• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Kim Hermanson PhD

Facilitating Creative Breakthroughs

  • Home
  • Events
  • Readings
    • Request a Reading
    • Testimonials
  • Products
    • Books
    • Self-Study Audio Courses
    • Courses to License
  • Blog
  • About
    • Official Bio
    • Lectures and Interviews
    • Personal Story
  • Doorway Sessions
    • Book a Session
    • What Clients Say
  • Contact
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Fundamental Change Depends on our Capacity to Engage with Metaphor

February 23, 2019

Metaphor is at the core of nearly every scientific breakthrough throughout history, and celebrated scientists like Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein relied on metaphor to help them make new discoveries. At all levels of society—personal, cultural, scientific, social, political—fundamental change depends upon our ability to engage with metaphor.

Aristotle claimed that his soul never thought without an image. Einstein said that words did not have much to do with his own thought process. Rather, it was visual and kinesthetic images that helped him formulate his mathematical and scientific concepts…words had to be laboriously found in a “secondary state.” August Kekule said his discovery of the benzene ring arose from a vision he had of a snake taking hold of its own tail. And Velcro was invented when George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer, noticed that the cockleburs that were stuck to his pants had tiny hooks on them.

Previous Post
Next Post

Uncategorized creative breakthrough, metaphor

Primary Sidebar

Blog Categories

  • Art
  • Books
  • Doorway Sessions
  • Earth/Nature
  • Imaginal
  • Inspiration
  • Learning & Creative Process
  • Metaphor
  • Social Change
  • Teaching, Coaching & Facilitating
  • Uncategorized

Blog Archives

Blog Tags

aesthetics albert einstein art artist beauty Betty Edwards Book Passage carl jung coaching consciousness creative process creative writing creativity depth psychology depth psychology alliance doorway sessions drawing on the right side of the brain eckhart tolle esalen institute george lakoff getting messy goethe heart learning herbert marcuse image imaginal imagination inspiration james hillman John O'Donohue kim hermanson learning marshall mcluhan martin foss metaphor nature picasso poetry Robert Henri social change Sophia Center stanley kunitz teaching The Art Spirit third space
Give your creativity a kick in the pants.
Get Kim's Guide: "15 Tips for Creative Breakthroughs"
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2021 Kim Hermanson, PhD

Website by Digital PDX

Header Image by California Artist Logan Payne.