Metaphorical Vision: Changes in

Western Attitudes to the Environment

William J. Mills

School of Geography, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3TD, England

Abstract. Metaphor plays a fundamental role in our perception and comprehension of our
environment, not just as a means of escape from customary vision but, more importantly, as the
means whereby that customary vision first becomes established. Societies differ in “metaphori-
cal vision” because their vision of the world derives from different metaphors. Three periods in
the history of the Western world are distinguished. In the Middle Ages, nature was seen primarily
as a book. In the Renaissance, it was believed to be organized in the same manner as a human
being. In the modern age, the most influential metaphor has been the machine. A society’s
choice of one metaphor rather than another as the primary vehicle through which it seeks to
comprehend its environment is highly indicative of the needs and aspirations of that society.

Key Words: Metaphor, book of nature, microcosmism, machinism, history of environmental

attitudes.

Certainly metaphor can be so used, but it is a

T HERE have been recently signs that
metaphor is becoming a focus of growing
geographical interest (Kolodny 1973; Liv-
ingstone and Harrison 1980, 1981; Sitwell
1981; Smith 1980; Tuan 1978; Weimer 1966).
An awareness of the extent to which our
image of the world is our own construction
appears to lie at the root of this development.
In an important article, Livingstone and Harri-
son (1981) have drawn attention to the epis-
temological role of metaphor and analogy.
They have stressed the role that these play in
creative thought as the means for breaking
through the bonds of customary vision, that
is, those ways of looking at the world which
have hardened into unanalyzed convention.
My concern here is to investigate the role of
metaphor in the establishment of that cus-
tomary vision.
Livingstone and Harrison distinguish be-
tween the “translation” and the “interaction”
views of metaphor. Neither of these, however,
is adequate to my purpose. The approach to
metaphor followed here is perhaps best dem-
onstrated by contrasting it with the “transla-
tion” view, which holds that metaphors
should be seen merely as collapsed similes
with the preposition of comparison omitted.
minority usage. The “translation” view en-
courages us to imagine that authors who use
metaphorical language cannot mean what
they are saying; this reduces metaphor to a
mere device of style. Sometimes, of course,
this is all that metaphor is, but more normally
this is not the case. Cohen and Nagle (1934,
p. 369) provide a particularly clear descrip-
tion of the alternative theory of metaphor that
I adopt here:’
It would be an error. . . to regard every metaphor
as an explicitly formulated analogy, in which the
words of comparison, “like,” “as,” and so on, are
omitted. This presupposes that the recognition
of the literal truth precedes the metaphor, which
is thus always a conscious transference of the
properties of one thing to another. But history
shows that metaphors are generally older than
expressed analogies. . . . Metaphors may thus be
viewed as expressing the vague and confused
but primal perception of identity, which sub-
sequent processes of discrimination transform
into a conscious and expressed analogy between
different things, and which further reflection
transforms into the clear assertion of an identity
or common element (or relation) which the two
different things possess.
From this it should appear no coincidence
that, as A. H. Sayce (quoted in Wheelwright

237

238 Mills
1968, p. 120) has written, “three-fourths of
our language may be said t o consist of
worn-out metaphors.” The principal impor-
tance of metaphor in this view is that it is the
means by which language grows. In this pro-
cess, we extend to the unfamiliar those words
and concepts we have found useful in com-
prehending the familiar. Far from being
merely a device of style, metaphor needs to
be seen as constituting the very mechanism
out of which our language is developed
(Urban 1939, pp. 174-81).
In this essay, I shall assume that metaphori-
cal language must be accorded “its full native
propriety” (Vico 1968, p. 131). If, then, we find
authors describing their environment in terms
we normally think applicable only to a book, a
human being, or a machine (the three exam-
ples I shall be studying), we are to assume
that these writers are indeed recording how
that environment appeared to them. Such
usage may appear “metaphorical” to us in
hindsight, but it is “literal” for those who
employ it.‘
What I mean by the term “metaphorical vi-
sion” is the tendency for a society to seize
upon one metaphor in particular as the cen-
tral vehicle through which it seeks to com-
prehend its world. Choice of one metaphor
rather than another is highly indicative of the
needs and aspirations of that society. The
chosen metaphor is exploited for all its impli-
cations, around which a systematic world vi-
sion is elaborated. In this process, however,
the metaphor may reveal aspects of itself
other than those for which it was first chosen,
and the “unraveling of its logic” may then
lead that society to experience an evolution of
ideas that may be disturbing to its tradition-
ally established preconceptions. Replace-
ment of one central metaphor by another may
occur for a number of reasons: the unraveling
of the logic of the primary metaphor may yield
conclusions that render it no longer accept-
able; other metaphors may, for reasons of their
own development, become seen as compara-
tively more attractive; or, finally, the needs
and aspirations of the society may alter.3
What follows is a brief history of Western
attitudes toward the environment over the
past two thousand years. I shall argue that
three metaphors, in particular, have been
exploited as the basis for the systematic de-
velopment of a “metaphorical vision” of the
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world. These metaphors are those of the book
of nature, man as the microcosm, and the
world as machine; the associated periods
broadly correspond to the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and the M ~ d e r n . ~
The Book of Nature
The world’s a book in folio, printed all
With God’s great works in letters capital:
Each creature is a page; and each effect
A fair character, void of all defect.
-Francis Quarles (Curtius 1953, p. 323)
A much-quoted passage of Petrarch has
been used to argue that in the Middle Ages
the habits of religious asceticism were so in-
grained that medieval man was incapable of
sharing our appreciation for the beauties of
n a t ~ r e In
. ~ this famous letter, Petrarch de-
scribes his ascent of Mt. Ventoux and his
feelings of exhilaration upon reaching the
summit. Having with him a copy of the “Con-
fessions” of Augustine, he decides to sit
down and read, only to be met with these lines:
Men go to wonder at the heights of mountains,
the oceans’ floods, rivers’ long courses, oceans’
immensity, the revolution of the stars-and of
themselves, they have no care!
Pet rarc h continues:
I closed the book, angry with myself for not
ceasing to admire things of the earth, instead of
remembering that the human soul is beyond
comprehension the subject for admiration. Once
and again, as I descended, I gazed back, and the
lofty summit of the mountain seemed to me
scarcely a cubit high, compared with the sublime
dignity of man.
A passage such as this is substantially
misinterpreted if we infer from it that our pri-
mary difference from Petrarch and Augustine
is one of aesthetical appreciation. There is
much evidence to demonstrate that medieval
men and women were at least as responsive
as we are to the beauties of the environment.
Even in this passage, Petrarch does record
his initial exhilaration on viewing the land-
scape. Then, too, we have only to recall Fran-
cis of Assisi and especially his “Canticle of
Brother Sun,” or to remember the intricately
and lovingly observed animals and plants dec-
orating cathedrals and the margins of il-
luminated manuscripts, to realize that the
stereotype of the Middle Ages as essentially

Metaphorical Vision
distrustful of nature will simply not match its
reality. It is not for reasons of a world-denying
asceticism that Petrarch and Augustine re-
spond to nature differently from ourselves.
Rather, the difference must be seen as one of
metaphorical vision.
Books and writing have since their origins
proved resonant symbols. For years after its
invention, writing was practiced as a most se-
cret and holy art by a highly restricted priestly
caste and was regarded with reverence and
awe by lay society. One has only to read the
New Testament to understand what a potent
symbol is “The Word.” Many societies have
possessed sacred books venerated as the re-
positories of divine wisdom. How natural,
therefore, to find the word and the book being
adopted by a society as important metaphoric
vehicles in its attempt to comprehend its envi-
ronment. Let us study how the extension can
take place.
Few societies have been more bibliocentric
than Christian Europe. Christianity is a re-
vealed religion and the Bible is accepted as
the prime source of that revelation but, it was
asked, is the Bible the sole source of God’s
revelation? Surely, the earth as God’s cre-
ation and seen by Him “to be good” must, at
least to some degree, reveal His nature.6
Thus, it came to be believed that God had
bequeathed not one but two books to man-
kind: the book of scriptures and the book of
nature, both of which had to be read in order
to come to a true knowledge of Him. Augus-
tine expresses this idea with his customary
power:
Some people, in order to discover God, read
books. But there is a great book: the very ap-
pearance of created things. Look above you!
Look below you! Note it; read it. God, whom you
want to discover, never wrote that book with ink;
instead He set before your eyes the things that
He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice
than that? Why, heaven and earth shout to you:
God made me! (Quoted in Glacken 1967, p. 204)
If Augustine and Petrarch after him are so
contemptuous of those “who go to wonder at
the heights of mountains,” it is not because
mountains are to be despised. They, too, are
the creations of God. Rather, he is contemp-
tuous of those who see them simply as ob-
jects in themselves but who fail to perceive
what is signified and symbolized through
them. A parallel would be to read a manu-
script and admire merely the elegance of the
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239
penmanship while ignoring the author’s
meaning.
Viewing the earth as a book entails certain
consequences, among which are these:
A book must have an author. (Those
monkeys randomly hammering away on
typewriters have yet to produce any-
thing readable, let alone the complete
works of Shakespeare!) To view the
earth as a book is necessarily to view it
theocentrically.
A book represents an attempt to com-
municate meaning. If the earth is a
book, it possesses intelligibility and
can, in principle, be read.
This meaning may well not be restricted
to a literal interpretation of the text;
various levels of meaning may be dis-
coverable. Just as it was believed that
the Bible should be read both literally and
symbolically, so also do the features of
our world possess meanings that are not
alwaysthosewhich appear most obvious.’
A book is written in legible characters.
Something in nature must be found to
correspond to these.
The metaphor of the book of nature is at
least as old as the Babylonians, who saw the
stars as “the writing of the sky” (Curtius 1953,
p. 304). I limit myself here to studying the
employment of the metaphor in Christian
Europe until the seventeenth century. I
choose this as the terminal date, not because
the metaphor then ceases to be used, but be-
cause, as Glacken (1967, pp. 204-205) writes,
after this date its usage changed and “one
read the book of nature not to find out about
something else but to learn about nature it-
self.” What I do want to show is a society for
whom this metaphor formed the prime vehi-
cle for perceiving the natural world.
One of the most striking features of the
history of the book-of-nature metaphor is its
gradual extension and elaboration until, in
the Middle Ages, it becomes the basis of a
completely systematized symbolic universe.
The Bible contains a number of texts that
provide good justification for seeing the
created world as a book, but of these the most
frequently cited is this passage from Paul’s
“Epistle to the Romans” (1 : 19-20):
That which may be made known of God is man-
ifest among them; for God hath shewed it unto
them. For the invisible things of Him from the

240 Mills
creation of the world are clearly seen, being un-
derstood by the things that are made, even by His
eternal power and Godhead; so that they are
without excuse.
Here Paul is concerned with the question of
the extent to which pagans are to be blamed
for their departure from true religion. His
conclusion is that because God’s truths are
so plainly written in His creation, pagans can-
not plead ignorance and so “are without ex-
cuse.” In Augustine’s “City of God,” however,
we find this same passage being used to
rather different ends (1972, pp. 312, 315).
Here Augustine’s object was to demonstrate
that elements of Neoplatonism were not in-
compatible with Christianity, but he could do
so only after first showing that certain
philosophers, and most particularly Plato,
were not precluded by their paganism from
having some knowledge of God, that is,
knowledge of Him through knowing His cre-
ation.
Elsewhere, we find John Chrysostom using
the developing metaphor i n yet another
fashion. The conclusions that he drew from it
were essentially egalitarian: he chose to em-
phasize that the book of nature, unlike the
book of scriptures, is open to all:
For if God had given instruction by means of
books, and of letters, he who knew letters would
have learnt what was written; but the illiterate
man would have gone away without receiving
any benefit from this quarter, unless someone
else had assisted his course; and the wealthy
man would have purchased the Bible, but the
poor man would not have been able to obtain it.
Again, he who knew the language, that was ex-
perienced by letters, might have known what was
therein contained; but the Scythian, and the
Barbarian, and the Indian, and the Egyptian, and
all those who were excluded from that language,
would have gone away without receiving any in-
struction. This however cannot be said with re-
spect to the heavens (1842, pp. 162-63).
Clearly, the metaphor had much to commend
itself to an impoverished, illiterate, and mul-
tilingual society.
By the Middle Ages we find that the book of
nature has become adopted universally as the
image through which the environment is to be
understood. “There is nothing, in visible and
corporeal things, that does not signify some-
thing incorporeal and invisible.” Of this sen-
tence from the ninth-century Irish philoso-
pher Eriugena, Etienne Gilson (1955, p. 120)
makes the following comment:
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This statement could be said to be the charter of
medieval symbolism, not only in theology and
philosophy, but even in the decorative art of the
cathedrals. The universe is a revelation compa-
rable to Holy Scripture. Let us look at things:
each and every one of them is a word spoken to
us by The Word (On Eriugena, see also Duclow
1977).
Medieval painters are often accused of being
incapable of achieving realism, but this is to
misunderstand their aims. Rather, they
viewed the world as symbol, conceived as “a
great picture-book of the truths of salvation,
in whose pages, God, the devil, and between
them, man, figured” (Biese 1905, p. 65). The
medieval artist rejected realism for the same
reasons that Petrarch condemned his initial
reactions on the summit of Mt. Ventoux. What
was important about the world was not its ap-
pearance, however beautiful that might be,
but what it signified. There was an exact par-
allel with reading the Bible:
The whole visible world is like a book written by
the finger of God. It is created by divine power,
and all human beings are figures placed in it, not
to shew the free-will of man, but as a revelation
and visible sign, by divine will, of God’s invisible
wisdom. But as one who only glances at an open
book sees marks on it, but does not read the
letters, so the wicked and sensual man, in whom
the spirit of God is not, sees only the outer sur-
face of visible beings and not their deeper parts
(Quoted in Biese 1905, pp. 155-56).
I have emphasized this sentence from Hugh
of St. Victor (1096-1141) because it so
strongly supports my assertion that the dif-
ferences between the medieval and modern
views of the environment do not result from
an assumed asceticism of the former, but from
what I have called a difference in metaphori-
cal vision. To the medieval mind, conceiving
of the world as a book, to respond to the
beauties of nature in a purely sensual fashion
was to be condemned; nature had been set
before humankind for their instruction. Enjoy
it one might, but never to such a degree as to
render one oblivious of its true purpose. Thus
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090- 1153), typically,
described how he made it a principle “to
learn from the earth, trees, corn, flowers, and
grass.” “Believe me, I have proved it; you will
find more in the woods than in books; trees
and stones will teach you what no other
teacher can” (quoted in Biese 1905, p. 155). In
the Middle Ages, people really did believe in
”sermons from stones.”*

Metaphorical Vision
It was not only the priests and theologians
who seized upon the book-of-nature met-
aphor. Given that the earth had been
created by God for the benefit of human be-
ings, was it not perhaps possible that in it one
might read not only of the truths of salvation
but also of truths relating to human welfare in
this life? If “creatures”-that is, created ob-
jects, including animals, plants, stones, moun-
tains, and planets-were the “letters” in which
God had written, then to discover their mean-
ing one had merely to examine their form.
The finger of God hath left an inscription upon
all His works, not graphical or composed of let-
ters, but of their several formes, constitutions,
parts, and operations, which aptly joined to-
gether do make one word that doth express their
natures (Browne 1964, p. 57).
This idea was called “the doctrine of signa-
ture~.’’~
In origin, like its parent metaphor, the doc-
trine is as old as history relates, but, like the
book of nature, it is during the Middle Ages
that it becomes systematized into an all-
encompassing form. The study of physiog-
nomy and the reading of palms both derive
from this doctrine. Medical authorities be-
lieved that where a plant, stone, or animal
bore some resemblance in shape, color, or
behavior to a human organ or disease, it pos-
sessed secret virtues and could be used in
healing. The mandrake was held to be partic-
ularly efficacious because its root was fre-
quently found to be very like the human body.
“Creatures” could also inform through their
location. Porta, for example, assures us that
wherever there is any ill, in that place also
grows some remedy. Portals “Phytog-
nomonica” of 1588 offers one of the most
comprehensive accounts of the doctrine of
signatures and is by no means restricted to
plants as its title might imply. The following
summary of Portals conclusions provides
some indication of how far the doctrine could
be taken (Thorndike 1923-58, Vol. 6, pp.
422-23). Porta:
distinguishes the virtues of acquatic and am-
phibious plants and animals, of those found in
different zones, in mountains and plains, in hol-
lows and hills, wild and cultivated. Plants with
similar leaves possess like virtues, as do plants
with similar odors. Plants of yellow color purge
of bile. Those of black color and likewise black
animals generate melancholy and the worst dis-
eases and are harbingers of death, milky plants
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241
are good for the milk; bony plants heal the
bones; animals with big ears are remedial for
deafness.. . . Plants that grow in summer are
beneficial for summer complaints. Those that
flower often or long cure recurrent diseases.. . .
Plants that rise against the sky protect from
thunderbolts.
If I am correct in suggesting that people of
the Christian Middle Ages saw environing
nature as essentially a book paralleling that
other source of divine revelation, the Bible,
certain conclusions seem inescapable. Those
for whom nature can most naturally be seen
as a book would seem, above all else, to de-
mand that their environment be intelligible.
Doubtless, for the earlier Christians, the earth
did possess meaning in a manner and to such
a degree that we “moderns” find difficult to
conceive. But intelligibility is not the only de-
mand that can be made of our world; if other
times have held other metaphorical visions,
then that may well be because they have also
made other demands.
Humanity as the Model
Geographers.. . are but the Anatomists
of the Great World.
-Helkiah Crooke (1615, p. 13)
In this section I shall investigate a metaphor
that is as important to the Renaissance vision
of the environment as the metaphor of the
book of nature is to the Middle Ages. Recall
two drawings, one familiar, one probably less
so. The first, by Leonardo da Vinci, shows the
figure of a man with outstretched hands and
feet neatly inscribed inside a circle and a
square. This argues the perfection of the
human form. The second drawing, known
technically as the “melothesia,” is similar to
the drawing by Leonardo except that here the
man’s figure is shown inscribed within the
circle of the heavens. This argues an intimate
relationship and correspondence between
human beings (the microcosm) and the world
(the macrocosm). What we have in these two
drawings is the expression of two crucial Re-
naissance commonplaces, one, that the
human body is perfect and that its propor-
tions must be mirrored in all works of art and
architecture, and two, that men and women
are themselves the image of the cosmos,
for they contain all things and are related to all

242 Mills
things. When we move from the medieval to
the Renaissance concept of nature, we do not
move from a pessimistic to an optimistic
world view. The difference is one of meta-
phorical vision, a difference embodying a
shift in the human orientation to the world:
formerly theocentric, it now becomes in every
sense anthropocentric.
To take humanity as the model when seek-
ing comprehension of a confusing world is an
entirely natural thing to do. If explanation
consists of reducing the unfamiliar to the
familiar, then what could be more natural
than reducing the unfamiliar to that which, of
all things, seems most familiar, the human
body together with its thoughts and emo-
tions? Consider how much of the language
we still habitually employ derives from just
such an anthropocentric view of the world.
We speak of mountains as possessing
“brows,” “shoulders,” “backs,” and “feet,”
and rivers have “heads” and flow through
“gorges” out into “mouths.” We refer to a
“neck” of land, an “arm” of the sea, a “vein”
of mineral ore, and the “bowels” of the earth.
“Animism” is perhaps the most ancient way
of thinking about the world. We must not,
however, make the mistake of assuming that
there was anything “primitive” about the Re-
naissance world vision, nor, for that matter,
about that of the Classical World (Col-
lingwood 1945, pp. 29-92; Lloyd 1966).
Whereas the primitive animist understands
phenomena such as trees, rivers, and moun-
tains by endowing them with human qualities
and personality but has no conception of the
world as a whole, the hylozoists of Classical
and Renaissance times did see the cosmos as
a whole, as forming one animate body (Allers
1944, pp. 351 -52).
Apart from its familiarity, the human body
possesses a number of attributes that make it
suitable as the model of the universe.
(1) Being composed of many parts and yet
one, it presents an image of complex
multiplicity organized within a coherent
whole (Barkan 1975, pp. 3-4).
(2) Change and development, which pro-
vide great problems for many in-
tellectual systems, can be satisfactorily
accounted for as an analogy with the
life cycle (Nisbet 1969).
(3) Because no distinction is drawn be-
tween order in the human form and in
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the natural world, it is possible to derive
an attractively monistic philosophy,
with the same principles accounting for
that order in both realms (Collingwood
1945, pp. 3-4).
(4) There are interesting epistemological
consequences in that, insofar as “in
every man, in each individual, a world, a
universe, regards itself” (Giordano
Bruno, quoted in Conger 1922, p. 63),
then to know oneself is at the same time
to know the world.
Unlikely as it may appear to us, belief in the
microcosmic metaphor, as I shall call this
sophisticated form of animism, was by no
means restricted to a few practitioners of
mysticism and the occult arts.’” It was indeed
the orthodox vision of the world; among its
adherents may be counted many who
achieved apotheosis in the history of science,
such as Leonardo, Bruno, Gilbert, Kepler,
Harvey, and even, arguably, Newton. As the
researches of Frances Yates (1964) show, the
Neoplatonist reaction against medieval Aris-
totelianism during the Renaissance was in-
spired to a considerable degree by Marsilio
Ficino’s translation of a number of Hermetic
texts. These works, deriving in fact from the
Egypt of the early years of the Christian era
and thus thoroughly imbued with the mi-
crocosmic and magical doctrines then current,
were misdated as preceding Plato and even
Moses. The texts were thus accorded an ex-
traordinary veneration because they ap-
peared to anticipate so many of the state-
ments of those writers, whereas in fact they
were only echoing them. This is the main rea-
son why microcosmic ideas, although devel-
oped in medieval thought, are not found there
to the same extent as in the later period
(Yates 1964, pp. 151, 381).
Within the microcosmic vision of the world
there is no real or presumed quality of the
human being that has not been attributed by
some writer to the cosmos as a whole. The
cosmos possesses life, intelligence, a soul; it
goes through the stages of infancy, youth,
maturity, and old age; it has skin, hair, a heart,
stomach, veins, arteries; and it experiences
ailments such as catarrh, wind, fever, and
warts. (Almost all these ideas can, for exam-
ple, be found in the small compass of Rob-
inson (1694)). The writers of the time did not,
however, agree upon one universal set of

Metaphorical Vision
equivalences between nature and the human
being. From this we need not infer that the
detailed microcosmiclmacrocosmic compari-
sons should be understood only as rhetorical
figures adopted for reasons of literary style.
For Renaissance man, such correspondences
were the very substance of the creation,
which was seen as being composed of exactly
such multilayered metaphorical relationships
constituting the “laws” by which God had ac-
complished that creation (Mazzeo 1953, 1954).
I have argued that we should reverse the
customary belief that in the Middle Ages
people had a pessimistic view of the environ-
ment whereas in the Renaissance people had
an optimistic view. A pessimistic world view
follows logically from the developed mi-
crocosmic metaphor, as the following quota-
tion will make clear:
You are surprised that the world is losing its
grip? That the world is grown old? Think of a
man: he is born, he grows up, he becomes old.
Old age has its many complaints: coughing,
shaking, failing eyesight, anxiety, terrible tired-
ness. A man grows old; he is full of complaints.
The world is old; it is full of pressing tribulations.
Now this, in fact, is a quotation not from some
writer of the Renaissance but from one of Au-
gustine’s sermons written shortly after the
sack of Rome in 410 A.D. (quoted in Brown
1967, pp. 297-98). As I have said, the mi-
crocosmic metaphor can be found throughout
the medieval period (Wright 1925, pp.
147-50), and certainly it was an accepted
commonplace that the world was in its last
years. And yet, on the whole, the medieval
view of nature was optimistic, and certainly so
in comparison with its successor. The reason
for this is as follows: if one believes the world
to be a book, parallel to the book of scrip-
tures, given by God to man for his instruction,
one cannot hold it to be severely flawed with-
out also condemning its creator. If its purpose
is our edification, what justification could
there possibly be for tearing pages out of it
and rendering it indecipherable? Perhaps we
are no longer able to read nature as perfectly
as Adam, who, we remember, was responsi-
ble for giving to each creature its name; but
the Fall from Paradise has not removed all our
capacity to read it. The story of the Fall is
interpreted in a much more pessimistic fash-
ion in the microcosmic metaphor. Not only
does the world age and decay as men and
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243
women, but also, if the Bible informs us that
humanity fell through sin, then so too did the
world. This doctrine of the “Cosmic Fall” is a
constantly reasserted theme throughout the
Renaissance (Hepburn 1973; Harris 1949;
Davies 1968). Thus we find Luther writing in
his commentaries on Genesis:
Even the earth, which is innocent in itself and
committed no sin, is nevertheless compelled to
bear sin’s curse. . . . All these things were de-
formed by sin and remain deformed still.. . . All
creatures, yea, even the sun and the moon, have
as it were put on sackcloth. They were all origi-
nally “good,” but by sin and the curse they have
become defiled and noxious.. . . The whole
world degenerates and gets worse every day
(quoted in Nicolson 1959, p. 101).
For the Renaissance mind, the present form
of the earth revealed merely the ruin of its
past perfection. Some held that before the
Fall and the Flood that followed it, the earth’s
surface had been billiard-ball smooth; but this
was not universally accepted. What was
agreed upon, however, was that just as the
faces of old people can become disfigured by
wrinkles, warts, and wens, so also could the
“face” of the earth. It is no coincidence that,
as Marjorie Nicolson (1959, p. 42) has pointed
out, among English poets of this time the
terms applied to hills and mountains were al-
most uniformly uncomplimentary. She lists
the following epithets as particularly charac-
teristic: “Wens, warts, pimples, blisters, and
imposthumes.” Belief in the earth’s decay, on
the other hand, did encourage early accep-
tance of the idea of denudation. Renaissance
authors such as Bishop Goodman (1616)
were much quicker than their eighteenth-
century counterparts to observe, for example,
the large amounts of eroded earth carried
away by rivers in spate and were more ready
t o draw the corresponding conclusions,
which were essentially in harmony with what
their metaphorical vision led them to expect
(Davies 1968).
The microcosmic metaphor proliferates
throughout Renaissance thought. It provides
theories of art, architecture, and music
(Wittkower 1949; Benesch 1965); of health,
both physical and mental (Bamborough
1952); of political behavior and the relation-
ship between church and state (Hale 1971); of
the course of history and the meaning of
change; as well as of other areas of human
concern (Barkan 1975). It also provided the

244
basis for that framework of thought outside of
which astrology and alchemy become re-
duced to incomprehensible superstitions. To
investigate all these aspects would far trans-
gress the compass of this essay. But before
abandoning the metaphor, I wish first to study
its implications in two particular areas, one
being the presumed circulation of water
within the earth, and the other, attitudes to-
ward the extraction of precious stones and
minerals. I shall begin with the latter.
When one finds expressions such as “hewn
from the living rock” or “born in the womb of
the earth,” it is wrong to assume simply that
the writer is succumbing to poetic fancy and
that no reader would interpret the words as
meaning what they say. Stones were viewed
as forming part of the great chain of being
and although one of the lowest links in that
chain, they were thought to share some of the
attributes of higher links such as vegetation,
animals, and man (Lovejoy 1936). In particu-
lar, they were believed capable of growth and
reproduction.
It is clear that neither the stars, heat, cold, or the
drying out of moisture are causes to which the
generation of stones can be attributed but we
have no hesitation in asserting that stones come
into existence from their own proper (seeds or)
seminal principles.. . . Stones are generated as
plants are-like produces like-gold gives birth
to gold, gems to gems, stones to stones. By vir-
ture of their seminary power, each species repro-
duces and multiplies itself and it preserves its
species intact and perfect (Schweigger 1665,
quoted in Adams 1938, pp. 68-89).
Some writers, chief among them Cardan,
noted that most transparent gems, when ex-
amined carefully, can be seen to possess tiny
pores and streaks, and they argued that these
constituted their digestive and reproductive
organs (Adams 1938, p. 94). The existence of
fossils, that is, of stones that appeared to
mimic vegetation and shells, merely con-
firmed the belief in the similarity between
these and stones. Fossils indicated that it
would be wrong t o deprive stones of all
animation. In such a world view, mining was
obviously a suspect occupation, and extrac-
tion of precious metals from the earth took on
the aspect of practicing abortion. Thus a low
yield of ore might indicate that the mineral
had been extracted before its due time. Al-
chemists believed that, left to themselves, all
minerals eventually “ripened” into gold, this
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Mills
being the highest member of their series. It
was this process of maturation that they
sought to duplicate in their laboratories, but
in a highly speeded-up fashion (Eliade 1971;
Robinson 1978). Not everyone then believed
in the possibility of transmutation, but even at
the end of the seventeenth century, and even
among so august and forward-thinking a
body as the Royal Society, it was thought of
the highest priority to ascertain “Whether it
have been found that the metalline part of the
vein grows so that some part of the mine will
afford one or more metal in tract of time, that
it did not so before?” (quoted in Adams 1938,
p. 295).
One of the parallels between human beings
and the earth that most impressed the Re-
naissance mind was that they both appeared
to possess some form of a circulatory system
(Tuan 1968):
The body of the earth, like the bodies of animals,
is intersected with ramifications of veins which
are all in connection and are constituted to give
nutriment and life to the earth and to its crea-
tures. These come from the depths of the sea
and, after many revolutions, have to return by the
rivers created by the bursting of these veins high
up (Leonardo da Vinci 1970, Vol. 2, p. 162).
Leonardo was as aware as Helkiah Crooke,
whose quotation introduced this section, that
“Geographers . . . are but the Anatomists of
the Great World,” and detailed study of his
notebooks has revealed that whenever
Leonardo concerned himself with human
anatomy, he wrote shortly afterwards about
that of the earth. For him, it was but an exten-
sion of the same subject (Leonardo da Vinci
1977, Vol. 2, p. 137). In possessing such
opinions, Leonardo was very much a man of
his time. He was equally unoriginal in the so-
lution that he proposed to the frequently
raised problem of how, given the existence of
subterranean passages returning water from
the sea, that water could subsequently be
raised to the heights of mountains, where so
many springs were observed to rise. Leo-
nardo’s answer was simple:
The waters circulate with constant motion from
the utmost depths of the sea to the highest sum-
mits of the mountains, not obeying the nature of
heavy matter; and in this case they act as does
the blood in animals which is always moving
from the sea of the heart and flows to the top of
their heads: and he who here bursts veins-as
one may see when a vein bursts in the nose, that

Metaphorical Vision
all the blood from below rises to the level of the
burst vein. When the water rushes out of a burst
vein in the earth it obeys the nature of other
things heavier than air, whence it always seeks
the lowest places (Leonard0 da Vinci 1970, Vol.
2, p. 158).
This assumed parallelism between human
and earth circulatory systems inspired Harvey
in his discovery of the circulation of the
blood. For this same reason, the implications
of his discovery were initially appreciated, not
by his fellow physicians, but by geologists,
who then sought to discover some central fire
in the earth that performed a role analogous
to that of the heart in man (Nicolson 1960, pp.
133-35).
In concluding my previous section, I argued
that to adopt the book as the major metaphor
through which to understand one’s environ-
ment suggests that those who adopted it de-
manded intelligibility of that world. What de-
mands, then, are implied in the adoption of
the microcosmic metaphor? Here, I think, the
primary demand is for integration. Renais-
sance people must have had a very strong
sense of being part of the world but also of
the world being part of them. It is avision that,
in its less orthodox forms, verged toward
pantheism.” For the people of this period, the
world was experienced as more centered on
the self than had been the case even in the
Middle Ages. Human structure was mirrored
in that of the earth, and human changes were
echoed in the earth’s. To know the world,
people had only to know themselves, and to
change it, to change themselves. Microcos-
mism could also provide foundation for Re-
naissance opt imism.
The Earth MachineI2
The world “is like a rare clock, such as may
be that at Strasburg, where all things are
so skillfully contrived, that the engine being
once set a-moving, all things proceed ac-
cording to the artificer’s first design, and
the motions. . . do not require the peculiar
interposing of the artificer, or any in-
telligent agent employed by him, but per-
form their functions upon particular occa-
sions, by virtue of the general and primitive
contrivance of the whole engine.
--Robert Boyle, The Christian Virtuoso
(Dijksterhuis 1961, pp. 442-43)
The insights of psychoanalysis, and in par-
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245
ticular those of Sigmund Freud, have been
but scantily employed in studies of human-
environment relationships. Annette Kolodny’s
highly stimulating book (1973) constitutes a
notable exception, but there are surely many
provoking possibilities that await investiga-
tion. Robert Lenoble (1969, p. 312) makes one
such suggestion that is certainly germane to
this essay when he speaks of Galileo and his
generation as inaugurating “a new attitude of
man before nature: he ceased to regard her
as a child watches his mother, modeling him-
self upon her; he wishes to conquer her, to
make himself ‘lord and possessor.’ ” This is
the explanation Lenoble offers for the sudden
widespread adoption of what I shall term the
“machinist metaphor,” an adoption that
seemed to occur almost simultaneously in a
number of widely separated European coun-
tries and among scholars who evidently never
met. What Lenoble is saying is that the phrase
“Mother Nature” does to a considerable de-
gree mean what it implies and that the human
relationship with “her” is one of classical
Oedipal conflict. Furthermore, he argues that,
beginning with the seventeenth century, this
conflict resulted in the human violation of
nature, a violation that was accompanied by
feelings of guilt and anxiety to which we are
still heir. (On this theme, see also Merchant
1979.) The suggestion is certainly intriguing,
but other factors, in particular the influence
of the early stirrings of the Industrial Revolu-
tion, need to be taken into account. Thus it
could be argued convincingly that the Scien-
tific Revolution is more the product of the In-
dustrial Revolution than the reverse.13What is
not in doubt, however, is that from the early
seventeenth century onward a new attitude
toward nature does develop and that central
to it is the machinistic metaphor.
Machinistic metaphor can be found since
the origin of philosophy. In microcosmism,
people interpret the world as modeled on
themselves, sharing their life, bodily organs,
and, perhaps, intelligence. Machinism devel-
ops out of the same desire to comprehend the
unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, but in this
case the familiar is human experience in
making and living with objects. Taken
broadly, therefore, machinistic metaphor can
include relating the world to the products of
pottery, carpentry, architecture, and the like,
as well as to more sophisticated products,
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246 Mills

such as levers and pulleys, clocks, steam en- ticular within mountains and hills that operate
gines, or computers. (On the use of this in much the same way as the alembic’s head.
metaphor in early Greek thought, see Lloyd A comparison with the alembic could ex-
1966.) It follows that the history of the plain a number of other earthly phenomena,
machinistic metaphor is largely that of the such as clouds, rain, thunder and lightning,
history of technology, with people perennially and earthquakes. The influential seven-
seeking to interpret the bewildering and teenth-century author Comenius provides
complex world in terms of the most advanced a typical quotation:
human inventions. The world is the Alembick of nature, the air the
Because machinistic metaphor is still very cap of this Alembick: the sun is the air: the earth,
much part of our own vision of environment, I the water, minerals, plants, etc. are the things
propose t o handle this section differently which being softened with this fire, exhale va-
pours upward perpetually. So there ascend, Salt,
from the two previous sections. Here, after
sulphury, nitrous, etc. vapours, which being
first sketching in some varied examples of the wrapped up in clouds, put forth various effects,
metaphor’s application, I shall concentrate on for example, when sulphury exhalations are
providing a more philosophical analysis. In mixed with nitrous (the first of a most hot nature,
particular, it is my intention in this analysis to the second most cold), they endure one another
so long, as till the sulphur takes fire. But as soon
indicate the marked degree to which the un- as that is done, presently there follows the same
raveling of the logic of this single metaphor effect as in gun-powder (whose composition is
para1le Is-an d , more ambit io us1y, perhaps the same of Sulphur and Nitre) a fight, a rupture,
constitutes-much in the evolution of West- a noise, a violent casting forth of the matter. For
thence it is that a viscous flaming matter is cast
ern attitudes toward nature during the past
forth, which presently inflames whatsoever it
few centuries. touches that is apt to flame, and smiting into
Microcosmists viewed the flow of water the earth, it turns to a stone, and being taken out
through the earth as essentially identical to after a time is called a thunderbolt (Comenius
that of the blood in human beings, but from 1651, quoted in Duncan 1951, pp. 442-43).
the end of the sixteenth century an alternative With James Hutton we emerge into a less
explanation develops. If, as was then gener- unfamiliar world, but it is one made less un-
ally accepted, rain and snow were insufficient familiar by the progress of technology and
to feed springs and rivers, which were instead thus by the availability of more sophisticated
fed largely from underground passages link- and flexible objects through which it might be
ing them with the seas and oceans, there was interpreted. Hutton was personally ac-
the problem of explaining how that water quainted with James Watt, the inventor of the
could possibly be raised from sea level to the steam engine, and although there is only one
heights at which springs were commonly to clear indication in “The Theory of the Earth”I4
be found. We have already noted Leonardo’s that this may well be the machine of which he
answer to this problem and, as we have also is thinking, in reading his work we do need
seen, after Harvey had discovered the role of always t o be conscious of the kind of
the heart, microcosmists looked to some technology that was available in the later
central fire to perform the same function for years of the eighteenth century. Hutton’s
the earth. The developing machinistic alter- commitment to machinism is made clear right
native was, however, to compare the earth to from the first sentence of his “Theory”:
the alembic, that is, to the distillation flask
When we trace the parts of which this terrestrial
used by alchemists. In this piece of apparatus, system is composed, and when we view the gen-
a flask containing water is heated to the boil- eral connection of these several parts, the whole
ing point and the steam so generated is then presents a machine of a peculiar construction
cooled to produce condensation in the head by which it is adapted to a certain end (1795,
Vol. 1, p. 3).
of the flask. Obviously, said the machinists,
the earth operates in a similar fashion. In its Tomkeieff (1945-53) has rightly drawn atten-
anterior there exists a central fire that heats tion to the persistence of microcosmic ele-
the incoming water flowing downward ments in Hutton’s theory, but it is only from
through subterranean passages from the his deep commitment to machinism that a
oceans. The water then rises as steam to the number of its more crucial aspects can be
earth’s surface, where it condenses, in par- understood. Hutton views the earth as a con-

Metaphorical Vision
sciously designed object, bearing in itself the
marks of its Creator’s power and wisdom. It
was created for a purpose. As a perfectly con-
structed machine, it cannot show the marks
of decay; so what does decay in it must,
through its own internal mechanisms, also be
restored (Davies 1966).15Finally, the opera-
tions of its working are in no way comparable
to those of its creation, which must therefore
remain forever beyond speculation. This is
the real meaning of Hutton’s famous phrase
“we find no vestige of a beginning,-no pros-
pect of an end” (1795,Vol. 1 , p. 200),a phrase
that has sometimes been so misinterpreted as
to imply that Hutton believed in the world’s
eternity. Far from it, machinism for Hutton
meant that the earth had both its Creator and
its moment of creation. His point, for he was
as much a philosopher as a geologist, was
essentially epistemological, and the words
that he wished to emphasize in this phrase
were “we find” (O’Rourke 1978).
In the past few decades, machinistic
metaphorical vision has received great im-
petus from the rapid evolution of the com-
puter and of other automated systems.
Hence, we find the mushrooming of such in-
tellectual endeavors as cybernetics, informa-
tion theory, and systems analysis. Today, it is
as common to understand the world in terms
of the language and concepts associated with
the computer as it was in the seventeenth
century to understand that world in terms of
the clock. I am not arguing here that the sys-
tems analyst sees the environment merely as
some form of giant computer, an anthropo-
morphism that any systems analyst would
probably find as unacceptable as the Renais-
sance view of the environment as a giant
man, but I would argue that the computer
analogy belongs to a long-established tradi-
tion with some unlikely forbears.
Metaphors carry in themselves implications
that are not always those for which they were
first found attractive. The gradually growing
awareness of these implications, their ac-
ceptance and development, forms what I have
called “the unraveling of their logic.” The un-
raveling of machinistic logic has proved par-
ticularly influential and is to be seen not only
in the ideas of individual earth theorists but,
perhaps still more significantly, in the general
evolution of Western ideas toward nature.
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247
This is the subject to which I shall devote the
remainder of this section.
Adoption of the machinistic metaphor en-
tailed, among others, the following conclu-
sions:
(1)“Made” objects require a “maker.” The
machinistic metaphor, at least in origin,
supports rather than undermines a reli-
gious view of the world.16 Especially
noteworthy in its employment in the at-
tempt to prove the existence of God by
means of the argument from design;
that is, the existence of a clock argues
the existence of a clock maker.”
(2)Objects are “made” for a purpose. Early
machinistic explanations, therefore,
commonly incorporate substantial ele-
ments of teleological reasoning.
Both of these implications are to be found, for
example, in highly developed form in Hutton’s
“Theory of the Earth.” But i f these were the
“conservative” features of the metaphor that
encouraged its initial adoption and permitted
its continued orthodoxy, this metaphor also
possessed other implications that were more
disturbing to the traditional world view:
(3) The well-constructed object does not
require constant maintenance and re-
pair; the more successful its construc-
tion, the more it can be left to its own
devices. (For a good example of this,
see the quote by Robert Boyle that in-
troduces this section.) The metaphor
requires a Creator for the initial act of
creation but, and contrary to all previ-
ous belief, the Creator’s omniscience
and omnipotence are now to be dem-
onstrated only by His total abstinence
from intervention in the world. In the
words of E. J. Dijksterhuis (1961,p.
491),the new conception of the Deity is
as a “retired engineer.” The environ-
ment, deprived of the immanent pres-
ence of God, for the first time in West-
ern history becomes desacralized, a
crucial step toward the secularization
of culture.
(4) Associated with the process whereby
the environment becomes desacralized
is the encouragement given by the
metaphor to people’s belief in their
ability to tinker with and ultimately to
control nature. A machine is put to-

248 Mills
gether from many parts, but what has
been put together can also be taken
apart. Machinism and atomism are by
no means as unrelated as they might
appear. Under the influence of this
metaphor, the attitude of people to-
ward their environment gradually be-
comes increasingly one of analysis and
dissection, asking of it not only how it
works but also how such mechanisms
may be controlled for human ends.
One further implication of machinism also
needs mentioning:
(5) Major technological inventions tend t o
be reflected in major shifts of environ-
mental vision.
It is one of the principal contentions of this
essay that the choice of one metaphor rather
than another, as a society seeks to com-
prehend its environment, is the clearest indi-
cator of that society’s ultimate demands upon
its environment. The machine is the symbol of
human ability to control the world. Robert
Lenoble (1969, p. 312) is surely correct in
suggesting that its adoption marks an im-
portant alteration in people’s attitude toward
nature, that from this moment onward people
seek, in the words of Descartes, to be her
“lord and possessor.” Undeniably, human
beings have always sought some degree of
control over their environment. If I am correct,
however, in arguing the centrality of the two
metaphors of the book of nature and of mi-
crocosmism during the medieval and Renais-
sance periods, then I believe we can infer
that, for these societies, control was not their
primary demand upon the environment. This
attitude ceases with the adoption of the
machine as the central metaphor. Since that
time, during what we call the “modern” pe-
riod, nature has been deprived of its aura of
the divine and has become merely an instru-
ment available for our use and exploitation.18
Conclusion
“Medieval,” “Renaissance,” and “modern”
are, of course, ultimately categories of the
mind and not of existence. They are terms
that have been found useful in imposing
some form or pattern on the continuum that is
history. They suggest that it is possible to
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identify at certain times some kind of
reorientation of attitudes. The world is looked
at in different ways. Priorities are altered. In
this essay, I have suggested that such
reorientations can, at least partially, be un-
derstood through study of the “central
metaphors” employed at different times. The
elaboration of these metaphors constitutes
the characteristic “metaphorical vision” of a
period, and the replacement of one metaphor
by another explains much of the reorientation
that occurred between periods. I do not mean
to imply that during each period the use of
one and only one metaphor is to be found.
This is certainly untrue. All three metaphors
can be found throughout all three periods.19
What I am saying, however, is that during
each period, one particular metaphor is cho-
sen and becomes the vehicle around which a
systematic vision of the world is then orga-
nized. In the Middle Ages this is the metaphor
of the book of nature, in the Renaissance it is
microcosmism, and, finally, in modern times
it is machinism.
These three by no means exhaust the stock
of possible metaphors about which a society
can develop a metaphorical vision. Suitability
for such a purpose would seem to depend on
the possession of two characteristics. First,
the metaphor must grow out of everyday ex-
perience. It must be familiar and must convey
the impression (and it may be only the impres-
sion) of being well known and understood.
For its explanation to be accounted satisfac-
tory, the unfamiliar must be related to the
familiar; where there is no familiar, there can
be no explanation. Second, it must be capa-
ble of almost universal application, always
making some sort of sense and indicating
conclusions that appear pertinent.
A variety of other metaphors have been
employed in the history of Western thought,
but it is questionable that any have received
the elaboration and development accorded
the three studied here. (The one possible ex-
ception might be the “mathematical meta-
phor.”) Words such as “order” and “law”
suggest a tendency t o project upon the
world concepts derived from our experience
as social beings living in organized com-
munities (Durkheim and Mauss 1963; on this
analogy in early Greek thought, see Lloyd
1966). A similar tendency to “project” is to be

Metaphorical Vision
found with particular modes of thought of
proven utility. The “dialectic” of history pro-
vides one example of this. “Thesis,”
“antithesis,” and “synthesis” are terms hav-
ing a literal application to the means whereby
human beings arrive at conclusions. They are
metaphorical when applied to the “workings”
of history (Vaihinger 1924, p. 8). Perhaps less
obviously, the same is true of mathematics.
Mathematics is one of the supreme creations
of the human mind; it enables us to make
sense of-that is, to put into some ordered
and patterned state-many complex and
otherwise baffling circumstances. There is,
however, no more reason to presume that re-
ality is ultimately mathematical than there is
to presume that history operates through the
dialectic. What I am arguing here is not that
the extension of experience from one sphere
to another is impermissible. It is inevitable. If
metaphor provides the means through which
language grows, then it is because all thought
is itself inextricably metaphorical (e.g.,
Berggren 1962-63, p. 472). It is important
that, as we use such an extension of experi-
ence, we do not mistake reality for the terms
in which we have come to understand it. As
Kant has written, “All illusion consists in
holding the subjective ground of judgement
to be objective” (quoted in Vaihinger 1924, p.
8). As one final example, consider the con-
cept “cause.” Etymology provides conclusive
evidence that this concept derives from our
experience of ourselves as causative agents,
that is, from our experience of ourselves as
possessing the ability to make things happen
as we so choose (Collingwood 1940, pp.
285-312). One of life’s greater ironies is that
this same concept, “cause,” should so fre-
quently be used to deny the reality of that very
experience on which it itself is founded.
To say as much is merely to restate the fa-
miliar Kantian idea that, of the “noumenal”
world, the world as it is in itself, we can have no
knowledge. What we do have knowledge of is
the “phenomenal” world, the world as it is
presented to us through our senses and as
mediated through our experience. By adopt-
ing Vico’s position of a “reversed positivism,”
we can, I believe, go further than this (Mills
1982).*O The “natural world” may indeed be
ultimately unknowable but not so the “human
world.” In this study I would like to present
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249
the paradoxical conclusion that “metaphori-
cal visions” do indeed inform, but that they
inform only incidentally about what they pro-
pose to be informing. Nature is no more a
book or a giant human being than it is an
extraordinarily complex machine. That cer-
tain societies should find such views of it
convincing, however, is highly informative
and provides us with a direct means of
knowing their central needs and aspirations.
Thus, in this paper I have suggested that the
principal demands that Western societies
have made of their environments have varied.
In the Middle Ages intelligibility and meaning
were held critical; during the Renaissance the
prime need was for integration; and in our
own time we have sought control and power
to manipulate.
A corollary of this approach is that the
question as to whether or not human knowl-
edge of the environment can be held to prog-
ress becomes problematical. This conclusion
would be vehemently denied by a pragmatist.
Surely, such a person might say, it should be
incontestable that our knowledge of our envi-
ronment is superior to that of our medieval
and Renaissance ancestors and proves itself
to be so every time that we successfully ac-
complish some end that their knowledge
would not have permitted them even to at-
tempt. “Truth” means nothing more nor less
than what works. Our knowledge proves itself
superior to theirs insofar as it allows us to
control and manipulate where they could only
fatalistically submit. The problem with this
answer is that it assumes that there is only
one set of criteria according to which the
success of knowledge can be judged; it fits
well with my thesis that those criteria that a
“modern” finds obvious are precisely those
implied by our chosen metaphorical vision.
But the pragmatist’s definition of truth will
certainly not satisfy those whose adopted vi-
sions of the world indicate different needs of
their environment. For the medieval mind, as
for the Renaissance mind, the historical trend
would be seen as very much for the worse.
People have indeed achieved a remarkable
power to manipulate the world, but it has
been an achievement with certain costs. No
longer is our environment resonant with
meaning as it was in the Middle Ages, and no
longer can we feel at one with it in the manner

250
o f the Renaissance. The world o f our c h o i c e
is d i f f e r e n t . Who i s t o say w h i c h i s to b e
preferred?
As to what w e may do, I rely upon Philip
W h e e l w r i g h t to suggest o n e possible course
o f action:
If reality is intrinsically latent and unwilling to
give up its innermost secrets even to the most
enterprising explorer, then the best we can hope
to do is catch partisan glimpses, reasonably di-
versified, all of them imperfect, but some more
suited to one occasion and need, others to an-
other. If we cannot ever hope to be perfectly right,
we can perhaps find both enlightenment and re-
freshment by changing, from time to time, our
ways of being wrong (Wheelwright 1967, pp.
172 - 73).
Notes
1. This view of metaphor first appears as the
theory of “poetic wisdom” of the eighteenth-
century philosopher Giambattista Vico, who
writes:
all the tropes . . ., which have hitherto been
considered ingenious inventions of writers,
were necessary modes of expression of all the
first poetic nations, and had originally their full
native propriety. But these expressions of the
first nations later became figurative, with the
further development of the human mind (1968,
D. 131).
In adopting this theory of metaphor, I do not
consider that my usage in any way constitutes
a test of its validity. It is unlikely that such a
theory could be falsified in any meaningful
manner. Rather, I shall adopt it as providing a
coherent framework within which to interpret
and explain a variety of phenomena and, in-
sofar as my use here should prove successful, I
shall be able to contribute further evidence of its
suggestiveness, power, and plausibility.
2. There is a case for arguing that even similes
should sometimes be read literally. After all, the
mere fact that the subject of study is being
compared to one subject rather than to another
must to some extent be revealing of the au-
thor’s perception of it. Although the scope of
my essay excludes explicit consideration of the
substantial anthropological literature o n
simile, metaphor, metonym, symbol, etc., the
following works appear to be most relevant:
Durkheim and Mauss (1963), Evans-Pritchard
(1937, 1956), especially the latter for its treat-
ment of the famous “twins-are-birds” meta-
phor, and Leach (1976).
3. The theory outlined here adopts what Shibles
(1971, p. 3) has called “the metaphorical
method,” and as such should be seen as bear-
ing a certain family resemblance to a number
of other theories. Among these are the follow-
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Mills
ing: Pepper’s theory of “root metaphor” (1961,
1973), Collingwood’s method of “absolute pre-
suppositions” (1940, 1945), and, t o a lesser de-
gree, the work of Kuhn (1970), especially as de-
veloped by Barnes (1973). The approach
should be contrasted with that of Foucault (1970).
4. My periodization of environmental attitudes di-
verges from those proposed by Collingwood
(1945) and Foucault (1970). In my opinion, both
writers fail to recognize the distinctiveness of
the medieval “customary vision.” Collingwood
sees it as merely a continuation of the classical
view, whereas Foucault, perhaps because his
survey only begins with the late fifteenth cen-
tury, attributes many medieval characteristics
to what he calls “the sixteenth century epis-
teme” and thus appears to underestimate the
novelty of the Renaissance view. Both would
wish to subdivide my “modern” period, which
is indeed far from undifferentiated, but I am not
convinced that any such division should be at
the same level as that which I am proposing.
5. I quote this account from MacLoughlin (1894,
pp. 2-3). The assertion that medieval man
lacked our appreciation for nature is sub-
scribed to, among others, by MacLoughlin
(1894, p. 5) and Clark (1976, pp. 3-4). For the
alternative view, see Gilson (1950, pp. 108-27).
6. The crucial text on the goodness of God’s cre-
ation is to be found in the repeated phrase
“and God saw that it was good,” in the account
of God’s creation of the world in Genesis,
Chapter 1.
7. Allegorical interpretation of the Bible has a
lona historv. beainnina with the work of the
firsCcentujJewkh exegete, Philo. By the time
of the Middle Ages, it was accepted that the
Bible was to be read on four separate levels:
the literal, the tropological, the anagogical, and
the typological. Because the last of these con-
siders the manner in which the events in
Christ’s life are foreshadowed in the Old Tes-
tament and was less applicable to a reading of
the “book of nature,” reading of that book
tended to concentrate on the other three levels
(Gilson 1938, pp. 229-30).
8. As, of course, did William Shakespeare:
And this our life . . .,
Finds tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
(As You Like It, Act 11.1.14-17)
Bunkse (1978) has questioned the extent to
which popular attitudes toward the landscape
can be recovered from writings such as those
of the Church Fathers. It is a reasonable point.
The Church Fathers were far from representa-
tive people. Because we are dealing with an
idea that was staple sermon fodder, especially
among the itinerant Franciscans, an idea that
lived on to be stated as a commonplace by
Shakespeare and that Male (1972) has shown
to be an indispensable key to interpreting the

Metaphorical Vision
iconographical schemes of medieval stained
glass and statuary, we can, I think, afford not to
be too chary of such evidence.
9. On this, see Sack’s interesting paper (1976). It
should be noted that Sack’s account differs
from my own in that he adopts Foucault’s con-
cept of “the sixteenth century episteme” and
therefore conflates the book of nature and mi-
crocosmic metaphors into one undifferentiated
whole. Whereas it is true that during this period
the two metaphors do become highly entan-
gled, for me this argues the transitional nature
of the time. It is perhaps a pity that Foucault’s
study extends back only to the late fifteenth
century. ”The sixteenth century episteme”
seems much less of a stable entity when placed
in the context of the centuries preceding it.
10. A recent geographical presentation of the
metaphor would seem to err in this regard.
Robinson (1978) is, I believe, misleading when
he suggests that this world vision is largely re-
stricted to alchemists. There is much evidence
to the contrary.
11. There seems to be a close connection between
pantheism and microcosmism. For example,
outside the period here under consideration, it
is no coincidence that the pantheists of the
Romantic era made great use of microcosmic
imagery.
12. I have borrowed my title from that of Davies’s
chapter on James Hutton (Davies 1968).
13. This is not to subscribe to the Marxist position,
but merely to hold with Halevy that “the very
sight of machinery inclines the mind to seek a
mechanical explanation of all natural phenom-
ena” (quoted in Davies 1968, p. 175).
14. In his discussion of volcanoes as analogous to
safety valves (Hutton 1795, Vol. 1, pp. 145-47).
15. Davies had demonstrated the existence of a
“denudation dilemma” in the late seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries up until Hutton, in
which to admit the reality of the earth’s denu-
dation was to caste aspersions upon the ade-
quacy of God’s creation. It is thus a conse-
quence of the replacement of the microcosmic
by the machinistic metaphorical vision, in that
denudation poses no problems for the former,
only for the latter. The dilemma was resolved
by the development of more advanced
technology and, in particular, by the develop-
ment of machines possessing in-built compen-
satory mechanisms (Davies 1966, 1968).
16. Hooykaas argues that the “mechanization of
the world picture” in the seventeenth century
represents in fact a return toward the Biblical
as opposed to the Greek concept of an animate
nature. “Seventeenth century mechanistic
philosophy was not a new compromise of
Christianity, this time with ancient materialism,
instead of ancient organicism or idealism, but
rather a step towards the Christianization and
the emancipation of natural science” (Hooy-
kaas 1972, p. 15).
17. Thus we find Voltaire writing, “The world em-
barrasses me. I cannot conceive of so beautiful
a clock without a maker” (quoted in Schneer
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251
1960, p. 125). On the other hand, a committed
atheist such as d’Holbach was forced into a
rather unconvincing, because half-hearted,
attempt t o deny machinistic metaphor al-
together:
Let us not be told that we cannot have the idea
of a work without having also that of a work-
man distinguished from his work. Nature is not
a work; she has always been self-existent; it is
in her bosom that everything is operated; she
is an immense elaboratory [sic], provided with
materials, and who makes the instruments of
which she avails herself to act: all her works
are the effect of her own energy, and of those
agents or causes which she makes, which she
contains, which she puts in action [Original
emphasis] (quoted in Glacken 1967, p. 521).
D’Holbach’s view cocld have been much more
naturally expressed in the language of micro-
cosmism.
18. One of the debates to which this essay contrib-
utes concerns the extent to which Christianity
can be held responsible for current exploitative
attitudes toward the environment. For a com-
mentary and bibliography on this debate, see
Doughty (1981). The position taken here is op-
posed to that advanced by White (1967), who
argues the prime responsibility of Christianity.
In stressing the importance of the adoption of
machinistic vision, I take a position approach-
ing that of Santmire (1975).
19. For more recent examples of the book-of-
nature metaphor, see Rudwick (1979) on its
occurrence in Lyell’s early writings, also Watts
(1957) and Lewis (1979). For a survey of micro-
cosmism across the ages, see Conqer (1922);
and for a geographical appraisal of organic
analogy, of which microcosmism forms a part,
see Stoddart (1967).
20. Briefly summarized, Vico’s position is that a
“scienza” of the “human,” but not of the “nat-
ural,” world is possible because the “human
world” is our own creation; of it we may there-
fore possess an interior, and thus superior,
knowledge. Only here may it be possible to
transcend the metaphorical.
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