Surfaces and Essences

Prologue: Analogies as the Core of Cognition

Are Analogies Seductive and Dangerous Sirens?

There isn't a single thought that isn't deeply and multiply anchored in the past.

Chapter 3. A Vast Ocean of Invisible Analogies

Events are Encoded Not by Rote but by Distillation

On the one hand, our conceptions depend on our senses, since our concepts would be quite different if our senses were different, but on the other hand, our perceptions depend on our repertoire of concepts, because the latter are the filters through which any stimulus in our environment reaches our consciousness.

Chapter 4. Abstraction and Inter-category Sliding

Of Waves

• Ocean waves ("swells");
• Waves of grain ("wavin' wheat");
• flags waving in the wind;
• waves of immigration;
• wavelengths;
• ripples (velocity, reflection, refraction. interference);
• sound waves;
• longitudinal or compression waves (traffic waves);
• transverse waves (vertical cycles);
• dispersive and nondispersive waves (velocity depends on wavelength or not);
• light waves;
• electromagnetic waves;
• moonlet waves (rings of Saturn);
• radio waves;
• temperature waves;
• spin waves;
• gravitational waves;
• matter waves (probability waves).

The Verticality of Expertise

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[...] categorization involves being able to make distinctions. [...] categorization also involves making associations.

Chapter 8. Analogies that Shook the World

The Principle of Relativity and Accelerated Frames of Reference

Parallels that Meet

In a letter of reference for the young man who had applied for a position as professor in 1911, [Henri Poincaré] wrote:

Mr. Einstein is one of the most original minds I have known.