Category: dead metaphor

The scientific language of an anthropologist

Making unfamiliar cultures familiar using scientific concepts

Keith S. Taber

Clifford Geertz may have been a social scientist, but he clearly thought that some abstract ideas about culture, society and politics were best explained using concepts and terminology from the natural sciences.

word cloud featuring a range of terms from Geertz's writings
Clifford Geertz was a social scientist who referenced a goof deal of scientific vocabulary

I first came across the anthropologist Clifford Geertz when teaching research methods to graduate students. Geertz had popularised the notion of the importance of thick description, or rich description, in writing case studies. I acquired his book 'The Interpretation of Cultures' (a collection of his papers and essays) to read more about this. I found Geertz was an engaging and often entertaining author.

"Getting caught, or almost caught, in a vice raid is perhaps not a very generalisable recipe for achieving that mysterious necessity of anthropological field work, rapport, but for me it worked very well."

(From 'Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight')

book cover

Anthropology: A rather different kind of science – largely based on case studies.

Generalisation in natural science

Case studies are very important in social sciences, in a way that does not really get reflected in natural science.

It has long been recognised that in subjects such as chemistry and physics we can often generalise from a very modest number of specimens. So, any sample of pure water at atmospheric pressure will boil around 100˚C.1 All crystals of NaCl have the same cubic structure. All steel wires will stretch when loaded. And so on. Clearly scientists have not examined, say, all the NaCl crystals that have ever formed in the universe, and indeed have only actually ever examined a tiny fraction, in one local area (universally speaking), over a short time period (cosmologically, or even geologically, speaking) so such claims are actually generalisations supported by theoretical assumptions. Our theories give us good reasons to think we understand how and why salt crystals form, and so how the same salt (e.g., NaCl) will always form the same type of crystal.2

Even in biology, where the key foci of interest, organisms, are immensely more complex than salt crystals or steel wires, generalisation is, despite Darwin 3, widespread:

"We might imagine a natural scientist, a logician, and a sceptical philosopher, visiting the local pond. The scientist might proclaim,

"see that frog there, if we were to dissect the poor creature, we would find it has a heart".

The logician might suggest that the scientist cannot be certain of this as she is basing her claim on an inductive process that is logically insecure. Certainly, every frog that has ever been examined sufficiently to determine its internal structure has been found to have a heart, but given that many frogs, indeed the vast majority, have never been specifically examined in this regard, it is not possible to know for certain that such a generalisation is valid. (The sceptic, is unable to arbitrate as he simply refuses to acknowledge that he knows there is a frog present, or indeed that he can be sure he is out walking with colleagues who are discussing one, rather than perhaps simply dreaming about the whole episode.)

…I imagine most readers are still siding with the scientist's claim. So, can we be confident this particular frog has a heart, without ourselves being heartless enough to cut it open to see?

(Taber, 2019)

Strictly, in an absolute sense, we cannot know for certain the entity identified as a frog has a heart. After all,

  • perhaps it is a visiting alien from another solar system that looks superficially like our frogs but has very different anatomy;
  • perhaps it is a mechanical automaton disguised as a frog, that is covertly collecting intelligence data for a foreign power;
  • perhaps it is a perfectly convincing holographic image of a 'late' frog that, since being imaged, was eaten by a predator;
  • perhaps other logically possible but barely feasible options come to mind?

But if it really is a living (Terran) frog, then we know enough about vertebrate evolution, anatomy and physiology, to be as near to certain it has a functioning heart as we could be certain of just about anything. 4

Generalisation in social science

Often, however, this type of generalisation simply does not work in social science contexts. If we find that a particular specimen of gorilla has seven cervical vertebrae then we can probably assume: so do other gorillas. But if we find that one school has 26 teachers, we clearly cannot assume this will apply to the next school we look at. Similarly, the examination results and truancy levels will vary greatly between schools. If we find one 14 year old learner thinks that plants only respire during the night time, then it is useful to keep this in mind when working with other students, but we cannot simply assume they will also think this.

The distinction here is not absolute, as clearly there are many things that vary between specimens of the same species, which is why many biological studies use large samples and statistics. In general [sic], generalisation gets more problematic as we shift from physical sciences through life sciences to social sciences. And this is partially why case study is so common within the social sciences.

The point is that the assumption that we can usually safely generalise from one NaCl crystal to another, but not from one biology teacher to another, is based on theoretical considerations that tell us why the shape (but not the mass or temperature) of a crystal transfers from one specimen of a substance to another, but why the teaching style or subject knowledge of one teacher depends on so many factors that it cannot be assumed to transfer to other teachers.

Drawing upon both a quotidian comparison and a scientific simile, Geertz warned against seeing "a remote locality as the world in a teacup or as the sociological equivalent of a cloud chamber".

A case study examines in depth one instance from among many instances of that kind: one teacher's teaching of entropy; one school's schemes of work for lower secondary science; one learner's understanding of photosynthesis; the examples, similes and analogies used in one textbook; …

Read about the use of case study in research

Case studies

Case studies look at a single instance (e.g., one school, one classroom, one lesson, one teaching episode) in great detail. Case studies are used when studying complex phenomena that are embedded in their context and so have to be studied in situ. You can study a crystal in the lab. You can also study extract cells from an organism and look at them in a Petri dish – but those isolated cells in vitro will only tell you so much about how they normally function in vivo within the original tissue.

Similarly, if you move a teacher and her class out of their normal classroom embedded in a particular school in order to to study a lesson in a special teaching laboratory in a research institution set up with many cameras and microphones, you cannot assume you will see the lesson that would have taken place in the normal context. Case studies therefore need to be 'naturalisic' (carried out in their usual context) rather than involving deliberate researcher manipulation. Geertz rejected the description of the field research site as a natural laboratory, reasonably asking "what kind of laboratory is it where none of the parameters are manipulatable?"

When I worked in further education I recall an inspection where one colleague told us that the external inspector had found her way to her classroom late, after the lesson had already started, and so asked the teacher to start the lesson again. This would have enabled the inspector to see the teacher and class act out the start of the lesson, but clearly she could not observe an authentic teaching episode in those circumstances.

Case study is clearly a sensible strategy when he have a particular interest in the specific case (why do this teacher's students gets such amazing examination results?; why does this school have virtually zero truancy rates?), but is of itself a very limited way of learning about the general situation. We learn about the general by a dual track (and often iterative) process where we use both surveys to find out about typicality, and case studies to understand processes and to identify the questions it is useful to include in surveys.

If case studies are to be useful, they need to offer a detailed account (that 'thick description') of the case, including its context: so to understand something about an observed lesson it may be useful to know about the teacher's experience and qualifications; about the school demographic statistics and ethos; about the curriculum being followed, and other policies in place; and so forth.

As one example, to understand why a science teacher does not challenge a student's clear misconceptions about natural selection (is the teacher not paying attention, or not motivated, or herself ignorant of the science?), it may sometimes be important to know something about the local community and and administrative practices. In the UK, a state school teacher (who is legally protected from arbitrary, capricious or disproportionate disciplinary action) is not going to get in trouble for explaining science that is prescribed in the curriculum, even if some parents do not like what is taught; but that may not be true in a very different context where the local population largely holds fundamentalist, anti-science, views, and can put direct pressure on school leaders to fire staff.

Beware of unjustified generalisation

This use of 'thick description' provides the context for a reader to better understand the case. However, no matter how detailed a case study is, and regardless of the insight it offers into that case, a single case by itself never provides the grounds for generalisation beyond the case. It can certainly offer useful hypotheses to be tested in other cases – but not safe conclusions!

Geertz was an anthropologist who knew that much field work involves specific researchers (with their idiosyncratic interpretive resources – background knowledge, past experiences, perspectives, beliefs, etc. -and individual personalities and inter-personal skills) spending extended periods of time in very specific contexts – this village, that town, this monastery, that ministry… The investigators were not just meant to observe and record, but also to look to make sense of (and so interpret) the cultures they were immersed in – but this invites over-generalisation. Geertz warns his readers of this at one point,

"I want to do two things which are quintessentially anthropological: to discuss a curious case from a distant land; and to draw from that case some conclusions of fact and method more far-reaching than any such isolated example can possibly sustain."

(From: 'Politics past, politics present: some notes on the uses of anthropology in understanding the new states')

Using science to make the unfamiliar familiar

One of the features of Geertz's writings that I found interesting was his use of scientific notions. Often on this site I have referred to the role of the teacher in 'making the unfamiliar familiar' and suggested that science communicators (such as teachers, but also journalists, authors of popular science books and so forth) seek to make abstract scientific ideas familiar for their audience by comparing them with something assumed to already be very familiar. As when Geertz suggests that the 'human brain resembles the cabbage'. I have also argued that whilst this may be a very powerful initial teaching move, it needs to be just a first step, or learners are sometimes left with new misconceptions of the science.

Read about 'making the unfamiliar familiar' in teaching

For a science teacher, the scientific idea is the target knowledge to be introduced, and a comparison with something familiar is sought which offers a useful analogue. I list myriad examples on this site – some being science teachers' stock comparisons, some being more original and creative, and indeed some which are perhaps quite obscure. Here are just a few examples:

and so forth…

But this can be flipped when the audience has a strong science knowledge, and so a scientific phenomenon or notion can be used to introduce something less familiar. (As one example, the limited capacity of working memory and the idea of 'chunking' may be introduced by comparison with different triglycerides: see How fat is your memory? A chemical analogy for working memory. But this is only useful if the audience already knows about the basic structure of triglycerides.)

Geertz may have been a social scientist, but he clearly assumed some abstract ideas about culture, society and politics were best explained using concepts and terminology from the natural sciences. So, for example, he made the argument for case study approaches in research,

"The notion that unless a cultural phenomenon is empirically universal it cannot reflect anything about the nature of man is about as logical as the notion that because sickle-cell anaemia is, fortunately, not universal, it cannot tell us anything about human genetic processes. It is not whether phenomena are empirically common that it is critical in science – else why should Becquerel have been so interested in the peculiar behaviour of uranium? – but whether they can be made to reveal the enduring natural processes that underlie them. Seeing heaven in a grain of sand 5 is not a trick that only poets can accomplish."

(From: 'The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man')

Geertz was also aware of another failing that I have seen many novice (and some experienced) researchers fall into. In education, as in anthropology, we often rely on research participants as informants, but we have to be careful not to confuse what they tell us with direct observations:

  • 'the teacher is careful to involve all learners in the class in answering questions and classroom discussion' (when it should be: the teacher reports that he is careful to involve all learners in the class in answering questions and classroom discussion )
  • 'the learner was very good at using mathematics in physics lessons' (when it should be: the learner thought that she very good at using mathematics in physics lessons.
  • 'the school had a highly qualified, and select group of teachers who were all enthusiastic subject experts' (or so the headteacher told me).

If such slips seem rather amateur affairs, it is not uncommon to see participant ratings mis-described: so a statements like '58% of the teachers were highly confident in using the internet in the classroom' may be based on participants responding to a scale item on a questionnaire (asking 'How confident are you…') where 58% of respondents selected the 'highly confident' rating.

So, actually '58% of the teachers rated themselves as highly confident in using the internet in the classroom'. For these two things to be equivalent we have to ourselves be 'highly confident' in a number of regards – some more likely than others. Here are some that come to mind:

  • the teachers took the questionnaire seriously, and did not just tick boxes arbitrarily to complete the activity quickly (I am sure none of us have ever done that 😎);
  • the teachers read the question carefully, and ticked the box associated with their genuine rating (i.e., did not tick the wrong box by mistake, perhaps misaligning response boxes for a different item);
  • the teachers understood and shared the researcher's intended meaning of the item (e.g., researcher and responder mean the same thing by 'confidence in using the internet in the classroom');
  • the teachers had a stable level of confidence such that a rating reflected more than their feeling at that moment in time (perhaps after an especially successful, or fraught, lesson);
  • a teacher's assessment of confidence clearly fitted with one of the available response options (here, highly confident – perhaps the only options presented to be selected from were 'highly competent'; 'neither professionally competent nor incompetent'; 'completely hopeless');
  • the teachers were open and honest about their responses (so, not influenced by how the researcher might perceive them, or who else might gain access to the data and for what purpose);
  • the teacher was a good judge of their own level of confidence (and does not come from a cultural context where it would be shameful to boast, or where exaggeration is expected).

As scientists we tend to come to rely on instrumentation even though it is fallible. We may report distances and temperatures and so forth without feeling we need to add a caveat such as "according to the thermometer" each time. 6 But instrumentation in social science tends to be subject to more complications. Geertz realised that in his field there was commonly the equivalent of writing that '58% of the teachers were highly confident in using the internet in the classroom' when the data only told us '58% of the teachers rated themselves as highly confident in using the internet in the classroom':

"In finished anthropological writings, including those collected here, this fact – that what we call our data are really our own constructions of other people's construction of what they and their compatriots are up to – is obscured because most of what we need to comprehend a particular vent, ritual, custom, idea, or whatever is insinuated as background information before the thing itself is is directly examined."

(From 'Thick description: toward an interpretative theory of culture.')

Some scientific comparisons

In discussing a teknonymous system of reference – where someone who had been named Joe at birth but who is now the father of Bert, is commonly known as 'Father of Bert' rather than Joe; at least until Bert and Bertha bring forth Susie (and take on new names themselves accordingly), at which point Joe/Father of Bert is then henceforth referred to as 'Grandfather of Susie' – Geertz suggests what "looks like a celebration of a temporal process is in fact a celebration of the maintenance of what, borrowing a term from physics, Grgory Batesaon has aptly called 'steady state'." This is best seen as a simile, as the figurative use of the term 'steady state' is clearly marked (both by the 'scare quotes' and the acknowledgement of the borrowing of the term).

Many of Geertz's figures of speech are metaphors where the comparison being used is not explicitly marked (so the state capital 'was' the nucleus). Another 'doubly marked' simile (by scare quotes and the phrase 'so to speak') concerned the idea of a centre of gravity:

"The two betting systems, though formally incongruent, are not really contradictory to one another, but are part of a single larger system, in which the centre bet is, so to speak, the 'centre of gravity', drawing , the larger it is the more so, the outside bets toward the short-odds end of the scale."

(From 'Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight')

Among the examples of Geertz using scientific concepts as the 'familiar' to introduce ideas to his readers that I spotted were:

Not all of these examples seemed to be entirely coherent, or strictly aligned with the technical concept. Geertz was using the ideas as figures of speech, relying on the way a general readership might understand them. Although, in some of these cases I wonder how familiar his readership might be with the scientific idea. We can only 'make the unfamiliar familiar' by comparing what is currently unfamiliar with what is – already – familiar.

Making the unfamiliar familiar, by using something else unfamiliar?

My general argument on this site has been that if the comparison being referred to is not already familiar to an audience, then it cannot help explain the target concept – unless the unfamiliar comparison is first itself explained; which would seem to make it self-defeating as a teaching move.

However, while I think this is generally true, I can see possible exceptions.

  • One scenario might be where the target idea is seen as so abstract, that the teacher or author feels it is worth first introducing, and explaining, a more concrete or visualisable comparison as a potential stepping stone to the target concept.
  • Another scenario might be where the teacher or author has a comparison which is considered especially memorable (perhaps controversial or risque, or a vivid or bizarre image), and so again thinks the indirect route to the target concept may be effective (or, at least, entertaining).
  • There might also be an argument, at least with some audiences, that because using a comparison makes the (engaged) reader process the comparison it aids understanding and later recall even when it needs to be explained before it will work as a comparison.

So, for example, typical readers of anthropology reports may know little about the neural organisation of cephalopods, but when being told that "the octopus, whose tentacles are in large part separately integrated, neurally quite poorly connected with one another and with what in the octopus passes for a brain … nonetheless manages…to get around…", perhaps this elicits reflection on how being an octopus must be such a different experience to being human, such that the reader pauses for thought, and then (while imagining the octopus moving around without a"smoothly coordinated synergy of parts" but rather "by disjointed movements of this part, then that") pays particular attention to how this offers a "appropriate image [for] cultural organisation".

These are tentacled, sorry, tentative suggestions, and I would imagine they all sometimes apply – but empirical evidence is needed to test out their range of effectiveness. Perhaps this kind of work has been done (I do not recall seeing any studies) but, if not, it should perhaps be part of a research programme exploring the effectiveness of such devices (similes, metaphors, analogies, etc.) in relation to their dimensions and characteristics, modes of presentation, and particular kinds of audiences (Taber, 2025).

Some of Geertz's references could certainly be seen as fitting the wider zeitgeist – references to DNA with its double helix may be seen to tap into a common cultural motif:

"So far as culture patterns, that is, systems or complexes of symbols, are concerned…that they are extrinsic sources of information. By 'extrinsic', I mean only that – unlike genes for example – they lie outside the boundaries of the individual organism …By 'source of information', I mean only that – like genes – they provide a blueprint of template in terms of which processes external to themselves can be given a definite form. As the order of bases in a strand of DNA forms a coded program, a set of instructions, or a recipe, for the synthesis of the structurally complex proteins which shape organic functioning, so culture patterns provide such programmes for the institution of the social and psychological processes which shape human behavior …this comparison of gene and symbol is more than a strained analogy …

"Symbol systems…are to the process of social life as a computer's program is to its operations, the genic helix to the development of the organism…

There is a sense in which a computer's program is an outcome of prior developments in the technology of computing, a particular helix of phylogenetic history…But …one can, in principle anyhow, write out the program, isolate the helix…"

(From 'Religion as a cultural system' and 'After the revolution: The fate of nationalism in the new states')

Geertz also goes beyond simply offering metaphors, as in this extract from an essay review of the classic structuralist anthropology text with a title normally rendered into English as 'The Savage Mind':

"That Lévi-Strauss should have been able to transmute the romantic passions of Tristes Tropiques into the hypermodern intellectualism of La Pense Sauvage is surely a startling achievement. But there remain the questions one cannot help but ask. Is this transmutation science or alchemy? Is the 'very simple transformation' which produced a general theory out of a persona disappointment real or a sleight of hand? Is it a genuine demolition of the walls which seem to separate mind from mind by showing that the walls are surface structures only, or is it an elaborately disguised evasion necessitated by a failure to breach them when they were directly encountered?"

(From 'The cerebral savage: on the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss')

It is worth noting here that whenever a work is translated from one language to another, there is an interpretive process, as many words do not have direct equivalents (covering precisely the same scope or range, with exactly the same nuances) in other languages. 'Savage' in English suggests (to me at least) aggression, and an association with violence. The French original 'sauvage' could be translated instead as 'wild' or 'untamed' which do not necessarily have the same negative associations. This is why when educational, and other social, research is reported in a language other than that in which data was collected, it is important for investigators to report this, and explain how the authenticity of translation was tested (Taber, 2018).

This device of an extended metaphor, where a comparison is not just mentioned at one point but threaded through a passage, can approach analogy – but without the explicit mapping of analogue-to-target expected in a formal teaching analogy. Here the idea of a property of meaning is compared with physical or chemical properties, but without the techniques the scientist has to identify and quantify such properties:

"And so we hear cultural integration spoken of as a harmony of meaning, cultural change as an instability of meaning, and cultural conflict as an incongruity of meaning, with the implication that the harmony, the instability, or the incongruity are properties of meaning itself, as, say, sweetness is a property of sugar or brittleness of glass.

Yet, when we try to treat these properties as we would sweetness or brittleness, they fail to behave, 'logically', in the expected way. When we look for the constituents of the harmony, the instability, or the incongruity, we are unable to find them resident in that of which they are presumably properties. One cannot run symbolic forms through some sort of cultural assay to discover their harmony content, their stability ratio, or their index of incongruity; one can only look and see if the forms in question are in fact coexisting, changing, or interfering with one another in some way or other, which is like tasting sugar to see if it is sweet or dropping a glass to see if it is brittle, not like investigating the chemical composition of sugar or the physical structure of glass."

(From 'Person, time, and conduct in Bali')

Geertz was clearly not adverse to using extended metaphors in his work:

"But, details aside, the point is that there swirl around the emerging governmental institutions of the new states, and the specialised politics they tend to support, a whole host of self-reinforcing whirlpools of primordial discontent, and that the parapolitical maelstrom is a great part an outcome – to continue the metaphor, a backwash – of that process of political development itself."

(From 'The integrative revolution: The primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states')

Offering manifold comparisons

Sometimes Geertz offers several alternative comparisons for his readers: so, above, the genetic helix is offered in parallel with a computer program, a blueprint for building a bridge, the score of a musical performance, and a recipe for cake. Another example might be:

"The second law of thermodynamics, or

the principle of natural selection, or

the production of unconscious motivation, or

the organisation of the means of production

does not explain everything, not even everything human, but it still explains something; and our attention shifts to isolating just what that something is, to disentangle ourselves from a lot of pseudoscience to which, in the first flush of its celebrity, it has also given rise."

(From 'Thick description: toward an interpretative theory of culture')

There are several ways to explain use of this technique. One is that Geertz is sometimes not confident in his comparisons, so offers alternatives – if one does not 'hit home' with a reader, another might. Perhaps this is about diversity and personalisation – after all, each reader brings their own unique set of interpretive resources (based on their idiosyncratic array of knowledge and experience), so if you do not know about the physics or biology, perhaps you do know about the example from psychology, or economics.

Alternatively, I sometimes got a sense that Geertz was simply enjoying the writing process, and not wanting to censor the creative spark as ideas presented themselves to him. Of course, that is a personal interpretation based on my unique set of interpretive resources: I have also sometimes got the feeling that I am getting carried away with my writing – carried along by the 'flow' experience described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – enjoying my own prose (which at least means that a minimum of one person does), and so possibly at risk of writing too much and consequently boring the reader. Reading Geertz gave me the feeling that he enjoyed the writing process, and that he crafted his writing with a concern for style as well as to communicate information.

From a pedagogic point of view, comparisons (similes, metaphors, analogies) are like models, always imperfect reflections of the target. Greetz suggested that not only was metaphor strictly wrong, but that it could be most effective when most wrong! In teaching it is important to highlight the positive and negative analogy (how this model is like a cell or a star or a molecule, and also how it is not), and that level of explication would be suitable for a textbook; but otherwise could (as well as disrupting style) come across as too didactic. By offering multiple comparisons, each of which are wrong in different ways, perhaps the common target feature can be highlighted?

"To put the matter this way is to engage in a bit of metaphorical refocusing of one's own, for it shifts the analysis of cultural forms form an endeavour in general parallel to

dissecting an organism,

diagnosing a symptom,

deciphering a code, or

ordering a system

– the dominant analogies in contemporary anthropology – to one in general parallel with penetrating a literary text."

(From 'Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight')

"The meanings that symbols, the material vehicles of thought, embody are often elusive, vague, fluctuating, and convoluted, but they are, in principle, as capable of being discovered through systematic investigation – especially if the people who perceive them will cooperate a little –

as the atomic weight of hydrogen or

the function of the adrenal glands."

(From 'Person, time, and conduct in Bali')

Even if this is not the case; we can expect that if the reader does mental work comparing across the multiple comparisons then this will have brought focal attention to the point being made as the reader passes through the passage of text. (Again, there is a useful theme here for any research programme on the use of figures of speech in science communication: how do readers or listeners process multiple comparisons of this kind, and does this figurative device lead to greater understanding?)

Cultural crystallisation

One recurring image in Geertz's writing is that of crystallisation.

"It is the crystallisation of a direct conflict between primordial and civil sentiments – this 'longing not to belong to any other group' – that gives to the problem variously called tribalism, parochialism, communalism, and so on, a more ominous and deeply threatening quality that most of the other, also very serious and intractable, problems the new states face…

"The actual foci around which such discontent tends to crystallise are various"

"In the one case where [a particular pattern of social organisation] might have crystallised, with the Ashanti in Ghana, the power of the central group seems to have, at least temporarily, been broken."

"The pattern that seems to be developing and perhaps crystallising, is one in which a comprehensive national party…comes almost to comprise the state…"

"…raises the spectre of separatism by superimposing a comprehensive political significance upon those antagonisms, and, particularly when the crystallising ethnic blocs outrun state boundaries…"

(From 'The integrative revolution: The primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states')

Crystallisation occurs when existing parts (ions, molecules) that are in a fluid (in solution, in the molten state) come together into a unified whole as a result of interactions between the system and its surroundings (evaporation of solvent, thermal radiation). Some of these quoted examples might stand up to being developed as analogies (where features of the social phenomenon can be mapped onto features of the physical change), but when used metaphorically the requirement is simply that there is some sense of parallel.

An interesting question might be whether such metaphors are understood differently by subject experts (here, chemists or mineralogists for example) who may be (consciously or otherwise) looking to map a scientific model onto the author's accounts, rather than a general reader who may have a much less technical notion of 'crystallisation' but might find the reference triggers a strong image?

We might also ask if 'crystallisation' has become something of a dead metaphor: that is, has it been used as a metaphor (a comparison with the change of state) so widely that it has taken on a new general meaning (of little more than things coming together)?

Balanced and unbalanced (social) forces

Another motif that I noticed in Geertz's writing was talking about social/cultural 'forces' as if they were indeed analogous to physical forces. In the following example, the force metaphor is extended:

"In sum, nineteenth century Balinese politics can be seen as stretched taut between two opposing forces; the centripetal one of state ritual and the centrifugal one of state structure."

(From 'Politics past, politics present: some notes on the uses of anthropology in understanding the new states')

The following example also features (as opposed to crystallisation) dissolving,

"In Malaya one of the more effective binding forces that has, so far at least, held Chinese and Malays together in a single state despite the tremendous centrifugal tendencies the racial and cultural differences generates is the fear on the part of either group that should the Federation dissolve they may become a clearly submerged minority in some other political framework: the Malays through the turn of the Chinese to Singapore or China; the Chinese through the turn of the Malays to Indonesia."

(From 'The integrative revolution: The primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states')

There seems to be another extended metaphor here as well, in that following dissolution, there is a danger of becoming submerged in the fluid. This quote also features the notion of 'centrifugal' force, which reappears elsewhere in Geertz's work (see below).

Canonical and alternative conceptions

I associate references to centrifugal force with the common alternative conception that orbiting bodies are subject to balancing forces – a centripetal force that pulls an orbiting body towards the centre, which is balanced or cancelled by a centrifugal force which pulls the object away from the centre. This (incorrect) notion is very common (read about 'Centrifugal force').

From a Newtonian perspective, orbital motion is accelerated motion, which requires a net force – if there was not a centripetal force, then the orbiting body would leave orbit (as, incredibly, happened to the moon in the sci-fi series 'Space: 1999' 7) and move off along a straight line. So, circular motion requires an unbalanced force (at least if we ignore the way mass effects the geometry of space 8).

Image of actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain - Space: 1999 (1975) with speech bubble:

Martin Landau and Barbara Bain – in 'Space: 1999' (created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, produced by ITC Entertainment)

I wondered whether the quote above would be interpreted differently according to a person's level of scientific literacy. Two possible readings are:

  1. "…one of the more effective binding forces…has…held Chinese and Malays together in a single state despite the tremendous centrifugal tendencies…" because the binding forces were stronger than the centrifugal force.
  2. "…one of the more effective binding forces…has…held Chinese and Malays together in a single state despite the tremendous centrifugal tendencies…" because the binding forces balance the centrifugal force.

The implication in the quote is that there is a steady state (if you will pardon the pun), so there must be an equilibrium of forces (that is, option 2). But, this is an area where learners will commonly have alternative conceptions: for example suggesting that gravity must be larger than the reaction force with the floor, or else they would float away; or that in a solid structure the attractive forces between molecules must be greater than the repulsive forces to hold the structure together.

"When [English A level students in a Further Education College] were shown diagrams of stable systems (objects stationary on the ground, or on a table) they did not always recognise that there was an equilibrium of forces acting. Rather, several of the students took the view that the downward force due to gravity was the larger, or only force acting. Two alternative notions were uncovered. One view was that no upward force was needed, as the object was supported instead, or simply that the object could not fall any lower as the ground was in the way. The other view was the downward force had to be greater to hold the object down: if the forces had been balanced there would have been nothing stopping the object from floating away."

(Taber, 1998)

Geertz was writing about society, and using the notion of forces metaphorically, but we know that when a learner is led to activate something in memory this reinforces that prior learning. For someone holding this common misconception for static equilibrium (as being due to a larger maintaining force overcoming some smaller force) then reading Geertz's account is likely to lead to:

  1. triggering prior learning about forces as relevant 'interpretive resources' for making sense of the metaphor;
  2. interpreting the social example in terms of the misconception: binding forces are larger so they hold the state together;
  3. thus rehearsing and reinforcing the prior (mis)understanding of forces!

That is, even though the topic is cultural not physical, and even though Geertz may well have held a perfectly canonical understanding of the physics, his metaphorical language has the potential to reinforce a scientific misconception!

This is not a particular criticism of Geertz: whenever a learner comes across an example that fits their prior conceptions, they are likely to activate that prior knowledge, and so reinforce the prior learning. This is helpful if they have learnt the principles as intended, but can reinforce misconceptions as well as canonical ideas. References to a scientific phenomenon or principle that assume, and so do not make explicit, the scientific ideas, always risk reinforcing existing misconceptions. (The teacher therefore tends to reiterate the core scientific message each time a previously taught principle is referenced in class – what might be called a 'drip-feed' tactic!)

Geertz seemed to be quite keen on the 'centrifugal' reference:

  • "It is the Alliance…where the strong centrifugal tendencies, as intense as perhaps any state…"
  • "the integrative power of a generally mid-eastern urban civilisation against the centrifugal tendencies of tribal particularism".

In the following extract, Geertz has two opposed centrifugal influences:

"Yet out of all this low cunning has come not only the most democratic state in the Arab world [Lebanon], but the most prosperous; and one that has in addition been able to – with one spectacular exception – to maintain its equilibrium under intense centrifugal pressures from two of the most radially opposed extrastate primordial yearnings extant: that of the Christians, especially the Maronites, to be part of Europe, and that of the Moslems especially the Sunnis, to be part of pan-Arabia."

(From 'The integrative revolution: The primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states')

A cursory reading might be that as these two opposed forces balance there is an equilibrium between them – but the scientist would realise this must be read as there being a strong enough cohesive force to hold the centre together against the combined effect of these forces – think perhaps of the famous Magdeburg hemispheres where two teams of forces were unable to pull apart two hemispheres with a vacuum between them (so that the pressure of air pushing on the outside spheres applied sufficient force to balance the maximum pull the horses could manage).

Engraving showing Otto von Guericke's 'Magdeburg hemispheres' experiment
Engraving showing Otto von Guericke's 'Magdeburg hemispheres' experiment (Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magdeburg.jpg)

Again, the metaphor might well lead a reader to apply, and so reinforce, their notions of forces acting – whether these notions match the canonical science account or not.

Some other scientific references.

Among the other scientific concepts I noticed referenced were

  • "A cockfight is …not vertebrate enough to be called a group…"
  • "…the intense stillness that falls with instant suddenness, rather as someone had turned off the current…"
  • "…that is like saying that as a perfectly aseptic environment is impossible, one might as well conduct surgery in a sewer."
  • "there has almost universally arisen around the developing struggle for governmental power as such a broad penumbra of primordial strife."
Sharing scientific and cultural resources

The very way that language evolves means that words change, or acquire new, meanings, and also shift between domains. If scientific terms are used enough figuratively, metaphorically, as part of non-scientific contexts then in time they will acquire new accepted non-technical meanings. We see this shift from metaphorical to widely accepted meanings in the establishment of idioms which must sometimes be quite mystifying to those not familiar with them, like non-native language speakers (Taber, 2025): understanding an idiom is not rocket science to the initiated, but the language learner might feel they've missed the boat or are having their leg pulled – and, if already struggling with the language, may consider them the last straw.

Read about idioms in communicating science

Indeed, there is a scholarly equivalent. So, I suspect many natural scientists may not know what a Procrustean bed is, or the significance of finding yourself between Scylla and Charybdis ("I'll have a chocolate and strawberry Scylla in a cone, and a bottle of 1990 Charybdis please"?), but such references are common in academic writing in some fields.

But scientists are in no position to complain when technical terms drift into figurative use in everyday language. After all, scientists are not above borrowing everyday terms metaphorically, and then through repeated use treating them as if technical terms. Certainly (as I describe in detail elsewhere, 'The passing of stars: Birth, death, and afterlife in the universe'), references to the 'births' and 'deaths' of stars are now used as formal technical terms in astronomy; but this is nothing new, for 'charge', as in electrical charge, was borrowed from the charge used in early firearms; and quarks originated in James Joyce – and calling them 'up', 'down', 'truth'/'top', 'beauty'/'bottom' and their qualities as 'strangeness' and 'charm' gave new meanings to terms taken from common usage. And having been sequestered by physics, they have then been borrowed back into popular culture again by the likes of Hawkwind and Florence and the Machine. 9

So, I have no criticisms of Geertz in using scientific terms figuratively in his writings about culture- even if sometimes those uses seem a little forced; and even if inevitably (simply because this is how human memory works) when such terms are used without definition or explication they may actually activate and reinforce alternative conceptions in those who already hold misconceptions of the science. A communicator has to draw upon the resources they have available, and which they hope will resonate (sic) with their audience in order to bring about the challenging task of sharing ideas between minds.

I read Geertz to find out a little more about his area of (social) science, but ended up reflecting especially upon how he used the language of natural science and how this might be understood by non-scientists. It has been suggested there is no privileged meaning to a text, as each reader brings their own personal reading. I do not entirely agree, at least with regard to non-fiction. There is certainly no meaning in the text itself (it is just the representation of the author's ideas and needs to be interpreted) but there is an intended meaning that the author hopes to communicate, and which the author seeks to privilege by using all the rhetorical tools available in the hope that readers will understand the texts much as intended. As every teacher likely knows: that is not an automatic or easy task.

Sources:

Notes:

1 We often say exactly 100˚C, but in practice factors such as the container used do make measurable differences – (Chang, 2004) – that we generally ignore.

2 Life is not always so simple. Sulphur, for example, forms different crystal structures at different temperatures; and many metals also undergo 'phase transitions' between structures at different temperatures. But we think our theories can also explain this, so we can generalise about, say, the shape of all sulphur crystals formed below 96˚C.

3 That is, before Darwin it was widely believed that species represented clear cut types of beings where in principle clear demarcation lines could be established between different natural kinds. We now understand that even if at any one time this is approximately true (see the figure), taking a broader perspective informed by Darwin's work we find different types of organisms blend into each other and there is no absolute boundary around one species distinguishing it from others. See, for example, 'Can ancestors be illegitimate?'

The scientific perspective on the evolution of living things
considers 'deep time' whereas the everyday experience of learners is
limited to a 'snapshot' of the species alive at one geological moment (from Taber, 2017).

4 This is a tricky area for the science educator. Scientists should always be open to alternative explanations, and even the overthrow of long accepted ideas. But sometimes the evidence is so overwhelming that for all practical purposes we assume we have certain knowledge. There are alternative explanations for the vast evidence for evolution (e.g., an omnipotent creator who wants to mislead us) but these seem so unfeasible and convoluted that we would be foolish to take them too seriously.

Read about the treatment of scientific certainty in the media

When it comes to climate change, we can never be absolutely sure the effects we are seeing are due to the anthropogenic actions we believe to be damaging, but the case is so strong, and the consequences of not changing our behaviours so serious, that no reasonable person should suggest delaying remedial action. This would be like someone playing 'Russian roulette' with a revolver with only one empty chamber. They cannot be sure they would shoot themselves, so why not go ahead and pull the trigger?

Similar arguments relate to the Apollo moon landings. One can imagine a highly convoluted ongoing global conspiracy to fake the landings with all the diverse evidence – but this requires accepting a large number of incredibly infeasible propositions. (Read: 'The moon is a long way off and it is impossible to get there'.)

5 The radical poet (and engraver and visionary) William Blake:

"To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour."

6 Even in the natural sciences, this depends upon how we think about the instrument used. If the instrument and technique are considered basic and simple and relivable, and 'standard' for the job in hand (part of the 'disciplinary matrix' of an established research field), we may not bother adding 'as measured with the metre rule' or 'according to the calibrated markings on the measuring cylinder' and then describe how we used the rule or cylinder. However, if a technique or instrument is new, or considered problematic, or known to be open to large errors in some contexts, we would be expected to give details.

7 Supposedly, according to the premise of 'Space: 1999', by 1999 the people of earth had amassed a vast stockpile of nuclear waste which was stored on one location on the moon. Even more supposedly, this was meant to have exploded with sufficient force to eject the moon from earth orbit and indeed the solar system, but without the moon actually losing its structural integrity. Just as unlikely, the space through which the moon moved was so dense with other planetary systems that the humans stranded on the moon at the time of the accident were able to engage in regular interplanetary adventures. Despite the fact that

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Douglas Adams

and that generally interstellar distances are vast, the projectile moon moved fast enough to quickly reach new alien civilizations but slowly enough to allow some interaction before passing by. (It was just entertainment. Extremely long sequences of episodes where the moon just moved through very tenuous gas and the odd dust cloud, and incrementally approaches some far star, may have been much more realistic, but would not have made for exciting television.)

Actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (seen in the publicity shot for 'Space: 1999' reproduced above) were a married couple who starred in 'Space: 1999', having previously appeared together in the classic series 'Mission: Impossible' – which also featured one Leonard Nimoy (see below) who also famously later ventured into space as Mr Spock.

cast of Mission Impossible series

The 'Mission: Impossible' team. "No Jim, not impossible captain, just very challenging."

8 From the perspective of general relativity, an orbiting body is simply following a geodesic in the curved space around a massive body, so gravitational force might be seen as an epiphenomenon: fictitious – a bit like centrifugal force.

9

"Copernicus had those Renaissance ladies
Crazy about his telescope
And Galileo had a name that made his
Reputation higher than his hopes
Did none of these astronomers discover
While they were staring out into the dark
That what a lady looks for in her lover
Is charm, strangeness and quark"

From the lyrics of 'Quark, strangeness and charm' (Dave Brock, Robert Newton Calvert)

"The static of your arms, it is the catalyst
Oh the chemical it burns, there is nothing but this
It's the purest element, but it's so volatile
An equation heaven sent, a drug for angels
Strangeness and Charm"

From the lyrics of 'Strangeness and Charm' (Florence Welch
Paul Epworth)