metonymy4u

Once upon a time our view of the world around us was very different. For example, we humans had the notion that space and time were either unchangeable features of God’s universe (Newton) or a priori essential principles of reason (Kant). But then some new data was discovered that was inconsistent with these notions and Einstein decided to build a new theory that rejected the idea of the constancy of space and time. Rather than trying to fit new data into old models, he simply proposed new models. The fact that the new models contradicted all of our traditional prejudices about the way the universe worked was not an impediment to him. Likewise, modern psychologists have discovered that it is more useful to fit concepts to contexts rather than the other way around. In this approach, concepts (words) are simply events which are more or less useful in a given context. They are not gateways to an eternally anchored truth. It’s kinda like what Audubon said about birding, “When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird.”