n terms of neurobiological economy, the mix of physical and metaphorical makes sense. As we evolved to process not only concrete sensory information, but also increasingly abstract thoughts, new neural circuits did not evolve to handle these tasks. Instead, in a proposed evolutionary process called, “scaffolding”, existing circuits were adapted to do double duty.
- Environmental temperatures → Emotional temperature.
- Physical space → Psychological space
- Physical weight → Psychological weight
- Physical warmth → Psychological warmth
This link can be the source to more than just metaphor.
If all abstract thought is metaphorical, and all metaphors are assembled out of biologically based concepts, then we would have an explanation for the evolution of human intelligence. Human intelligence would be a product of metaphor and combinatorics. Metaphor allows the mind to
use a few basic ideas . . . to understand more abstract domains. Combinatorics allows afinite set of simple ideas to give rise to an infinite set of complex ones.
- Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought.
Everyday experiences and physical things and sensations - Concrete things