Science Forums 2

[Kriminal99]

IMO normal people generalize from their experiences using metaphors sometimes, resulting in an inability to precisely relate experiences of different types. Those metaphors allow people to persuade and motivate each other, and if a person values this ability to a certain degree they may even create whole belief sets linked together by metaphor (ie the earth mother cries when rain is polluted with man's emissions)

Metaphors do not provide a precise relationship between ideas. You cannot use such a relationship in deciding what to do or even think about one idea or the other. On the other hand, a person can generalize concepts from different situations by observing similarities between them and defining the concept accordingly... with the things that vary in each case left variable in the concept.

Reasoning this way allows someone to come up with a new theory after doing something like watching birds or the stars and extracting a general concept. It also allows someone to learn MUCH faster, because they are not learning the same things over and over again by completely isolating each discipline from one another.

Furthermore, people who do not do this might use the ideas in a single discipline in such a way that violates some greater truth... a truth they would have no way of knowing about because there is no way they could relate it to the discipline they are working in.