Logjam Metaphor for Concepts

Concepts accrete around words the way a logjam accretes around a snag in a river.

This page is a Central Idea.

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In his 1997 book, *Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again *, Professor Andy Clark hypothesizes that concepts grow around words in a way similar to how logjams form in rivers. A logjam starts when something – perhaps a log – floats down a river and gets stuck on something. The original obstacle has now become larger, so it’s more likely that something else will get stuck. And so on, until you have a pile of logs tangled up together. Importantly, it’s not just logs that get stuck. It can be twigs, leaves, or any other junk that floats. Plants might take root and grow. And so on. A logjam grows into a complex structure.

To Clark, a word or phrase gets learned, then accretes associations based on the brain’s later experiences with that word. See Associations of Dawn for an example.

Note: in the book, Clark's actually metaphor is to a mangrove island . I like mine better.

I hypothesize that a Distributed Logjam might be a nice alternate metaphor.

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