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The Brain’s Software: The Natural Languages and Poetic Information Processing

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The Machine as Metaphor and Tool

Abstract

In this essay the machine as metaphor and tool becomes the metaphor as tool or machine.

I am indebted to all the participants at the 1990 Abisko workshop for their valuable suggestions and perceptive comments. In particular I would like to thank Paul David, Edward Steinmueller, Hermann Haken, Robert Rosen and Rolf Wasén for their particularly detailed comments. My interest in metaphors began when I spent a year (1989) at Stanford’s Humanities Center. There I had lengthy discussions with literary specialists about figures of speech and why they took them so seriously. Toni O’Shaughnessy, Elena Feder and Susan Levin were particularly helpful in sharing their views with me and suggesting appropriate sources. Anthropologists Bernard Siegel and Bill Beeman also made many valuable comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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Johansson, S.R. (1993). The Brain’s Software: The Natural Languages and Poetic Information Processing. In: Haken, H., Karlqvist, A., Svedin, U. (eds) The Machine as Metaphor and Tool. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77711-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77711-0_2

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