Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking — Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander
Culture, Collaboration, and Leadership
Surfaces and Essences makes the hypothesis that all human thought and experience is metaphorical, beginning from birth when we start to make sense of the bombardment of raw sensory input. Over time, we extend, modify, and revisit the metaphors that we live by. This book gives a solid reason why stories are so compelling, and suggests a way of thinking about thought that could help us align our organisations around a shared understanding. It also highlights how the language we use can amplify some concepts while muting others (and gives examples of how the idiomatic metaphors differ even across English and French which share many roots)
Read this book for insight into how stories and metaphors provide the foundation for our experience, and how we might synthesise these ideas into an information sharing strategy.
