Posts tagged with "Surfaces and Essences"

Hobbes on metaphor #fail

Came across this massive fail by Hobbes to rage against metaphor in Hofstadter and Sander’s Surfaces and Essences and thought it interesting:

To conclude, the light of humane minds is perspicuous words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; reason is the pace; increase of science, the way; and the benefit of mankind, the end. And, on the contrary, metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous words are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention and sedition, or contempt.

Hobbes, Leviathan