The importance of metaphor
In the yesterday's class, I first explained the importance of metaphor, because the students were not good at 3rd homework exercise, that is, "select a character, and list and categorize the metaphors in his or her remarks". Many students didn't understand the difference among analogy, metonymy and synecdoche. So I first explained what metaphor was. A metaphor expresses an idea or a thing in other idea or thing, and the metaphorical target idea is more abstract than the original. For example, "a discussion is a war" is a metaphor based on analogy, and "discussion" is more abstract idea than "war". However, there is a different discussion from "war", for example, we can discuss in a manner of "give and take". So a metaphor lights up only one aspect of the target idea, and the other aspects are hidden in the shadow. So much so that, we can understand the cultural and personality background of a person by analyzing what kinds of metaphors the person uses.
By the way, are there any other expressions except for metaphor? The answer is no. After all, language itself is a metaphor, because the relation between signifian and signifie is arbitral, as Ferdinand de Saussure pointed out. That is, a word(signifian) is not its object(signifie) itself. Although language is only a sign, we have no other choice but to express an object using language. This is the just thing that an idea is expressed by the other idea. Well then, how is the relation between signifian and signifie determined? That is determined by difference and deferral, these two characters are mixed into "differral" by Jack Delida. "Difference" means that a signifie is distinguished from the other things, for example, "red" as a signifian distinguish "red" as a signifie from the other colors. But the meaning of word cannot be determined only by "difference", because we cannot understand what kind of "red" only by "red". So to determine what kind of red the "red" means, we need another words, such as shallow, shiny, like a baby cheeks and so on. So a meaning of word can be determined after appearance of the word, that is "deferral". So much so that, we can also understand the personality of a person if we see what kinds of words the person uses.
Ethnomethodology
Tomorrow, I introduce "Ethnomethodology" into my moomin class to comprehend the messages of Moomin stories. "Ethno" means a specific social groups, "method" represents the ordinary ways or habits that the group members use to communicate with each other. The moomins form a specific community, so by analyzing their "method" we can understand how they construct their community. So it is the message from the author Tove Jansson.
Debate on Realism v.s. Instrumentalism
In the next class of Socio-constructive Science & Technology I, we debate whether we should stand on Realism or Instrumentalism. The former insists that the object explained by a scientific idea, i.e. photon, is really exist. On the other hand, the later consider it is not important whether the object is really exist or not, it is good a scientific idea explains observed phenomena appropriately. Einstein was one of the most popular scientists who believed in Realism, and Stephen Hawking was a good representative of Instrumentalism. I asked my students to think whether the research that they gapple with everyday is based on Realism or Instrumentalism, and why you think so. Through this debate I hope to introduce such conclusion that Realism have many problem especially in modern science, and to give guidance to them to Socio-constructivism which is the end point where Instrumentalism is inquired.
Moomin seminar 3rd
Yesterday, the 3rd Moomin seminar was held. In the class, we did three exercises on "Comet in Moominvalley". The first is dividing the story into four parts, that is introduction, development, turn and conclusion, and evaluating each part whether it is positive or negative. Next, we listed the original rhetorics of 10 main characters and analyzing each personality from his/her rhetoric. Lastly, metaphors which were used in the story were founded.
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy in sociology is a method for explaining what society is. In dramaturgy, we act a kind of role and through this role-playing we construct social relations with each other. Our acts depend on time, place and audience, and our action induce us a sense of "self". Therefore, our identities rather change through our everyday social interactions with others than be stable and an independent psychological entity. A story can be also analyzed by dramaturgy. It is important not only that we analyze what kinds of roles the characters act in a story but only that we should consider our roles as a reader of a story, that is, what kind of emotions we sense against each character. While the character who we have a good impression is who we want to act of, the character who we have a negative feeling has same things as we dislike some parts of ourselves.
To analyze our roles against a story, I think ethnomethodology is useful. "Ethno" means a social community and it is ethnomethodology that explains its everyday methods and practices. Ethnomethodologist analyze how the order of the community is formed based on this explanation.
Composition of story
Knowledge is a story, story has a composition, composition has the following 4 factors:
- gather and bundle point
- events related to the point
- order of the events
- causal relation between a series of the events
And these factors are divided into some big coherent units and construct a structure. A basic structure is "introduction-adequate development-conclusion". Although there are various types of structure in various stories, the following 4 patterns are typical:
- Ruin type: rise, rise and fall, fall of main character's luck, and finally a bad end
- Hero type: fall, fall and rise, rise, and finally a happy end
- Comedy type: repeat of fall and rise, and finally a happy end
- Tragedy type: repeat of rise and fall, and finally a bad end
Few stories has only one pattern. Almost all stories have a set of these pattern, and furthermore a complex story is nested a set of the 4 typical patterns.
Falsifiability
In today's second class of Socio-constructive Science & Technology I, we argued on "falsifiability". This idea appeared as a substitute of logical positivism to define science better. Logical positivism had mainly two problems. One is so called as "too early generalization". Based on logical positivism, we get scientific knowledge by inductive reasoning over phenomena. However, we cannot define how much phenomena we should prove a common rule is valid on. The other is we can't guarantee the justice of inductive reasoning as a method for inducing proper rules. This reasoning based on "principle of uniformity of nature", that is a hypothesis that natural phenomena don't occur at random, they should have some orders, that is, in the same condition same phenomena happen. However, we cannot prove this principle. Considering the circumstances mentioned above, logical positivism is insufficient for definition of scientific knowledge. On the other hand, falsifiability does not refer to whether or not a knowledge can be proved its rightness, rather judge a knowledge is scientific or not by whether or not it has a room for accepting counter evidences. For example, the hypothesis of "all living things have evolved" can not be contradicted, on the other hand, "all living things have evolved by natural selection" is falsifiable because we can search a creature which has evolved by another way except for natural selection. However falsifiability has also a problem that it is difficult to prove falsifiability because we can add as many ad-hoc hypotheses which protect main assertion from contradictions as we like. After all, scientific knowledge cannot be free from human works, in other word, scientific knowledge is constructed by ourselves, not exist in natural.
