And what we've had, since before the beginning of this case, is a conflict between two different ways of thinking that use almost identical vocabularies. So we talk about two different subjects while making sense only of one. This is why Microsoft lost the case. It's also why it will win on appeal. In fact, nothing matters more, because metaphors are the magma from which our mountains of words extrude.
Metaphors make meaning.
They are what allow us to start sentences we don't know how we'll finish, and to finish sentences we don't remember how we started. They are what allow us forget the words another person speaks or writes yet to remember what they mean. Let's take a modest example. Let's take the subect of life . If we define life literally, we might say it's a stable open biological system that supports volitional activity.