Vividness in Mathematics and Narrative

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Gowers
Keyword(s):  
Common Factors ◽  
Mathematical Notion ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
Analogous Process ◽  
Mathematical Texts

This chapter examines vividness in mathematics and narrative. It first gives two presentations of the mathematical notion of a group before explaining how to calculate highest common factors. It then considers the role of figures of speech, such as metaphor and irony, in mathematics and proceeds by citing a few passages from literature that highlight the use of concrete details to convey abstract thoughts; these include passages from Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Alan Hollinghurst's The Folding Star, and George Eliot's Middlemarch. The chapter argues that when working through a totally analogous process, exactly the same response can be created in certain mathematical texts.

Developing Habits and Knowing What Habits to Develop: A Look at the Role of Virtue in Ethics

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erich H. Loewy
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Conventional Method ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Better Than

Virtue ethics attempts to identify certain commonly agreed-upon dispositions to act in certain ways, dispositions that would be accepted as ‘good’ by those affected, and to locate the goodness or badness of an act internal to the agent. Basically, virtue ethics is said to date back to Aristotle, but as Alisdair MacIntyre has pointed out, the whole idea of ‘virtue ethics’ would have been unintelligible in Greek philosophy for “a virtue (arete) was an excellence and ethics concerned excellence of character; all ethics was virtue ethics.” Virtue ethics as a method to approach problems in medical ethics is said by some to lend itself to working through cases at the bedside or, at least, is better than the conventional method of handling ethical problems. In this paper I want to explore some of the shortcomings of this approach, examine other traditional approaches, indicate some of their limitations, and suggest a different conceptualization of the approach.

Figures in the carpet of branding

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Brown
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Services Marketing ◽  
Cautionary Note ◽  
Internal Branding ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Analytical Tools

PurposeMany have noted the role of metaphor in branding understanding. More than mere decorative frills, tropes play a fundamental, foundational part in the process. The purpose of this comment is to consider some of the branding's core conceits and classifies them for scholarly convenience.Design/methodology/approachMetaphors, first and foremost, are figures of speech not analytical tools or techniques. Accordingly, the commentary adopts an appropriate literary approach to its subject matter. Reflective for the most part, it seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct simultaneously. Suggestion not stipulation is the aim.FindingsAfter scrutinising branding's figurative landscape, then focussing on several promising analogies, the commentary concludes with a cautionary note concerning internal branding. Metaphor is not all fun and games, nor the be all and end all of branding understanding.Originality/valueServices marketing possesses two powerful and deeply entrenched tropes – relationships and dramaturgy. Although this comment touches on both, particularly the former, it points out the plethora of figurative possibilities, some fresh, others familiar, that are available to brand managers and researchers both.

Bihemispheric Language: How the Two Hemispheres Collaborate in the Processing of Language

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman D. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Level Of Understanding ◽  
The Right

Speech production in most people is strongly lateralized to the left hemisphere (LH), but language understanding is generally a bilateral activity. At every level of linguistic processing that has been investigated experimentally, the right hemisphere (RH) has been found to make characteristic contributions, from the processing of the affective aspects of intonation, through the appreciation of word connotations, the decoding of the meaning of metaphors and figures of speech, to the understanding of the overall coherency of verbal humour, paragraphs and short stories. If both hemispheres are indeed engaged in linguistic decoding and both processes are required to achieve a normal level of understanding, a central question concerns how the separate language functions on the left and right are integrated. This chapter reviews relevant studies on the hemispheric contributions to language processing and the role of interhemispheric communications in cognition.

Enhancing Civilian Risk Mitigation by Expanding the Commander’s Information Aperture

2020 ◽  
pp. 160-190
Author(s):  
Geoffrey S. Corn ◽  
Michael W. Meier
Keyword(s):  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Civilian Protection ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Military Necessity

Debates continue over the significance of reverberating effects of an attack during armed hostilities and how they implicate proportionality assessments. Some argue commanders bear an obligation to integrate consideration of such effects in their proportionality judgments; others argue that such effects are too speculative. But this debate reveals the vital role of process in attack judgments. That process will ideally provide commanders with information related to judgments that seek to ensure the balance between military necessity and humanity, relying on battle-staff experts working through a doctrinal process to filter and refine such information. In this chapter, we suggest a new staff principal: the civilian risk mitigation expert. Such an expert will contribute to expanding the commander’s aperture related to civilian risk considerations and better enable the commander to foresee and consider all attack effects, thereby enhancing both civilian protection and the legitimacy of attack judgments.

A Biographical Case Study of a Victimizer's Daughter's Strategy: Pseudo-Identification With the Victims of the Holocaust

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Rosenthal ◽  
Dan Bar-On
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
The Real ◽  
Repair Strategy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Working Through ◽  
The Holocaust

Abstract Previous studies have shown that many children of former Nazi perpetrators either identify with their parents by denying their atrocities, by distancing them-selves emotionally from their parents, or by acknowledging their participation in the extermination process. Through a hermeneutical case study of the narrated life story of a Euthanasia physician's daughter, a type of strategy, which we defined as pseudo-identification with the victim, is reconstructed. The results of the analysis suggest that this is a repair strategy. Putting oneself in the role of one's parents' victim provides refuge from acknowledging possible identification with Nazism and its idols, as well as identifying oneself with the real victims of one's parents. In this case, the psychological consequences of this strategy are described: The woman still suffers from extermination anxieties which block further working through of the past. (Behavioral Sciences)

scholarly journals Juvenile social experience affects pairing success at adulthood: congruence with the loser effect?

2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1767) ◽  
pp. 20131514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mylene M. Mariette ◽  
Charlène Cathaud ◽  
Rémi Chambon ◽  
Clémentine Vignal
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Social Experience ◽  
Male Quality ◽  
Male Attractiveness ◽  
Winner And Loser Effects ◽  
Analogous Process ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Juvenile Males

Social interactions with adults are often critical for the development of mating behaviours. However, the potential role of other primary social partners such as juvenile counterparts is rarely considered. Most interestingly, it is not known whether interactions with juvenile females improve males’ courtship and whether, similar to the winner and loser effects in a fighting context—outcome of these interactions shapes males’ behaviour in future encounters. We investigated the combined effects of male quality and juvenile social experience on pairing success at adulthood in zebra finches ( Taeniopygia guttata ). We manipulated brood size to alter male quality and then placed males in either same- or mixed-sex juvenile dyads until adulthood. We found that males from reduced broods obtained more copulations and males from mixed-sex dyads had more complete courtships. Furthermore, independent of their quality, males that failed to pair with juvenile females, but not juvenile males, had a lower pairing success at adulthood. Our study shows that negative social experience with peers during adolescence may be a potent determinant of pairing success that can override the effects of early environmental conditions on male attractiveness and thereby supports the occurrence of an analogous process to the loser effect in a mating context.

Frustration Is a Feature

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-524
Author(s):  
Brandon Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Emotional Work

This article argues that the primary role of the instructor is to help students understand and work with the difficult emotional states that arise from struggling to learn. Drawing on Sianne Ngai’s theorization of “ugly feelings” and using his own experience with digital humanities instruction as a case study, the author offers ways to center emotional work, especially work involving frustration and anxiety, in the classroom. Asking students to develop failed prototypes and reflect on the process, for example, can provide them with a better sense of what it might mean to succeed. Giving the same exercise twice, with artificially imposed difficulties the second time, might help them learn concrete steps for working through mounting irritation. In short, frustration and anxiety are not things that emerge from time to time—they are ever-present. The author argues that it is the job of instructors to develop ways to prepare students not for the unexpected failure but for the inevitable frustration that comes even with success.

‘No learned rhetorical flourishes!’ Anti-rhetorical narration and metaphorical agency in Raabe’sCeltic Bones

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Elshout
Keyword(s):  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
The Real ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Cognitive Studies ◽  
Virtual Events ◽  
Narrative Function

As Monika Fludernik (2011) points out, creative metaphors receive less attention than conceptual metaphors in cognitive studies. The complex role of metaphor in literature and its narrative function needs to be further explored. Realistic novellas do not display a predilection towards elaborate creative metaphors. They contain other figures of speech and more conventional figurative forms such as symbols, allegories and similes – the latter to approximate an experience or perception. My hypothesis is, however, that in realistic texts metaphorical agency is often contained and instigated by virtual micronarratives (digression, memory, association, imagination and dream). How does metaphoricity relate to virtual parts of the storyworld? In order to investigate this question I use Wilhelm Raabe’s poetic realist novella Keltische Knochen ( Celtic Bones, published 1864) as a case study. Raabe’s travel account shows how virtual passages can receive and entail a metaphorical dimension. In Raabe’s novella the narrator witness claims that it does not manipulate reality by rhetorical tricks and metaphorical transformations, and therefore makes a clear distinction between the virtual and real parts of the storyworld. At the same time this distinction is undermined because the virtual events interfere with the real events and transform them into metaphorical sequences. The metaphorical sequences open up alternative segments of the storyworld that can be coined as paranarratives. The case study exposes the negotiability and the co-text dependence of literary metaphoricity and contributes to the exploration of the narrative potential of figurativeness in literary texts.

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