The Chemical Age: Presenting history with metaphors∗

The Chemical Agediscussion of metaphors can reveal something of the late eighteenth centurycultural conventions that were used to make history meaningful by thedeployment of mechanical, organic and chemical metaphors. Althoughmy topic is philosophical thought, my approach will be cultural-historicalin two senses.First, in addition to traditional argument analysis, I propose to takeaccount of how those arguments are connected with German culture ofthe 1790s. I understand philosophical thinking to be a cultural activity,whose presuppositions are provisional and subject to historical change likeall human activity. I do not want so much to relativize those arguments, asto make them comprehensible within the historical context in which theywere presented. My first methodological supposition is that in general,cultural context will always clarify a particular text.Second, the cultural-historical study of metaphors used by Schlegelcan produce new insights into how history was conceived in the eighteenthcentury. In this respect, my second methodological principle isthat interpretation can proceed from a particular text to the level of thecommon cultural totality of which it is a part. A part (text) becomesunderstandable in its connection with its respective whole (con-text), butreciprocally context is always constructed by reference to other texts –specifically primary sources. 4 People use their pre-existing knowledge inorder to conceive of new and unknown things. Metaphorical thinking isa linguistic method for relating the new to the familiar. 5 The metaphorsthat a past culture deployed and the changes in those metaphoric structuresconstitute both a field of research and a methodological resourcefor cultural history. The cultural system of metaphors can reveal how aparticular culture interpreted and made meaningful its reality by drawinganalogies between different things. 64 See Gadamer [1960] 1990, p. 272; Tontti 2005, p. 60.5 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have claimed that every conceptual system presupposesa metaphorical system. Lakoff & Johnson 1980, p. 22. Even the etymology ofword ‘concept’ from Latin capere (to take) implies a metaphor of grasping somethingwith the hand. The German Begriff (concept) is similarly based on the metaphor ofgreifen (grasp).6 According to Immanuel Kant, analogy means an identity of relation between any twoordered pairs. The analogical mode of producing knowledge follows the form: A is toAsko Nivala: The Chemical Age: Presenting History with Metaphors. In: Bruce Johnson & Harri Kiiskinen (eds.): They DoThings Differently There. Essays on Cultural History. Cultural History – Kulttuurihistoria 9. k&h, Turku, 2011. Pp. 81–108.83