Charles Brown wrote: > > ^^^^^ > CB: Or a is to b as x is to y: a:b::x:y > > Algebra is metaphoric; metaphors are algebraic : 1/2 = 2/4
No. There is a sharp difference between a metaphor and an identity. It is dull & silly to say of a fast runner that she runs like a rabbit because there is not enough difference. As runners they are too near to an identity -- i.e. too much like mathematics. Ovid compares Daphne fleeing Apollo to a hare fleeing, & Samuel Johnson gave it as an example of a bad simile because there was not enough difference. He was right in his principle but wrong in the instance because it was not the speed of the rabbit Ovid had in mind but the psychology as it were of the rabbit, making the _social_ relationship of Apollo/Daphne analogous to the _social relationship_ of wolf/rabbit. Carrol
