Looking for intersections between childbirth, science, and metaphor, I am
reminded of how the Los Alamos scientists handled, in language, the
bomb. When the uranium bomb, "Little Boy," had been sent to Japan, work
continued on the plutonium bomb: the problem was whether it would be a
girl or a boy, a dud or a success. The test, however, was successful and
the telegram sent to Truman's Secretary of War read: "Doctor has just
returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky
as his big brother. The light in his eyes is discernible from here to
Highhold and I could have heard his screams from here to my farm." I
give this example partly to emphasize that scientists, like other humans,
use language to communicate. And language is metaphorical, as is every
form of concept-making. Sokol seems to argue for the empiricism of
scientific terminology. Well, we wish. But no terminology is empirical.
Secondly, I'd like to challenge Sokol's "After all, a metaphor is usually
employed to clarify an unfamiliar concept by relating it to a more
familiar one, not the reverse." This truism, like many truisms, is not
true, as a glance up at the example above will attest: an unfamiliar
concept (the bomb) is elucidated by reference to another unfamiliar
concept (childbirth). I say childbirth is "unfamiliar" because it has,
until recently, no history, no literature, no visibility, no "publication"
culturally. Nevertheless, the ineffability of childbirth and the paucity
of its representations have done nothing to inhibit its phenomenal
success as the number one supplier of metaphors of causation, eg, birth
of the nation, birth of the language, birth of capitalism, womb of time,
poem as a child, etc (it also is a prime supplier of metaphors for metaphor).
In fact, people are far more comfortable using birth-as-a-metaphor than
birth-as-a-subject. You don't need special credentials to do it -- in
fact the less you know about birth the better! By contrast, consider the
three long posts from Alison, Randolph and Vasili, all of which express
awareness regarding the limits of language, and all of which choose
testimony or personal narrative as a form.
Mairead
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