One more example of an image schema, which has been thoroughly studied,
is the container schema. Infants gain experience of containers—such as bottles,
cups and boxes—from their earliest days. Structurally, a container has an inside,
an outside and a boundary. It instantiates the ideas of in and out, which play