Re: weather/climate::individual/social

James Robert Martin (jmartin who-is-at extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU)
Wed, 24 Apr 1996 09:48:35 +1000 (EST)

Gordon

I've been digesting your message on zoom. Would it be fair to say that
the delicacy of focus metaphor deals with levels of generality - general
to specific; whereas the weather to climate metaphor deals with levels of
abstraction - something more concrete to something more abstract. In
linguistics terms, the focus metaphor is like delicacy or
subclassification within a level of abstraction, whereas the
weather/climate metaphor is more like relations across strata, across
levels of abstract. Of course, we need both kinds of perspective - better
pairs of glasses, and better ways of getting meta- to something.

Jim Martin