"For example, to express our ideas concerning their physical basis we use different metaphors--stored up ideas, engraved images, well-beaten paths."
— Ebbinghaus, Hermann (1850-1909)
Date
1885
Metaphor
"For example, to express our ideas concerning their physical basis we use different metaphors--stored up ideas, engraved images, well-beaten paths."
Metaphor in Context
The amount of detailed information which an individual has at his command and his theoretical elaborations of the same are mutually dependent; they grow in and through each other. It is because of the indefinite and little specialised character of our knowledge that the theories concerning the processes of memory, reproduction, and association have been up to the present time of so little value for a proper comprehension of those processes. For example, to express our ideas concerning their physical basis we use different metaphors--stored up ideas, engraved images, well-beaten paths. There is only one thing certain about these figures of speech and that is that they are not suitable.
Provenance
Searching "metaphor" at Christopher D. Green's Classics in the History of Pyschology (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/)
Citation
Electronic edition at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/memory1.htm
Theme
Meta-metaphorical
Date of Entry
08/11/2005
