an electronic publication of Staff Development - contributions are welcome
Blending and Conceptual Integration


source: http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/Entry/gibbs

"Teaching Tips Collection"

Mark Turner, University of Maryland

Blending and Conceptual Integration

During the Upper Paleolithic, human beings
developed an unprecedented ability to
innovate. They acquired a modern human
imagination, which gave them the ability to
invent new concepts and to assemble new
and dynamic mental patterns. The results of
this change were awesome: human beings
developed art, science, religion, culture,
refined tool use, and language. Our
ancestors gained this superiority through the
evolution of the mental capacity for
conceptual blending. Conceptual blending
has a fascinating dynamics and a crucial role
in how we think and live. It operates largely
behind the scenes. Almost invisibly to
consciousness, it choreographs vast
networks of conceptual meaning, yielding
cognitive products, which, at the conscious
level, appear simple. Blending is governed
by uniform structural and dynamic
principles and by optimality constraints. The
theory of conceptual blending has been
applied by scores of researchers, in
cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science,
psychology, linguistics, music theory,
poetics, mathematics, divinity, semiotics,
theory of art, psychotherapy, artificial
intelligence, political science, discourse
analysis, philosophy, anthropology, and the
study of gesture and of material culture.