CONCEPTUAL BLENDING

'Conceptual Blending' (aka 'Conceptual Integration') is a general theory of cognition.^[1] According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are "blended" in a subconscious process known as Conceptual Blending, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language. Insights obtained from these blends constitute the products of creative thinking.
The theory of Conceptual Blending was developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. The development of this theory began in 1993 and a representative early formulation is found in their online article Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression. Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier cite Arthur Koestler´s 1964 book "The Act of Creation" as an early forerunner of conceptual blending: Koestler had identified a common pattern in creative achievements in the arts, sciences and humor that he had termed "bisociation of matrices" - a notion he described with many striking examples, but did not formalize in algorithmic terms^[2].
A newer version of blending theory, with somewhat different terminology, was presented in their book ''The Way We Think'' (ISBN 0-465-08786-8). Their theory is partially based on basic ideas advanced by George Lakoff in his 1987 book ''Women Fire and Dangerous Things'' and in Lakoff's coauthored 1980 book with Mark Johnson ''Metaphors We Live By''. It is also related to Cognitive architecture theories like Soar and ACT-R, and to frame-based theories of Marvin Minsky, Jaime Carbonell among others.

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Notes

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External links

Notes

1. No single cognitive theory has yet been able to cover any significant fraction of the phenomena of human cognition, but some claim that, as of late 2005, conceptual blending was rising in prominence among such theories.
2. Mark Turner, Gilles Fauconnier: The Way We Think. Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books 2002, p. 37

See also

★ Mental space

★ Cognitive psychology

★

★ Embodied philosophy

★ Conceptual metaphor

★ Analogy

External links

★ Blending and Conceptual Integration - Mark Turner

★ Blending Website at University of Aarhus

★ The Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor Online is a collection of numerous formative articles in the fields of conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending (aka conceptual integration).

★ The differences between conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending are illustrated in this article on visual blends by Tim Rohrer

★ Aparta Krystian. Conventional Models of Time and Their Extensions in Science Fiction A master's thesis exploring conceptual blending in time travel. Contains an introduction to the theory of conceptual blending, as well as an exploration of the differences between conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory.