Colin Murray Turbayne

Colin Murray Turbayne ( 7 February 1916 - 16 May 2006) was an Australian-American philosopher who specialized in the writings of the Empiricist George Berkeley while lecturing for over three decades at the University of Rochester. He is also noted for his research into the use and abuse of the linguistic metaphors in the historical writings of several other noted philosophers and scientists of the western tradition in his book The Myth of Metaphor.

Quotes

The Myth of Metaphor (1962)

• The mechanical philosophy is a case of being victimized by metaphor. I choose Descartes and Newton as excellent examples of metaphysicians of mechanism malgré eux, that is to say, as unconscious victims of the metaphor of the great machine. Together they have founded a church, more powerful than that founded by Peter and Paul, whose dogmas are now so entrenched that anyone who tries to reallocate the facts is guilty of more than heresy.
  • Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (1962) [1] p. 5.

• There is a remedy against the domination imposed, not by generals, statesmen, and men of action, whose power dissolves when they retire, but by the great sort-crossers, whose power increases when they die- the remedy of becoming aware of metaphor...
  • Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (1962) [2] p. 5.

• The metaphysics that still dominates science and enthralls the minds of men is nothing but a metaphor, and a limited one.
  • Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (1962) [3] p. 6.

• However appropriate in one sense a good metaphor may be, in another sense there is something inappropriate about it. This inappropriateness results from the use of a sign in a sense different from the usual...
  • Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (1962) [4] p. 11.

• In short, the use of metaphor involves both the awareness of duality of sense and the pretense that the two different senses are one.
  • Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (1962) [5] p. 17.

• Thus to the plain man there may be no metaphor in Aristotle's "substance", Descartes' "machine of nature," Newtonian "force" and "attraction," Thomas Young's "kinetic energy" and Michelangelo's figure of Leda. Placed in their customary contexts these present nothing to him but the face of literal truth. To the initiated, however, who are aware of the "gross original" senses as well as the now literal senses , they may become metaphors. There are no metaphors per se....
  • Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (1962) [6] p. 18.

• Knowing the theory of anything is contrasted with know-how in all the arts...Beethoven..Michelangelo..Shakespeare, all great exponents of know-how, probably knew how to manipulate their instruments to achieve the desired results long before they knew the theory of their art. Perhaps some of them never bothered to learn the theory. On the other hand, there are many who know the theory better than these, but who lack know-how....Although we acquire the skill of understanding words by experience, so that we know the correlations between them and things, between words and other words, and between words and feelings and actions, we do not do it by inductive reasoning. Nor must we think that we do it by deductive reasoning... In the main, words are cues rather than clues.
  • Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (1962) [7] pp. 90-91.

External links

• Berkeley Prize Winners
• Colin Murray Turbayne's publications on JSTOR.org
• Colin Murray Turbayne's publications on Google Scholar
• Colin Murray Turbayne in the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• You may read Turbayne's "The Myth of Metaphor" (1962) online at hathitrust.org

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