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Conceptual
blending
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Conceptual Blending (aka Conceptual
Integration) is a general theory of cognition.[1] According to this
theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are
"blended" in a subconscious process known as
Conceptual Blending, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and
language. Insights obtained from these blends constitute the products of
creative thinking, though conceptual blending theory is not itself a theory of
creativity, inasmuch as it does not illuminate the issue of where the inputs to
a blend actually come from. Blending theory does provide a rich terminology for
describing the creative products of others, but has little to say on the
inspiration that serves as the starting point for each blend.
The theory of Conceptual Blending was
developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. The development of
this theory began in 1993 and a representative early formulation is found in
their online article Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression. Mark Turner and Gilles
Fauconnier cite Arthur Koestler´s 1964 book "The Act of
Creation" as an early forerunner of conceptual blending: Koestler had
identified a common pattern in creative achievements in the arts, sciences and
humor that he had termed "bisociation of matrices" - a notion he
described with many striking examples, but did not formalize in algorithmic
terms[2]. Conceptual Blending
theory is also not formalized at the level of algorithmic detail , but its
various optimality principles provide some guidance for those building
computational models.
A newer version of blending theory, with
somewhat different terminology, was presented in their book The Way We Think
(ISBN
0-465-08786-8). Their theory is partially based on basic ideas advanced by George
Lakoff in his 1987 book Women Fire and Dangerous Things and in Lakoff's
coauthored 1980 book with Mark Johnson Metaphors We Live By. It is also
related to Cognitive architecture theories like Soar and ACT-R, and to frame-based theories of Marvin
Minsky, Jaime Carbonell among others.
[edit] Notes
1. ^ No single cognitive
theory has yet been able to cover any significant fraction of the phenomena of
human cognition, but some claim[citation needed] that, as of late 2005,
conceptual blending was rising in prominence among such theories. In his book
"The Literary Mind" (Oxford University Press 1996), conceptual
blending theorist Mark Turner states that "Conceptual blending is a
fundamental instrument of the every day mind, used in our basic construal of
all our realities, from the social to the scientific." (p. 93)
2. ^ Mark Turner, Gilles
Fauconnier: The Way We Think. Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden
Complexities. New York: Basic Books 2002, p. 37
[edit] See also
Resources on Conceptual Blending
[edit] External links
Blending and Conceptual
Integration - Mark Turner
Blending Website at
University of Southern Denmark
The Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor Online is a collection of
numerous formative articles in the fields of conceptual metaphor and conceptual
blending (aka conceptual integration).
The differences between conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending
are illustrated in this article on visual blends by Tim Rohrer
Aparta Krystian. Conventional Models of Time and Their Extensions in Science Fiction A master's thesis
exploring conceptual blending in time travel. Contains an
introduction to the theory of conceptual blending, as well as an exploration of
the differences between conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending
theory.