[Xmca-l] Re: Imagination

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Esteemed discussants!

In consideration of metaphor as synthesis and considering the word _synthesis_ itself, I looked further into the etymology of synthesis, I missed the "syn-" prefix which means "with" So it is really "with putting, with placing" or better, "putting with, placing with."

I wondered, is it possible that _synthesis_ itself is a metaphor (an older metaphor so that it no longer feels to be a metaphor) from an embodied action of placing or putting something somewhere with something from somewhere else? 

"Putting with" doesn't seem so different than "carrying over."

Yet there are subtle differences!

"Putting with" seems to be taking two or more things and putting them together (smash up, anyone?), while "carrying over" seems to me taking one thing and transferring it from one domain to a new one, while still maintaining the memory of how it was once used. 

In other words, a synthesis may not reveal its generative properties, while a metaphor maintains its utility in its newer application (meaning, anyone?). And yet, a metaphor's original use (its original domain), may be lost (as in the case _synthesis_ as a word was transferred from the domain of an embodied act, as is done with a metaphor).

There's more! A synthesis could also be the blending of an object with a domain (a thing in a place, a thing *with* a place), not just blending of objects, and this is why a metaphor _can be_ a synthesis.

Hence, could it be that a synthesis is a metaphor and a metaphor is a synthesis?

I like the infinite loopiness of that, with an emphasis on the loopiness! :)


Kind regards,

Annalisa