The Literary Mind.pdf

72 THE LITERARY MIND
that "the finish line" in the blend corresponds to FDR'S degree of accomplishment
on his hundredth day in office in the relevant input space of "FDR'S first
year in office" (beginning March 4, 1993). But protest will arise if we say, "So
far, FDR has succeeded completely at keeping well ahead of Clinton." We could
say this of a real race, but not of this blended race, because in the blend, some
aspects of intentionality from the input spaces are indispensable for the reasoning
in the blend, but only certain aspects of that intentionality are allowed to
enter the blend. Yet this restriction is not simple. If we knew of a passage in
President Roosevelt's diary in which he represents himself as competing with all
presidents, past and future, and then claims that he has set a record for accomplishment
in his first one hundred days that no other president will ever be able
to equal, then we might be able to say without provoking protest, "So far, FDR
has succeeded in staying well ahead of Clinton."
Structure that is developed in a blended space can change our view of the
input spaces, as in the following riddle, which Arthur Koestler attributed to psychologist
Carl Dunker:
A Buddhist monk begins at dawn to walk up a mountain. He stops and
starts and varies his pace as he pleases, and reaches the mountaintop at
sunset. There he meditates overnight. At dawn, he begins to walk back
down, again moving as he pleases. He reaches the foot of the mountain
at sunset. Prove that there is a place on the path that he occupies at the
same hour of the day on the two separate journeys.
The reader might pause here to try to solve the riddle before reading further.
It can be solved ingeniously by imagining the Buddhist monk walking up
as his double walks down on the same day. In that blended space, it is clear that
there is a place on the path that the two Buddhist monks occupy at the same
hour of the day: The place is where he meets himself. He must of course meet
himself, since someone who traverses a path in the space of a day must meet
someone who traverses the path in the opposite direction in the space of the same
day, however much they both walk as they please. This inference, that there must
be a place that the two travelers inhabit at the same time of day, is projected from
the blend back to the input spaces to create a point of connection between the input
spaces of the two journeys, although no encounter occurs in either of them.
Interestingly, people who count this blend as supplying a proof often cannot supply
an alternative proof that does not make use of the blend.
It is worth pausing to observe that this is another case in which the input
stories to the blend are not related as source and target. Indeed, this is a projection
over stories that does not seem to involve metaphor or analogy in any cen-