People use metaphors to paint a picture of a concept, to highlight the significance of an idea, and to involve a person at both the emotional and intellectual level. Metaphors are not absolutely true or accurate pictures. Rather, they provide a pictorial analogy that communicates the significance of an idea or concept. Their purpose is to facilitate understanding. Most internationally respected scientists have created metaphors because they were in need of a communication system to describe awesome ideas for which there are no concrete or literal terms.
All metaphors are revelatory and inaccurate.
To profit by another s experiences, we must become adept at the art of playing with metaphor, translating images, listening for the meaning beneath the nonsense of just-so stories of myths. Consciousness is poetry. We mix our metaphors in order to avoid orthodoxy, literalism, tyranny. The blue and orange metaphor presented here represents a highly simplistic version of the symbolic signals that occur between and among everyone who lives and works in a school. This signal system is both verbal and nonverbal and includes both language and paralanguage traits, such as tone and quality of voice.