The Cognitive Beauty of Metaphorical Images

Earl R. MacCormac

Introduction

Metaphors are creative cognitive processes that express new insights by juxtaposing concepts not normally associated (l). Usually metaphors appear in linguistic clothes, but artists have also employed visual metaphors to convey novel viewpoints. Early in the twentieth century cubists protrayed the human body and landscapes in geometrical forms suggesting a dramatically different method of perceiving the natural world. Mathematicians often create metaphors as vehicles to express their meaning. Decision theorists describe alternative paths as "trees" largely because when displayed, these different possibilities look like stick diagrams of trees. And fractals represented in computer graphics express algorithms visually and can metaphorically suggest new intuitions. Fractals have been used to suggest visual representations of such widely diverse phenomena as the spread of epidemics and chemical reactions (2).

All forms of metaphor, linguistic and visual, arise from the same cognitive process. I contend that this cognitive process itself can be represented in a metaphorical image derived from non-linear dynamical algorithms like fractals. This is what I mean by "cognitive beauty" — a metaphorical image derived from a non-linear dynamical algorithm which possesses the aesthetic qualities of emotive pleasure that are derived from the form, contrast, and color of the computer graphics. To establish this thesis in a paper of this length would be impossible ; instead, I will first outline my presuppositions and then present a sketch of my proposal. Wherever possible, I shall present empirical evidence to support my claims. The presuppositions for this thesis are : (1) the computational metaphor ; (2) the cognitive process of metaphor as a coevo-