Researchers mine millions of metaphors through computer-based techniques

The San Jose Mercury reports:

Metaphors cannot be taught, asserted the great philosopher Aristotle. "It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others."

But a computer scientist and a literary historian say he's wrong.

In a project started at Stanford University, the researchers are teaching computers how to analyze texts from Plato to Pynchon, mining millions of these abstract phrases. (Metaphorically speaking.)

They're building a vast searchable database, making it possible to browse historic patterns of word usage — for instance, "rose'' and "love'' — from ancient Homeric epics to postmodern cyberpunk novels, and everything in between.

"As a tool, it provides a really powerful way of thinking about a lot of literature at once," said English literature professor Brad Pasanek, who collaborated on the project with longtime friend and computer scientist D. Sculley.

The work makes tangible what the German linguist Harald Weinrich called the "metaphoric field." "Pasanek's database is the first 'metaphoric field' that we can actually see and use," said Franco Moretti, a Stanford comparative literature professor. "It provides empirical proof for a daring, but never wholly solid concept."

This approach to studying literature was inconceivable back around 330 B.C., when Aristotle wrote that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of the metaphor,"

Anyone interested in literature will find this whole article fascinating.