Metaphorical Imagination: Towards a Methodology for Implicit Evidence 1443899852, 9781443899857

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Metaphorical Imagination

Metaphorical Imagination: Towards a Methodology for Implicit Evidence By

Muhammad Tanweer Abdullah

Metaphorical Imagination: Towards a Methodology for Implicit Evidence By Muhammad Tanweer Abdullah This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Muhammad Tanweer Abdullah All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9985-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9985-7

A truer [marital] relationship is more than the physical metaphor—the vocal, carnal, and contractual; it is essentially [clothed] within a body-soul embodiment

To Khadija—my soulmate

CONTENTS

Prologue ........................................................................................... xi Acknowledgements ....................................................................... xvii Part I Chapter One....................................................................................... 2 Social Research: Reflections on Evidence 1.1. “What is evidence?” Personal anxieties 1.2. Physical vs. implicit evidence 1.3. Implicit contextual sense in metaphor 1.4. Beyond the body! Embodied cognition 1.5. Revisiting evidence: Logos, Pathos, Ethos Chapter Two .................................................................................... 26 A Hermeneutic Vacuum: Scope for Implicit Evidence 2.1. Mainstream incapacities: Some thinking aloud 2.2. Implicit evidence inside the Variable 2.3. Methodological vs. intellectual survival 2.4. Embodied cognition across time-space 2.5. Embodied truth[s] and Gadamer’s flickering Chapter Three .................................................................................. 50 Political Correctness! Some [Soul] Researching 3.1. Evidence analyses by “paralysis”! 3.2. Theoretical paradoxes vis-à-vis embodiment 3.3. Evidence-based…doctrines or doctoring? 3.4. The idea of dropping our tools! 3.5. Living by essential survival tools! 3.5.1. Which “heavy” and “survival” tools? 3.5.2. Where and when to drop the “heavy” tools?

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3.5.3. Doubt and trust all methods equally! 3.5.4. When is partial knowledge, still “knowing”? 3.6. Embodiment as an intellectual survival toolkit 3.7. Metaphor as a methodological survival tool Part II Chapter Four .................................................................................... 76 Prodigy: Expectations from the Prodigal Son 4.1. Prodigal-prodigious schema 4.2. A methodology within paradox 4.2.1. Figurative family norm 4.2.2. Diversity inside family 4.2.3. Probing in: Unapproachable, anticipatory 4.2.4. Objectivist-subjectivist rationality 4.2.5. Cognitive-linguistic minimalism 4.2.6. Experiential-compliance syntheses 4.2.7. Robustness vis-à-vis perceptibility 4.2.8. Evidence in the deviance! 4.3. Within: Embodied norms of social researching Chapter Five .................................................................................. 102 “Singing the soul back…”! An Embodied Homecoming 5.1. Metaphorical Imagination: Introduction 5.2. MI: Rationale 5.3. MI: Time-space embodiment 5.4. MI: Methodological compliance 5.5. MI: Cognitive hypotheses 5.6. MI: Conceptual plane 5.6.1. Intuitive-experiential [heuristic] reasoning 5.6.2. Thought trials: Source and target domains 5.6.2.1. Pendulum/precession movements 5.6.2.2. Yo-Yo/swing movements 5.6.2.3. Spiral movements 5.6.3. Emergent interpretations

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5.7. Implicit Evidence: Key characteristics 5.7.1. Postdisciplinarity 5.7.2. Embodied cognition 5.7.3. Paradoxical sensemaking Chapter Six .................................................................................... 130 Cognitive Restructuring: From Dualism to Embodiment 6.1. A scope of MI through the crystal 6.2. Crystal substance: Physical within implicit evidence 6.2.1. Structures and shapes 6.2.2. Faculties 6.2.3. Dimensionalities 6.2.4. Transmutations 6.2.5. Colours 6.2.6. Reflections 6.2.7. Refractions 6.2.8. Disorders and illusions 6.2.9. Space groups 6.3. MI: Correspondence with mainstream models 6.4. Implicit Evidence and the Conspiracy Theory Part III Chapter Seven ............................................................................... 158 The Data is Dead? Long Live the Evidence 7.1. Revisiting body and soul: “Imagine” 7.2. Body vs. soul: Is purposeful life a journey? 7.2.1. Marketing: From healthcare to warfare 7.2.1.1. Marketing is war! 7.2.1.2. War is marketing! 7.2.2. Metaphors by which we live dangerously! 7.2.2.1. Fatal dreams 7.2.2.2. Fallen out of “order” 7.2.2.3. What did [not] happen that day!? 7.2.3. [Re]searching a purposeful life

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Chapter Eight................................................................................. 182 Cartesian Anxiety: “In search of a ground”! 8.1. A psychosomatic syndrome: Some indicators 8.2. “Craving for an absolute ground” 8.3. Do blind men blink? 8.4. Embodied births vs. relativist upbringing 8.5. Holding on to “the hidden hand” Chapter Nine ................................................................................. 206 Postdisciplinary Truth[s]: “Too much is at stake”! 9.1. Soul [re]searching: Embodied truth-values 9.2. Prodigal-prodigy cognitive norms 9.2.1. “…who desires the soul”! 9.2.2. “…who plays with the soul”! 9.2.3. “…who makes love with the soul”! 9.2.4. “…who attains [a state of] ecstasy in the soul”! 9.3. Why “the stakes are too high”? 9.4. A blinded sense of the common-sense Epilogue ........................................................................................ 231 References ..................................................................................... 233 Index .............................................................................................. 248

PROLOGUE

Living by Neil Diamond’s lyrical metaphor [The Story of My Life, 1986], this book tells the story of my [academic] life. It starts with the struggle of my PhD days, and may end [only] on the day I leave this world. Certainly, it is the story of our times: tragic times of fallacious evidence and partial truths—a never letting go; that I hope people will find plain to read. This book interconnects the domains of critical theory, embodiment philosophy, cognitive linguistics, and qualitative research; and I do not privilege myself to essential specialism, academic training, or resourcefulness, in these domains. I am also unprivileged in academic contacts and peer support for help in reviews and technical comments. I consider myself privileged only as a sensitive observer and life-long learner, trying to follow an instinctive sense for assigning values to my first-hand experiences. Metaphor is my gifted storyteller, and only in metaphor could one safely assert that the story’s still the truth—a claim I make in this book. The story follows 25 years of my rewarding fellowship with metaphor, which would influence my observation and [life-long] learning. In February 2000, over a seminar lecture at Lancaster University, Prof. Maggie Mort, would smilingly introduce me as: “Tanweer, from mathematics to metaphor!” This seemed to have hinted at two amusing facts: my first degree in mathematics and over a year’s (1991) struggle for [intellectual] survival in the most celebrated but hardcore Operational Research department at Lancaster’s management school where I completed a research masters. In my PhD proposal I had opted for soft analytical models. I was quite convinced that even if I wanted to assign mathematical and

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statistical efficacy to human group behavioural complexity, it would not actually be as simple as it appeared. So, rather than making the usual change in the proposal, I decided to change department and moved to Applied Social Science. Prof. Alan Beattie, my academic supervisor from 1992 to 1994, and I were inspired by Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization [1986] and mutually decided that I expand the “images” to an inter-organisational domain and study the challenging norms of interagency collaboration. Unfortunately, in the middle of my research data analysis and write-up, my scholarship came to an end, reducing my status to a non-resident student and resulting in an unwanted break of four years (1994-1998). However, this break allowed for a helpful drilling down of the metaphors under my study, and testing their staying power in refining and finishing my PhD (1999-2000) with the generous support of Prof. Roger Clough. This break also put to the test my love for metaphor. Beyond the PhD, I held on to my strong belief in a utility of metaphorical modeling in organisation analysis and social research. This conviction, vis-à-vis my experience of the flaws of scientific positivism, is reflected in the first chapter, and carried on to serve as an inquiry-in-writing format since then, in 2006-2007 in particular, when I drafted three chapters of this book at the School of Education at the University of Leeds. Over the years, I have shared this conviction through conference papers, publications, and even some preliminary schemata [Abdullah, 2000a; 2000b; 2004; 2005a; 2005b; 2006; 2008a; 2008b; 2010; 2014; 2015]. I kept pointing to the never letting go of the challenges of social research practice, alongside a growing need for parallel sensemaking options to review complexity and deception in contemporary evidence— the story of our times. Certainly, I maintained my confidence in metaphor in order to take on this challenge.

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A saying associated with psychologist Abraham Maslow is that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This seems true in our choice of social research methods. More noticeably since the 21st century, the positivist protocols of our methodology toolkit have failed us in terms of their sophistication and penetrative power to study complex settings. But why is it that, this book asks, we would be “hushed up” by these complexities? By overviewing the 21st century evidence, this book allows us to revisit the epistemology and ontology of evidence. This revisit makes little claim to bringing about an academic revolution, but does emphasise a cognitive [r]evolution—an indispensable sense of methodological direction, marking and flagging up posts for researchers who take evidence seriously. It is over this revisit that I introduce metaphor as a schema that allows researchers to reinterpret evidential complexities around them. The normative position I take is to prepare the grounds—both theoretical and moral—for the utilisation of metaphor as a cognitive methodology that I call Metaphorical Imagination (MI). Over the entire history of our empirical knowledge, we only discover, uncover, and/or recover what has already existed: the physical laws of gravity and motion, the chemical formulae, and a range of diseases. In the same way, all evidence of mainstream complexity exists out there. MI lets us unfold and interpret this evidence. Such a capacity for discovery is not possible in the positivist tradition; still MI does not undervalue empiricism that must hold phenomenal and realist influence over our intellect. MI allows embodied cognition of empiricism and intuitivism—the body and soul of evidence. As such, the normative scope of MI may appear helpfully thinner than critical social theory and sociological traditions such as Symbolic Interactionism, but thicker and more inclusive as compared to Researching and Applying

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Metaphor (RaAM) which studies an exclusive metaphorical discourse inside specific contexts. MI is nothing new at all. It is ever-present in mainstream poetry, whether romantic or mystic, embodying the body and the soul, letting both implicitly speak for each other. It is only in a “disciplined” capacity that MI offers a renewed sphere of intellectual influence that cuts across all levels: a respondent’s setting (individual, societal, or universal) vis-à-vis his or her responses, and the categories of academic disciplines to study these responses. Building on critical social research and clear gaps in social theory, MI takes us to a postdisciplinary world of Implicit Evidence (IE), whereupon we involuntarily unlock ourselves from our specialist identity genres that we assumed we were tied to. This presents a challenging debate, but one worth engaging in. For empiricism to end up [only] in relativism (which I assert is the case), has been embarrassing for our sensemaking capacities. In our intellectual journeys, most of us would keep tracing circles in search of our truths, consuming times but staying fixed to our spaces. MI may not take us to [all] the truths that we must seek, but it fills up the knowledge gaps in a direction of the truth[s]. MI offers us tangential hope! MI produces the scope for our methodological survival. Intuitivism in MI is not beyond or against the empiricist “here and now” but rather, paradoxically within mutuality of these spaces and times; allowing us to see the forest for the trees the same way as the trees for the forest. MI gives shape to an intuitive image of a dense forest that we do not miss in a thick account of the empiricist data trees. Specifically, MI allows methodological sustenance within inconsistent settings: - Where and when the quality and credibility of empirical evidence are likely to be questioned;

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- Where and when the evidential settings are likely to be complex, uncertain, and deceptive; - Where and when the evidential settings are figurative and likely to be insufficient to rationalise an empirical and literal sense; - Where and when evidential settings are likely to reveal hidden meanings across experiential-intersubjective and interpretative-intertextual analyses; and - Where and when, in terms of serendipitous, heuristic, and reflexive sensemaking of implicit contexts, the tacit influence is likely to become cognitively viable. I hope students of social research theory, critical social and organisational inquiry, and soft evaluation methodologies may find this book helpful. It can serve as an academic reference for researchers and practitioners in areas such as investigative journalism, organisational development and social reforms, and propaganda and conspiracy analysis; as well as subjects within applied social science, such as social and community work, race and inter-faith relations, and psychiatric health. It may also help develop indigenous approaches for inquiry into, and prevention of, hate crime, domestic violence, and childand elderly abuse. Nonetheless, as the evidence shaped up in MI is essentially postdisciplinary, I do not withdraw from, or draw in, any boundaries of social inquiry and practice. Rather, by bringing metaphorical thinking and social research closer, MI invites us to take a break from the usual [here and now] fixation, and appreciate the paradoxical wonders of implicit evidence around us. This break can put to the test cognitivemethodological capacities of MI across multiple contextualexperiential explanations. I divide this book into three parts, each of three chapters. The first part outlines the rationale, scope, and inevitability of intuitive evidence in social research that we customarily call

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personal, and whose tacit sensemaking is often [under]treated as unsolicited. Here, I challenge the customary conceptions of [hard] evidence, and make a strong case for intuitive evidence in the metaphor and embodied cognition vis-à-vis failings of empiricism in negotiating mainstream complexity in social research theory and practice. The second part presents MI as a cognitive methodology and discusses its key theoretical and operational utility in social science research. In this context, I explain how social [science] research is actually an embodied form of cognition of empirical-intuitive evidence that can negotiate mainstream paradoxes. Here, I introduce a cognitive schema that characterises a unique mutuality in shaping the divergence and convergence of research evidence. Further, with “crystallisation” as a case in point, I illustrate how MI could induce a cognitive restructuring—from dualism to embodiment. In part three, I discuss the key implications of MI and briefly revisit and reenact the [dualist] epistemology and ontology of evidence, and subsequently claim all truths to be only emergent paradoxical values in metaphor. Here, I discuss the body and soul, and the life and death of the data; losing and winning wars of truths and untruths, knowing and unknowing the purpose of life, and the enlightened and gloomy worlds inside and outside of us. I also assert how the scope of the most sought after ethical responsibility is actually hidden in the metaphor that we enact by researching, and how within a cognitive unconscious sense of intuitive evidence, metaphor unfolds the rhetoric of truths not only in our [titular] research, but in our lives. I also claim all truth-values in social research to be embodied, paradoxical, and postdisciplinary.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to take the opportunity to thank all those in my life who shaped the world around me, for the better—that, I could only now confirm to be the case, and it always will be. I must acknowledge all my teachers, commentators, and wellwishers at the universities of Peshawar, Lancaster, and Leeds, especially Roger Clough, Alan Beattie, Marilyn Martin-Jones, Phil Hodkinson, Lynne Cameron, and Alice Deignan. I am grateful to Georgeta RaĠă at BUASVM Timiúoara, and Greg Smith at the University of Salford, for their kind advice. I also wish to acknowledge Hussein Borie and Omar Alsharqi at King Abdulaziz University, Mohammed Hanawi at Aston University, and other colleagues for their earnest support. I am indebted to my mother for always helping lift me to a high morale. Her insight and imaginative reasoning into social life is very penetrating, and her strong genetic influence is noticeable in my academic interests. Coincidentally, during the past three years, her Lewy body dementia developed from bad to worse—nearly in parallel with my finalising this book. Initially, her disease would not hold her back from taking the steps to visit me regularly in the early hours of the morning to ask: “Are you still working!” often adding, with a gentle kiss on my shoulder: “When will you finish the book?” And I would reply: “Looks like never!” Though, in recent months, I only hear her calling for me in her several hours of extreme restlessness. When I would leave the work to attend to her, and to hold her closely, she would still fondly kiss my hands, conveying implicitly countless blessings. I must appreciate my dearest mother- and father-in-law for their continued morale-boosting and benevolence. With his

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academic background and interest in philosophy and English literature, my father-in-law has always been there for me for a discussion, and continues to be a most wonderful intellectual inspiration. For my wife Khadija, the book dedication says it all. Her unending moral and academic support approaches coauthor status. I am most indebted to my precious sister Fariha for always shouldering my responsibilities, and especially, for not just standing by me, but standing up for me, when I need someone the most. Her presence in my life is so very special that I find it tough to imagine a life without her. I thank my teenage daughters Maryum and Sarah for help with some metaphor expansions and illustrations in the text, but more for their patience over the past three years with no family holiday. I am grateful to my brothers (especially, Ali), brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law (particularly, Ayesha), all my nieces (in particular, Summayyah) and nephews, for their love and support. Here, I also recall all well-wishers—the nearest and dearest in my family who are no longer there, especially, my father who took my education very seriously—right from the initial milestones, and my loving sister-in-law, Hafsa. I deeply appreciate my publishing team at Cambridge Scholars Publishing for their patience, diligence, and keen professionalism. I cannot thank Katerina Spathia enough for her blissful part in the end towards proof-reading and some comments; specifically for bearing with me through perhaps the most strenuous four months of my life, owing to the concurrent illness of my mother. I must mention our family pet, Lilly, a Turkish Angora cat: my regular company over the final writing up. She would lie fondly near the keyboard next to my right hand; maybe for an instinctive [proximal] interest in the mouse that we shared.

PART I

CHAPTER ONE SOCIAL RESEARCH: REFLECTIONS ON EVIDENCE

Words spoken are symbols or signs of affections or impressions of the soul; written words are the signs of words spoken…But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs, are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects of which, those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies. [Aristotle, De Interpretatione 1, 16a:3-9; trans. Modrak, DKW, 2001; emphasis added]

1.1. “What is evidence?” Personal anxieties “You are pulling the rug from under your own feet!” “You must let the data speak!” These were the strongly worded cautions with which two of my PhD supervisors at Lancaster outmentored me. They wanted to ensure that I follow the prescribed methodology for my fieldwork and adhered to the duly approved protocols for data collection, analysis, and interpretation. In opposition to this, I would find myself questioning the fieldwork setting, without focusing too much on a [procedural] projection of the data. I was certain that richer data existed outside of approved methodology and the bounded methods. Nevertheless, I could make sense of this data only in the form of personal insights reflecting and evolving out of my experiential interactions with the fieldwork setting. These insights kept defining and redefining the patterns of my conceptions and assumptions of the goings on over the progress of the fieldwork.

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Interestingly, these insights had emerged in parallel with my methods, and well ahead of the findings typically acquired towards the end. I could follow the emergence of insights through the entire course of fieldwork data collection and even beyond—all the way to data interpretation and the [final] write up. Contrary to my research schedule stages too, this sensemaking of emergence was concurrent, not sequential! I wondered whether that emergence was a parallel sense of infusion, a fusion of my methods with insights, or simply confusion. Owing to the prescribed research focus, i.e. the rug under my own feet, I could not endorse the emergence of my insights, and equally was unable to let the data speak through the norms of data citation, because a fluidity in such emergent insights could hardly be held together and reported as valid evidence in the data. I was not the only one to have experienced such anxieties. Later, I noticed several social researchers having reported the influence of evolving insights through the course of research and writing up [among others, Holloway and Jefferson, 2000; Wolcott, 2001; Flyrbjerg, 2001; Garratt, 2003; Richardson and Lockeridge, 2004; Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005]. In prescribing the value of heuristic research in the social sciences, Moustakas [1990] claims that such insights actually created a consistency between field realities and the researcher’s “reflective thought, feeling, and awareness” (p. 12). In complex research settings such as the one I was studying, Wolcott [2001] would recommend a comprehension of emergent insights even through the “sixth sense”. Their reporting, however, would remain an issue. My PhD fieldwork was mostly qualitative. I had used a triangulation of the interview, observation, and questionnaire methods to examine the challenges of collaborative planning faced by agencies working for primary health care in Pakistan [Abdullah, 2000a]. As all the agencies operated in turbulent,

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impermanent, and inconsistent political-economic and socialcultural milieus, the fieldwork turned out to be demanding. In that situation, the rationalist and positivist admonitions of my supervisors were indeed well-placed. Their message was clear: to recognise the limiting factors of the setting, but stick to the task. “The best PhD is the finished PhD”, I was warned. Still, I was not convinced I should give up my naïve ambition of making better contextual sense. In hindsight, I find a social researcher’s usual frustration against method—the scientific standards [Feyerabend, 1975, and others], to be natural and understandable. For our PhDs, whether as idealists, pragmatists, or realists, we all struggle with the approved normative limits of collecting, processing, and interpreting our data. However, our purpose must be to find evidence in data and not data in evidence, and be able to discover any [critical] underlying relationships between the data and evidence. In my case, I was unsure whether such relationships were coincidental, consequential, or transcendental. All I did was to follow a parallel sense of curiosity to unfold evidence in the data that was embedded deeply or existed outside the approved data sources. I strongly felt that our methodological incapacity to register personal insights must not subvert the presence or importance of these insights as a credible source of evidence. The anxiety about reporting intuitive influences is common to all scholarly traditions of the physical and social sciences. Among others, the mid-20th century philosophies of Michael Polanyi and Hans-Georg Gadamer point to the flaws of empiricism vis-à-vis the need to recognise the intuitive, emotive, and imaginative reflections that we all experience in parallel with our prescribed methods of social inquiry. In Personal Knowledge [1958] and The Tacit Dimension [1967], Polanyi claims that social researchers actually produce [tacit] personal knowledge that is unreportable as credible evidence.

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Symbolic Interactionism in qualitative research—developed by Blumer [1969], Denzin [1992] and other Chicago School sociologists—acknowledges the social researcher’s role in respect of the setting and all meanings that enact mainstream social realities, while recognising them as instinctually interactive and experiential. A value of contextual sensitivity of the field data with regard to theory emergence is selfexplanatory in the notion of the Grounded Theory [Glaser and Strauss, 1967]. Again, the questions of how we rationalise, validate, and report intuitive categorisation remain open to debate [Kelle, 2005]. Hence, I was in a position to realise that tacit insights in social research served only as the researcher’s experiential means [Wolcott, 2001; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Brown, 2003; Greenwood and Levin, 2005, among others] but not the methodological ends, and subsequently, as a source of evidence. In Beyond Method [Morgan, 1983], a mix of social and organisational research suggests that tacit influences persist, but only at the back of the researcher’s mind. This assortment of options certainly offers a function in terms of methods, but little support as insistent methodologies in sustaining and validating tacit insights as sources of evidence. 1.2. Physical vs. implicit evidence Through the course of my PhD fieldwork, I developed several personal insights that were, in a way, beyond method. These insights evolved across a wide [spatiotemporal] range of fieldwork data sources and perspectives, from hearsay to academic: ideational-ideological, historical, social-linguistic, political-economic, and cultural-institutional, such as: “in relying too much on international donors, the government of Pakistan agencies developed a dependency syndrome”. No systematically collected data could have projected this insight enough for the robustness needed to ideate and explain

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“dependency” (financial, technical, intellectual…) vis-à-vis some sensemaking of coherence essential to conceptualise the level(s) of incidence of a syndrome (individual, institutional, cultural…). Again, the challenge I faced was two-fold: first, to be able to qualify a dependency syndrome as my intuitively evolved critical insight, and second, to validate it as credible evidence. For this purpose, I needed a single methodology, i.e. the rug under my feet that could help comprehend the contextual complexity in concurrence with a single implicit sense which could speak for the data; thereby, claiming validity [within the same] as credible intuitive evidence. Here, metaphor came to my rescue. Challenged with making sense of data complexity, metaphor proved robust and offered coherence. Metaphor not only validated a random emergence of personal insights, but more importantly, it helped in recognising how and why the quality of evidence in the data has traditionally been perceived as physical and visible. Conceivably, the majority of social researchers who follow empirical norms are, in a way, cognitively conditioned towards this tendency. Let us see how evidence as a Source Domain of cognitive metaphor [stereotypically] translates into the Target Domain as physical and visible: Evidence has a weight; Evidence has a body, or perfect body; Evidence is hard or soft; weak or strong; Evidence is prima facie and corpus delicti The Latin origin of evidence: “e”–out, and “videre”–to see, reveals the main reason behind mainstream researchers’ instinctive attraction to the physical profile of the data: features, figures, and curves, that let the data speak through personal interviews, trendy and stylistic visual displays, and iconic pictograms. In public inquiries or crime investigations,

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we are likely to perceive [valid] evidence through detectable grounds, tracks, and footprints that we trace, and even sniff. All of which are physical senses or capacities. We also keep on record, display, and retrieve evidence in visual exhibits, tokens, and seals. We frequently scan evidential credibility across solid physical-measurable indicators and indexes (the index finger, in some cases!). When finalised, the “body” of evidence is hard-coated, as in academic dissertations, and filed away in glossy jackets that we typically notice in inquiry reports and consultation projects. Based on the Metalude database [Goatly, 2005], I notice how in order to qualify evidence as credible1, our cognitive constructs tend to favour the open, uncovered, clear, and visible, against the hidden, covered, unclear, and invisible: Unknown is COVERED Unknown and ignored is INVISIBLE To make known is to SHOW and DRAW Known is UNCOVERED and OPEN Obvious is CLEAR Seriousness and Importance is WEIGHT Some “body” of evidence was also visible in my PhD data—indented interview quotations, boxed observations, pie charts, and the database index. A projection of physical configuration was meant to ensure mechanistic sanctity—to the satisfaction of my supervisors; but, I continued to contest its worth. A physical-visual presentation was elegant but superficial, and inadequate in conveying an implicit sense through emergent insights such as “a dependency syndrome”.

1

For more details on physical vs. visible evidence, readers may study databases that provide root analogies of a set of target domains and source domains of relevant cognitive metaphors.

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At that point, an image appeared in my mind, representing a possibility: if evidence is cognitively conditioned to have a physical body, could we not correspondingly uncondition or recondition evidence in an implicit soul? Further, only if social researchers reinterpreted and reframed their cognitions, could the soul reveal implicit evidence. This shift in reasoning led to more questions: Are Aristotle’s mental affections (as quoted initially) the signs or impressions of the soul that we unconsciously display in our choice of metaphor? Could metaphor unfold implicit evidence within the soul whilst interpreting a personal and intuitive sense in data? Could the soul reveal to us the implicit evidence of complexity inside institutional intrigues, the human cultural psyche, and symbolism of individual, group, and organisational power? How could we ever disregard the value and utility of the soul in social research? It is certain that we miss the deeply embedded factors of individual and organisational behaviour because Aristotle’s mental affections—the impressions of the soul—the metaphor, could not be taken into account by the empiricist norms and protocols and serve as a credible source of evidence. Hence, it became clear, that, only because the soul was not physical and visible, the exclusively positivist norms would disregard its potential utility. To investigate how and why this is the case, we need to realise how [highly] the soul has been valued in early philosophical tradition, and take advice from the sages of antiquity. Socrates believes that philosophers are innately attracted to the soul and not the body. For the soul’s transformational

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utility in a philosophical discourse, he would call himself the midwife of the soul, i.e. someone who assisted in bringing to life a newly-born self—a newer understanding, and possibly a truer self. Plato recognises a philosopher’s true value as the ability to win the soul through discourse. And for Aristotle, the soul is the “essence” of human intellect and its elusive, but most insightful, cognitive source. Hence, without expanding further on the influence of the soul through the history of philosophy, one may recognise how the metaphor, as the carrier of Aristotle’s mental affections that the soul creates, is simply the basis of all philosophical reasoning—instinctively “the same for the whole of mankind”! Assertions made in the philosophy of antiquity invite us back to the basics of human cognition. And this return must refresh the epistemology and ontology of evidence through the philosophical discourse that takes intuitive sensemaking seriously. Thereupon, we could always review the possibility and methodological sustenance of truths in implicit evidence in light of its hardly claimed relationship with the soul. 1.3. Implicit contextual sense in metaphor I refer to some PhD fieldwork data to demonstrate how metaphor rendered coherent the complex study setting, and made sense of it in a robust manner [Abdullah, 2000a]. Among other methods, I had employed 50 open-ended questionnaires and 50 semi-structured personal interviews, in order to collect data from representatives of healthcare agencies of the governmental and non-governmental sector in Pakistan, as well as international bilateral donor agencies that provided financial and technical support. Several figurative phrases by respondents helped in gleaning a deeper sense of the respondents’ mindsets. Among literal answers to question of why inter-agency collaboration was challenging for them, some responses were metaphorical, such as: “…because of

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the turf, money and ego”! As a set of primary metaphors, this phrase seemed ordinary at that moment. Later, over metaanalysis and data syntheses, its implicit meaning unfolded both in relating to, and in creating, several secondary metaphors. Interestingly, this phrase also (re)interpreted the literal and quantitative data, allowing unique conceptual coherence with regard to methodological utility. I outline some of these data below. The figurative content is italicized while the data context is indicated in brackets: - “It has become a joke for some [donor] colleagues that we [government agencies] are motivated by travel allowances and daily allowances and not by the purpose of our work responsibilities”. - “Strings are attached to funding…donor agencies have their own marketing reasons behind aid…funds go back into their own pockets”. - “We would not involve them [government agencies]… maybe for good reason”. - “Inter-agency conflicts are territorial and [expressed in terms of] territoriality”. - “Ad hocism and patchwork…the government agencies have no choice but to make ad hoc decisions”. - “Better if we [government agencies] do not have any aid, people would be cut down to size”. - “The health sector is a market…they [donor agencies] want consultants and equipment to be bought from their own country…no agency is ready to lose its market [in a shared domain of collaboration]”. - “They [government agencies] buy a lot of frustration and heart-burn for themselves too”. - “[How’s collaboration possible] in government agencies [where] in-fighting is a national sport”.

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- “He [a government agency counterpart] would come and even lick my shoes to get his job done”. - “When there is more money [i.e. funding for inter-agency collaboration]...there is room for corruption”. - “Donor agencies want a clearly-defined area of operation”. - “[For us, the donors] collaboration is only possible with like-minded non-governmental agencies”. - “When there is no urgency [to collaborate], all agencies become egocentric”. - “[Donor] agencies guard their individual identity”. “Turf, money, and ego” helped in [steadily] connecting to the respondents’ mindset and unfolding the complexity of my fieldwork setting. The literal phrases and quantitative data would not comprehend complexity in a manner that was robust and coherent. Even more importantly, this particular phrase appeared to take form through emergent cognitive configurations that could roughly be described as clumps, pivots, and synergy. (i) First, all the above and other fieldwork data could be assembled in the phrase turf, money and ego in terms of three cognitive clumps. These clumps created a unique paradox, allowing ubiquitous inclusivity vis-à-vis exclusivity and distinguishability along inseparability in the phrase, shaping a viable conceptual plane. (ii) Second, the cognitive clumps in turf, money and ego appeared to have become [loosely] connected through randomly emergent cognitive pivots. A viability and flexibility in thought trials and subsequent metaphorical extensions across the emergent pivots created, within transference, the scope for an intuitive embodiment. The pivots shaped and enacted a cognitive convergence vis-

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à-vis divergence, and aligned the core of the conceptual plane in this phrase. (iii) Third, the phrase turf, money and ego is bound to lose its cognitive-linguistic sustenance if the symbolism in “turf”, “money” and “ego” were taken separately, as three mutually exclusive challenges. I describe this as cognitive synergy created through the clumps and pivots. This synergy helped the transference of multidisciplinary views on complexity in the phrase, but also creating the scope of [a] postdisciplinarity in implicit evidence. It dispersed each clump across the conceptual plane and produced contextually deeper, still universal, and experiential, yet intuitively rich (re)interpretations. My conception of the clumps, pivots, and synergy is closer to cognitive science accounts of conceptual blending and conceptual integration [Turner, 1998; Fauconnier and Turner, 2002], “image schemata” [Johnson, 1987], and a “cognitive schema” [Lakoff, 1987; Hampe, 2005]. My study of turf, money, and ego could also be expanded within philosophical norms of “alethic hermeneutics” [Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000] in terms of experiential-intuitive (re)interpretations. I discuss a cognitive interplay of clumps, pivots, and synergy. First, turf normally suggests a bounded area or a field. Other than its “physical” sense, it also extends to ideological, cultural, and institutional domains. Its literal sense is limited, but its implicit cognitive metaphorical extension is not. For instance, cultures have turfs that conservative agencies guard from invasion. Institutional ideologies are territories and not allowed to be trespassed upon. Ideas can be bought and sold in terms of money. Besides, room for corruption extends further both the “turf” and the “money” identities. Second, we conceive of money as a resource holding direct monetary value. It mainly symbolises financial and material

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consumption, but its sphere of extensions equally covers other resources, e.g. technology, personnel, information, and time. Equipment used by an agency is directly convertible to money in as much as information is outsourced or accessed via the satellite, and even an agency’s global goodwill. An accountant can calculate the cost of these resources to the fractions of a penny. In my PhD data, strings, allowances, pockets, markets, and corruption are metaphorical extensions of the “material” values that implicitly correspond the turfs— political-economic, institutional-ethical, and cultural-societal. Third, ego is a human psychical phenomenon that usually manifests itself in behaviour and works as a hindrance to collaboration. Ego unfolds in how agencies maintain or defend their identity turfs within a shared domain, and depicts barriers that are seated deep in “causal” mindsets of individuals representing the “agency”. To suggest that an agency (the government or donor) has a mind of its own, is a metaphorical extension that can identify gaps in self-respect, empowerment and scope for change (or challenges faced) at the individual, institutional, or societal level. Some egoistic explanations unfold in the “we/our” and “they/their” polarised social-cultural and ideological tendencies among agency representatives. Ego is implicitly evident in “reserved” and secured car parking areas, trendy office décor, top-brand office technology, chauffeur-driven luxury vehicles, and even in the persuasive communication skills of donors—but a lack of the same in many government agencies, causing multipleresource dependency on the donors. Here, the government ego appears to reciprocate [a claim] in the “no questions asked, no strings attached” style of a working relationship. In phrases such as “for good reason”, “in-fighting is a national sport”, and “when agencies become egocentric”, the implicit contexts require cross-perspective reinterpretation at multiple levels (the individual, institutional, and societal); and

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even across the history of collaborative working. This is how we could explain an agency in terms of carrying an egoistic identity, or interpret an individual-level corruptive practice to create a bad institutional image with implications on broader societal and foreign policymaking levels. Travel, and daily maintenance allowances hold a monetary value for government staff, but serve as a joke for the donor colleagues, and, as such, as a matter of ego for the former. Equally, some government counterparts perceived donor aid as an implicit political-economic agenda aimed at inducing dependency on donors, and any workplace privileges to be the beginning of corruption among them. For someone to “lick others’ shoes to get a job done” is thinking down upon other identities, i.e. others’ turf—egoistically. In interpreting implicit cognitivesocial-linguistic contexts, one can trace egocentric politicaleconomic-ideological identities of agency representatives to positions that were centrist, with extensions to leftist or rightist positions and extremes. Clearly, a metaphorical sense of respondents’ data could interpret evidence beyond the literal. Plain phrases such as “the government has no choice…”, or “collaboration is possible” or “we would not involve them…” only indicate an agency’s policy direction. These phrases do not convey any emergence or interplay of clumps, pivots, or synergy. 1.4. Beyond the body! Embodied cognition Because mainstream scientific method cannot rationalise an intuitive sense [Flyvbjerg, 2001], any hints in phrases such as, “for good reason”, “egocentric”, and “like-minded”, could hardly serve as credible evidence. Even in typical narrative norms, intuitive evidence does indeed carry the threat of pulling the rug from under the feet of a social researcher. Any effort to rationalise or contextualise what good reasons are, or attempt at assigning such reasons to one’s honesty, civility, or

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the speaker’s sense of sarcasm (among other possibilities), can be seen as a researcher’s interpretational bias. To produce credibility in metaphorical hints, researchers would need to keep filtering (both accepting and rejecting) and allow the implicit intuitive influence to simply evolve. The challenge is that of assigning contextual meanings and normative values to the “here and now” experiences that emerge intuitively. For cognitive linguists the answer is embodied cognition. The discoveries of second-generation cognitive science since the 1980s have made possible sensemaking of physical vs. implicit evidence as embodied cognition. The embodiment thesis offers support in terms of a paradigm shift to studying evidence and a scope for reinterpreting evidential complexity through image schema, cognitive metaphor, and framing [Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff and Turner, 1989; Varela et al, 1991; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Fauconnier and Turner, 2002]. Let us view social research as a large “metaphorisation process”, whereby embodied cognition allows us to carry out all surveys and experiments within the great laboratory of the human mind [Brown, 1991; Varela et al, 1991; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999]. As such, embodied cognition enacts the body and soul (or a physical and implicit sense) of evidence within mutuality, as both essentially belonging to one domain: By using the term embodied we mean to highlight two points: first that cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological and cultural context. [Varela et al, 1991, pp. 172173]

An embodiment of sensorimotor capacities and all contextual experiences assigns emergent and paradoxical [cognitive] values to evidential variables that (within mutuality) are both

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physical and implicit, and experiential as much as they are intuitive. Hence, embodied cognition of the body and soul of evidence leads to a rejection of Cartesian dualism in social researching. Embodied cognition inside the metaphor is quite popular in poetry. It allows metaphor to create an implicit qualitative meaning or to interpret a qualitative response to the empirical here and now, allowing the body to feel and assign metaphorical variables to experiences such as pain, emotional arousal, and humour. In Miall’s [1997] view, “the agent that relates body and mind is feeling …it motivates or even guides processes of thought” (p. 204). Hence, in the gut feeling, gut instinct, gut reaction, and showing gut, we make sense of the world around us through the intestine. We feel through the bones and the knees. We weigh up our emotions with a heavy heart, and cry the heart out. We wish to shift the weight of responsibility and troubles off our shoulders and chest, respectively. When we get too emotional and are about to cry, we get a lump in our throat. Some moments of disgust also turn our stomach, and a little anxiety moves some butterflies into the same stomach. We get cold feet when we are nervous, and in cold blood, lack sensitivity and compassion. We also experience being turned on and off in the event, or a lack, of sexual stimulation. A qualification of these examples as the metaphor-turnevidence within embodied cognition is the foremost challenge to contemporary social research. Hence, in focusing the scope of implicit evidence within embodied body-soul cognition, we must overview the 21st century philosophical-methodological paradoxes and complexities, especially the poststructuralist genres; whereby we find a range of theoretical paradoxes and interpretive ethics to have progressively reduced evidence into something blurred and contentious. Let us see how embodied cognition in metaphor could meet this challenge.

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First, in characterising social research genres and methods with reference to embodied cognition, for what serves qualitative evidence and how we report it, the once welldefined academic boundaries are no longer there or perhaps never existed. Most sociological and anthropological narratives, for instance, have fused into investigative journalism. Whatever the explanations may be—reductionist, deconstructionist, or otherwise, such a “blurring epistemological genre” [Denzin and Lincoln, 2005] defies strictly scientific-empiricist positions on evidence, as well as requiring our research inquiries to move out of customary mechanistic norms on which most genres are built. A blurring epistemology leads on to blurring ontology, and conceivably, an indication of one embodied cognitive domain of evidence. Second, implicit evidence is customarily unapproachable through social scientific standards and mechanistic protocols that are becoming increasingly redundant. Noticeably, since the start of the 21st century, the “uprightly” displayed straw man fallacy has revealed its lifelessness and deception in the main. The scientificness in research thought and practice is not all-pervasive and all-rational: “truth claims are less easily validated now; desire to speak for others [are] suspect” [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005, p. 964]. At the individual and institutional levels (such as finance, development, and public policy), a scientific objectivity is encroached upon by implanted agendas that have always been, and continue to be political. For long-term and strategic purposes, most evidence in data is preempted and spin-doctored, interestingly, at not only policy but also at the tactical and operational levels. If we contest evidence in political or public inquiries or policy research, we usually find individuals and institutions there to hide evidence in the data by making it inaccessible to us; or hide behind the evidence they make up, to conceal their stakes of the turf, money, and ego—in the name of scientificness.

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Third, embodied cognition allows the cause, the agent, and the criteria for examining evidence to be within a single domain. In recent times, because evidence also appears in “whistle-blowing”, “leaks”, “cables”, and “morphed images”, distrusting the source, the agent, and the credibility criteria of evidence is quite understandable. With huge expansions in cyberspace, information gadgetry, and the news and social media, we find nearly half the world’s inhabitants to have been interpreting evidence in the news in their own distinct manner—typically metaphorical! Though the leaks and the blogs claim to uncover the truth, we must take such accounts with a pinch of salt. In effect, such notions serve only raw data propped up in front of us—the played up news headlines, partial-news breaking tickers, and infrequently tampered-with media footage. Rather than some evidential support, we find renewed versions of complexity, uncertainty, and deception, in evidence sources, our respondents, and even [within] our own interpretive selves. Evidence becomes not only blurred and unapproachable, but also embarrassing. In our search for the realities and the truths, we seek support from fact-finding inquiries or commissions that again, in the name of credibility and objectivity, must follow the [same] scientific criteria! Fourth, embodied cognition rejects a split between researchers’ sensorimotor capacities and his or her recurrent social-cultural context under study. A disembodied effort to seek evidence is likely to yield something provisory or partial. While body language and emotional responses such as an utterance, a grin, a shrug of the shoulders, or a wink of the eye, are recognised as a crucial support to cognitive metaphor [Kovecses, 2002; Gibbs and Wilson, 2002; Cienki and Muller, 2008], all implicit hints produced therein—in favour of, or against documented evidence, are embodied cognition. Lakoff and Johnson [1999] claim the cognitive metaphorical display in human gestures, art or rituals, to follow embodied

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instincts. With or without verbal support, the body language both in humans and in animals produces helpful implicit evidence, which is embodied, especially the look in their eyes. 1.5. Revisiting evidence: Logos, Pathos, Ethos With a view to revisiting the theoretical-methodological grounds and potential of embodied cognition and cognitive metaphor vis-à-vis the scope of credible evidence, I build upon Aristotle's celebrated tradition of the Logos, Pathos, and Ethos, as three possible positions: 1. Philosophical position: This position explains the human capacity for rationalising implicit evidence and its inherent complexities in terms of “empirically responsible philosophy” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999]; and human reasoning as a case of [embodied] intellectual compulsion and not of choice: Reason is not completely conscious, but mostly unconscious …not purely literal but largely metaphorical and imaginative …not dispassionate, but emotionally engaged…not only our capacity for logical inference, but also our ability to conduct inquiry, to solve problems, to evaluate, to criticize, to deliberate about how we should act and reach an understanding of ourselves. [p. 11]

Cognitive science may explain the scope of implicit evidence with regard to recognition of the unconscious in metaphor. Embodied cognition induces philosophy to take up Plato’s challenge of making claim to a truer intellect by winning the soul through the metaphor. In this regard, among others, Lakoff and Johnson [1999] seem convinced that most explanations to our philosophical challenges “have always been, and will always be, metaphorical” (p. 12). However, in favour of cognitive metaphor theory and embodied cognition,

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they put aside the poetic and rhetorical utility of metaphor as “the traditional theory of metaphor” (p. 119). A sizeable piece of literature on cognitive metaphor that followed Metaphors We Live By [Lakoff and Johnson, 1980] has paved the way for embodiment philosophy to serve as an intellectual norm for revisiting the epistemology and ontology of evidence. Hence our efforts to “win the soul” could be rewarding only if we were able to interpret metaphorical evidence in our research data. Rather than letting empiricist protocols speak for the data, we must rise to the [odd] occasion and get closer to the implicit contexts, take [embodied] ownership of its abstractions and develop capacities to think with our heart— the ethical heart, and feel with our mind—the intuitive mind. Thereon, we could always interpret the data in a language of its own that the data speaks, instinctively and universally— the metaphor. What is more, in order to make out what the data speaks for, through the implicit context, i.e. the soul. To be able to unfold a deeper sense in the metaphorical hints, social researchers need not be divine powers. They merely need be inspired listeners—embodied listeners. Only then could we empower our intuitive intellect (that Polanyi calls personal) to attend to and embody all metaphorical goings on around us as essential cognitive resources and exclusive standards of responsible social research. Once headed in this direction, it is important that we do not divide ourselves as social researchers across intellectual turfs or boundaries of scholarly traditions and disciplines; even over the limits of our individual times and spaces. Here, we must also make embodied sense of an intuitive world inside of us, as much as of the physical world outside of us. 2. Methodological-contextual position: This position brings us [back] to my PhD research challenges and my supervisors’ warnings, mentioned earlier. First, we encounter

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the challenge of figuring out whether the intuitive evidence in the metaphor could speak for the data, so rendering the data credible outside the mechanistic protocols. Second, explaining how the notion of embodied cognition of the research context could offer a viable methodological-contextual support—the rug under our feet, towards the scope of qualitative inquiry. In the case of the first, since the 1980s we notice fair recognition of intuitive sensemaking of metaphor, mostly in ethnographic research. However, this sense reflects an open sociological and anthropological narrative—the poetical or traditional theory of metaphor. In social and organisational analysis, since Morgan [1983] in particular, some emphasis on discourse and conversation in social research proves as yet insufficient in qualifying research within embodied cognitivemethodological utility. Morgan’s later work on metaphorical analyses of organisation and the individual, in relation to the institutional mindset [1986; 1993] is [only] a perceptive deconstructionist schema with which to analyse organisational boundaries and levels of complexity. Similarly, Symbolic Interactionism [Blumer, 1969; Denzin, 1992; among others] and semiotics [Chandler, 2002] that help negotiate complexity analysis in symbols and metaphors are all-sociological and unobtrusive, respectively. A Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM) approach initially explains a utility of “operationalising metaphor” in context-specific applied linguistic research [Cameron and Low, 1999] that expands to the use of metaphor for research and analysis in the real world [Low et al, 2010; Cameron and Maslen, 2010]. Here, the real world is explained as the “site” of a social interaction and contextual emphasis within which metaphor is studied, aided by corpus linguistics and computer software-based methods. That is how a perceptual divergence and convergence of mainstream complexity is created from a broader Symbolic Interactionist plane to a narrower RaAM

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plane, back and forth, [presumably] within a disembodied sense. What are the intuitive time-space frames of the real world context; what qualifies as experiential a priori evidence and what happens beyond real world realism, remains open? Moreover, only recently have we realised the need to study evidence beyond the classically legal-mechanistic protocols and inside narratives that are multidisciplinary and integrative [Anderson et al, 2005; Twining, 2006]. However, the classic evidence continues to rely upon methodologies that follow the physical and legal parameters, and what is called “actionable” evidence—a political narrative used to justify intelligence and military operations. In this regard, the Lifting the Lid on the Workings of Power [Runciman, 2005] serves as a study of evidential complexity, both implicit and actionable. It mentions the Hutton and Butler inquiries, and appears to induce an embodied cognition of implicit vs. legal evidence alongside political spin-offs and how they were handled by state intelligence. It specifically points to the role of electronic and press media, and the judiciary in the UK during Prime Minister Tony Blair’s era of evidential complexity. Whether intuitive or experiential, the choice of the phrase “lifting the lid” is an enactment of metaphor: what is likely to be some cooked up evidence either covered (hidden) or covered-up (unapproachable) by the state agencies, in the name of national/strategic interests. Sayer’s [1992] surrealist perspective allows for an examination of any political covers and cover-ups when a hidden reality corresponds to a manifest reality, whilst the former is given more importance. His view explains how social research could possibly study cover-ups on power plays through intuitive evidence: “images and metaphors worthy of systematic study” (ibid. p. 5). Here, we may also say that embodied cognition is likely to rationalise implicit evidence shaped in figurative-styled sensemaking. Denzin and Lincoln [2005: final part] highlight an exclusivity

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of figurative norms to justify and systematise the qualitative method to speak for evidence in the research data. Eventually, embodied cognition of implicit evidential contexts must, at some point, enable us to revisit and reprove the conventional “disability” in not speaking for the data. If intuitive evidence creates contentions in the positivist circles, it also takes us to a worthwhile course of poststructural, and even postdisciplinary, inquiry; towards a revaluation, rather than devaluation of our methodological norms. Evidence may then belong not to a specific philosophy, discipline, or social theory, but be contested within and outside of these, and even on the very boundaries that sanctify them. Hence, embodied cognition may only “interpret” (rather than collect) evidence, across metaphorical insights that were multiple, experiential, and cross-disciplinary, whereby the very rug to be pulled out from under the feet of the researcher may not even exist! 3. Ethical-intuitional position: This position basically builds on human virtue and ethics, and claims a researcher’s resolve to be essentially moral and apolitical, serving as a conceivably hidden moderating variable in mainstream social research. Embodied cognition may allow [metaphorical] reframing and a reexamination—of what is moral vs. what is political, as in the lifting the lid sense just discussed. As such, owing to the ethical responsibilities of social research as a normative position, we could examine what Denzin and Lincoln [2005] call the “moments”—the evolutionary stages of qualitative research, particularly in the 21st century—that is the Seventh, Eighth, and the Ninth moments. The Seventh Moment (2000 to 2004), which lingers in many societies, could be described as a challenging phase for what qualifies as evidence. This moment establishes positivist methods and empirical evidence-based practices as a hostile reaction to recognition and growth of critical and indigenous

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qualitative inquiry. The Eighth Moment (2005 to present) allows the qualitative norms to negotiate with the empiricist opposition by building on ethical and human values, connecting the scope of social research with social values. Denzin and Lincoln [2005] describe this era as “a politically charged space…a dynamic, complex, confusing, and contradictory context for qualitative social research” (p. 20). Interestingly, in this era, even the notion of validity is no longer a matter of research design but an issue concerned with the researcher’s ethical responsibility [Koro-Ljungberg, 2010]. This confusing scenario continues to define “the present” through which we live until the Ninth Moment (2010 to present), also called “the fractured future” [Denzin and Lincoln, 2005]. But in my analysis, this fracture (or possibly, a prolapse) has resulted out of a tension—an awkward moral “insightlessness” to depoliticise [the] scientific evidence visà-vis methodological disabilities to reinterpret the very scientificness. A prognosis constitutes of the 21st century evidential fallacies, whether in a prolapse or a fracture. This position is also supported in the reemergence of ethical intuitionism [Audi, 2004; Huemer, 2005] which builds on impartiality and social justice. Here, there opens up a responsible and resilient role for social research to unfold implicit evidence in embodied cognition of a sense of morality as our intuitive regulator. For arguments of The Good in the Right [Audi, 2004], anything appearing as “good” (or bad) remains, paradoxical, incidental, and a personal experience, whilst what is “right” may also be paradoxical but emergent, coincidental, and [intuitively] objective. Hence, towards the scope of implicit evidence, intuitive clues may serve as a priori “rights” that could be reexamined within the norms of metaphorical reasoning and embodied cognition. Could embodied cognition in the metaphor knit together social research within ethical-intuitive reasoning? Could the

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embodiment philosophy revisit the epistemology and ontology of evidence alongside responsible social research, and so diagnose any moral blindness among us? I bring these questions up within the scope of renewed methodological norms for interpreting implicit metaphorical evidence that we indeed live and unlive by in the 21st century, whether consciously or unconsciously. Thereafter, we must reexamine the normative ailments of social research, such as the verdict of a fractured or prolapsed future along with insightful and relevant metaphorical indicators of social theory.

CHAPTER TWO A HERMENEUTIC VACUUM: SCOPE FOR IMPLICIT EVIDENCE

…The cure of mankind is beset with the errors of certain doctors who practice to attempt the one method without the other…So you should not treat body without the soul. [Plato, Charmides, 1955:157; Trans. Lamb, WRM]

2.1. Mainstream incapacities: Some thinking aloud Our empiricist toolbox does not have sufficient capacity to rationalise and comprehend the implicit data contexts that are seated deep in the human psyche. As dedicated [empirical] researchers, we often find ourselves trying to make precisioncuts in diamonds by use of a kitchen knife, or catching a whale with an ordinary fishing rod. We embarrass ourselves by deeming a hardbound research dissertation or a gloss-filed inquiry report to be most effectual. Yet in practical terms, our findings are shallow, and our evidence always incomplete. Our incapacity in probing and comprehending evidential complexity leads to methodological incapacities. I overview some of these based on my PhD research experience: 1. Incapacity to assign implicit contexts: When we put our projected research plans, questions, and ideals into practice, they become compromises: (i) logistical, (ii) methodological, and (iii) intellectual. A logistical compromise is usually made in a research proposal vs. real-time and rationalised choices; fieldwork itinerary

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vs. a tactical reschedule; budget sources and spending limits vs. actual spending and operating adjustments. A methodological compromise is made in deciding the size and scope of the literature review, sampling/nonsampling choices, preempted errors, marginal scales of measurement, levels of statistical confidence, limits of staying within hypothesised variables and results. An intellectual compromise is induced within involuntary and inevitable time-space contextual limitations that produce relativism in all findings. For the sake of our assumptions and compromises, we eventually give up the quality of our findings. We customarily call such compromises our research limitations, and expect our examiners or reviewers to understand and accept them. As a consequence, what we consider to be a logistical matter is actually a methodological limit, and what we recognize as methodological is essentially intellectual. But we simply live [researching] by these compromises. For the matter of determining whether a compromise is intellectual or methodological, our research toolbox lacks the means of making a cognitive distinction. For randomly evolved metaphorical data access pointers, such as: the “dead end”, a “U-turn”, “trespassing prohibited”, or data quality indicators such as: the untold “story”, “restricted” access, or media “eyewash”, we leave implicit data contexts partially defined, or undefined. We need to develop capacities with which to accredit these contexts as cognitive categories of evidence quality and levels of access. Is there not a clear incapacity for practicable research norms that rigorously identify the scope of intellectual vs. methodological compromises? Can the embodied cognition of metaphor interpret data access levels and

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quality indicators: where the “dead end” is; when a “Uturn” has to be taken; and why “trespassing” is prohibited in our inquiries, as much as the truth-values in “the untold story” and media “eyewash”? 2. Incapacity to determine implicit contexts: Exclusive protocols of a specifically tactful method, such as “observation” and the “unstructured interview”, do not decide the source of evidence in data. While letting the data speak, the data is bound to identify a self of its own that may be in conflict with the mindset which we do not let it speak, such as the respondent’s self. Where does any data [self] originally belong prior to becoming our evidence? Could we interpret that and call it a credible source? Would that data actually belong to the researcher’s [interpretative] self and within a possible contestation with the respondent’s [interpretative] self or the setting, or is it that [most] evidence remains implicit in the data self? In personal interviews, a researcher is likely to follow data beyond the respondent’s verbal reports. However, after lengthy audio-taped interviews, we leave our analyses mostly to transcriptions. Should we consider any parallel sensemaking inside unwarranted data sources, such as respondents’ spin-off or deceptive body language, the researchers’ gut feeling, or a handy [hearsay] opinion from someone else? While studying implicit contexts, could we reflect on emergent insights of the researcher, his/her respondent(s), and the research setting as an embodied cognitive domain? 3. Incapacity to validate implicit contexts: We can hardly delimit evidential complexity. We cannot avoid overhearing parallel “inside stories” that offer insights

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to vested interests behind any reform agenda because these insights were unreportable. Other than being naïve about interpretations (as mentioned earlier), must we also remain passive to the “cherry-picking” charms of respondents, expecting them to reveal in a telephone interview or a postal questionnaire all “power plays” and intrigues behind the scenes, by themselves? Indubitably, for this purpose, we would need some methodological gadgets to allow us to remain “switched on”, and attend to implicit cues that emerge randomly and instinctively, across wider ranges of times and spaces, and over events such as an informal discussion with a respondent’s chauffer. The ethnographic methodological norms for reporting intuitive data are perceptive, but come with their own weaknesses—restricted formal access, a thin domain, a smaller scope for generalisation, and frequent concerns about a researcher’s objectivity. In response to such concerns, one of my supervisors had advised me (again, in the spirit of “letting the data speak”) that I could always make a note of emergent intuitive cues, and report the time, place and context of emergence in the data references. I followed the advice, as it was possible for some events; however, I wondered how to index randomly evolving intuitive cues that created or removed cognitive links, flashing back and forth, on and off, when having a shower, or undergoing a long and painful dental treatment. While Archimedes’ legacy of the Eureka is unique in terms of a scientific discovery, I find [conscientious] social researchers to live out the Eureka moment at all times—even a lifetime. Is it not the case that our intuitive sense follows a cognitive metaphorical demarcation such as a “need-toknow” and “first-name” basis for key data contacts, and

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“insiders”, “gatekeepers”, and “whistle-blowers” as identities of key data sources? Does it not stand that a metaphorical sense of evidence is hidden in cognitive paradox: “half-truths”, “true lies”, “naked truths”, and “open secrets”, or abstractions like “morphed” images, “cooked-up” stories, and “leaked” footage? Is not such [definitional] sense typically metaphorical? Should we identify such data as half-truths that are helpful, but provisory and incomplete? The process would entail a deferral of conclusive judgments to some point of disclosure, leak, or any unsolicited weblogs, so postponing our complete sense of evidence to respondents’ cathartic end-of-life or even posthumous memoirs. Regarding data sources, levels of access, or unique patterns of unwarranted emergence, is it not the case that social research practice is both prescribed and personal, and for that reason, embodied cognition? 4. Incapacity to conclude upon implicit contexts: This incapacity raises the question of inconclusiveness in data findings and reporting. At which point do we latch up our research toolbox and zip up our evidence, confirming our data-driven conclusions to be factual and final—and consider the “big [data] picture” to be complete? Is that point to be found only at the end of fieldwork findings, on submission of dissertations (or the survey and inquiry reports), final comments by our research supervisors, or approval by a committee? Or perhaps we confirm our data-driven conclusions to be factual and final when degrees are awarded, when the findings are published and shelved in libraries, and the verdicts find their way to the policymakers’ tables? Is there any further valuation of these as the facts? (This relates to concern 1 above). Basically, our contextual

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insights continue shaping up and enhancing implicit evidence further, rendering our conclusions [partly] inconclusive. If our gut feeling or intuition cannot qualify as credible evidence, then conversation and participant observation have their own problems as relativist and insufficient inferences. How big is the “big [data] picture”? Would it ever be complete? Could we ever conclude our findings in view of all the relativist and subjective compromises over our times and spaces—within our own selves, our respondents, and other researchers to whom we refer, or in the complexity of a setting that we study? Could we call inconclusive yet evolving cognitive cues in a sense, embodied, and qualify that as a credible parallel source of evidence? It seems that a provisory sense can be expressed better through the metaphor and embodied cognition, within essentially evolving time-space and experiential-intuitive contexts. The questions and concerns I raise have challenged social and organisational research throughout history. I find sympathy for these in ethnographic reflexivity and even chaos theory, and some justifications in symbolic interactionism and there is nothing out of context [deconstructionist] worldview [Derrida, 1976]. Equally the “all is data” argument of the “grounded theory” [Glaser and Strauss, 1967] is relatable. George Herbert Mead’s view on the human self, the mind and society as overlapping entities [extended by Blumer, 1969 and others] explains a researcher’s symbolic interaction with the unique setting around her or him, allowing for learning through the entire course of a research inquiry. A researcher’s view becomes unique only for his or her contextual insights and personal experiences which are drawn out from exposure to his or her world. For Derrida [1976], the context is a realist

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sensemaking of world history in its entirety, for which reason, any symbolic interaction does make the interpretative process convenient across intellectual times and spaces—but how long and how wide, is still open to question. Symbolic Interactionism is closer to my argument of making sense of implicit contexts through the metaphor with the difference that metaphor creates an intuitive, embodied, and coherent image, that minimally converges on our world of interactions, and not a sense that is divergent and largely sociological. 2.2. Implicit evidence inside the Variable My questions and concerns certainly add to Blumer’s [1956] sensitivity for the “variable” from a wider sociological position: “there is a conspicuous absence of rules, guides, limitations, and prohibitions to govern the choice of variables” (p. 683). What we consider a generic variable, such as the “attitude”, “authority”, and even “age” is actually not generic; it is our [disparate] worldview—how we interpret our social-historical norms, an abstract cultural-organisational ruling, and a linear value of time, respectively. Thus we end up in [living by] variables that are not generic, i.e. restricted to a genre, class, or category, but the opposite—disparate, and not helpful in comprehending evidential complexity. Most of my concerns point to our misplaced assumptions about the generic variables, because “the question of how the act of interpretation can be given the qualitative constancy that is logically required in a variable has so far not been answered” (p. 688). In this regard, a disparity in the variable may also be explained by cognitive-memetic1 transference of 1

Memes are basically [cultural] metaphors that, in some way, perhaps hermeneutically, may also explain the scope of embodied “cultural” cognition. In terms of metaphorical analysis as an intuitive-experiential cognitive skill, the “variable” may be defined as the degree of cultural transference (or learning variability) from one individual’s cognitive

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[cultural] evidence in the data. For instance, anecdotes, songs, clichés, and the body language that cognitively reinterpret (whether by imitating or replicating) implicit evidence, cutting across the [underlying] social-cultural and multiperspectival variability. In this way, embodied cognition in metaphor provides an ontological indemnity to the scope of cultural transference in memetics. However, I emphasise here the value of a cognitive, rather than cultural, transference. Hence, the rules and guides that govern our norms for variable analyses are likely to be hidden in the cognitive ethos that embodies a researcher, the research setting, and his or her institution. I explain this point with the help of some common research variables that we generalise as generic: 1. Age: It is mostly described as personal, chronological and numerical, whilst it equally depicts a sense of social-psychological and physical wellbeing. Among Arabs, the Japanese, and some traditional tribes, age is measured differently. Japanese traditions count age from the point of a baby’s conception rather than that of delivery. A person aged 60 years according to the solar year, is actually 62 years old on the lunar scale practiced in the Arab world. Concerning old age, some terms such as “senior”, “grey”, “elderly”, and “young at heart” are disparate variables. 2. Gender: Traditional research surveys allow only two formal options, yet an acceptance for additional categories is on the rise, depending on the views and definitions of sexuality and orientation that can be capacities to another. Importantly, embodied cognition can resolve the internalists (the “i-memes”) vs. the externalists (the “e-memes”) debate among the memeticists. For overviews and critiques on memes, readers may refer, among others, to Aunger [2010] and Midgley [2010].

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personal, societal, or embodied. This variable remains disparately implicit, emergent, and paradoxical, as some people discover or orientate [the] “realities” of their sense of sexuality only at an advanced age. 3. Nationality: The notions of citizenship and ethnicity usually overlap with the “national identity”, and make the latter abstract and multi-perspectival. We notice in cases of citizenship, race, and ethnicity a hyphenated or unhyphenated status. Questions are also raised about “origins” (aborigines!), and the “migrant”, “alien”, and “ethnic” vs. “naturalized” or “native” identities in view of a “given”, “claimed”, or a “dual” nationality with regard to disparities in what identity comes first. Ethnicity is a blurred contextual mutuality of human colour, racial, and linguistic lineage. In the 21st century reemergence of cultural conservativism and racial nationalism that decharacterise the pluralist societies, the generic rules of empiricism can hardly decide the implicitly conflicting [disparate] identities. 4. Level of education: Formal and informal education, literacy, and lifelong learning are all different things. The “level” of formal education that we generically follow in social research is controversial considering the wide variety of indigenous learning systems and cultures, employability, technical skill, professional attitude, workplace-based training, ethical behaviour, the civic sense, and moral values. 5. Marital status: This variable usually holds four or five apparently generic options, including an official or legal status. Arguably, one would come across a range of [marital] relationship markers in different societies,

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indicating, among others, the “forced”, and “unhappy” marriages. For instance, there is an issue in some socialcultural value systems whereby a seemingly consensual sexual activity is viewed by involuntary spouses (mostly wives) as “marital rape”. 6. Address: Like nationality, this variable is usually a reference to one’s domicile or place of residence, street or postal address. Google Earth serves as an index thereof. Other than its celestial, geographic, and cyberspace images, the Earth expands the intellectual domains of humanity, humankind, universe, and the world. Some deep thinking lets us belong to the worlds “inside” and “outside” of ourselves. The notion of the world and the globe is only metaphorical, e.g. “the world over”, “the end of the world” and “out of this world”. Likewise, we have “globalisation” as in to “think globally, and act locally”. One would even find a generic search for a “home address” to be an amusing task, because the disparate values are also hidden inside the “home” vs. the “house” variability, such as “a homecoming”, and “home is where the heart is”. 7. Religion: Towards a need for empirical evidence, this variable has been turning into a mainstream culturalsociological paradox. The generic valuing of religion is waning; only disparate practices in multiple forms and traditions are common. As such, a realist value is implicit inside the “belief” systems, “faith”, “spiritual” practice, and symbolic splits in religious orthodoxy and unorthodoxy: embodied practice vs. disembodied nonpractice, the “vegetarian” vs. the “vegans”, and a range of other symbolic [normative] interpretations.

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Six decades past Blumer’s warning [1956], variable analysis in social research has become even more demanding. Variable’s influence in post-deconstructionist era is beyond a sense of the sociological and cultural transference, and more relevant to paradoxical interpretation by cognitive metaphor. Variability within the variable keeps signifying the implicit evidence in metaphor. Notwithstanding the rise of 21st century political-ethical relativism, we persist in research that exaggerates and oversimplifies, and hence, remains provisory and deficient [Koro-Ljungberg, 2010; Denzin, 2013]. 2.3. Methodological vs. intellectual survival Implicit evidence in double-talk and eyewash is indeed ubiquitous and too complex to unfold and report, but these shortfalls must not induce surrender to empiricist protocols. Whether my concerns are epistemological or ontological, hermeneutic or ethical-intuitive, their impact virtually defines the quality of inputs and outputs at all stages of our research inquiries. Indeed, empiricism makes its methodological sense wherever it is relevant; however, when and where evidence in the data is complex or unapproachable, we must not give up in easy compromises. At the least, we must examine whether our compromises are learned or unlearned, and whether they result from incapacities that were logistical, methodological, or intellectual. We also need to defend our positions in terms of explaining how and why social research could distinguish a methodological survival from an intellectual survival. Importantly, the scenario resulting from our [implicit] evidential incapacities, variable disparity, and interpretative inadequacy in particular, points to presence of a hermeneutic vacuum in social research practice. This vacuum is not created of methodological relativism, but wrongly attributed to it. It depicts an evidential unrepresentativeness, i.e. a clear limitation in our evidence and not the limiting factors of our

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research process that we readily accept as relativism. We must not confuse methodological relativism (that results from methodological compromises) with intellectual relativism (a consequence of intellectual compromises). Rather, we ought to ascribe a time-space [contextualised] hermeneutic vacuum within these to be filled up by implicit evidence that we take up discovering. As researchers and as laypeople, we actually fill in the vacuum with an intuitive proxy of metaphor through the process of human imagination; first, in making sense of, and second, in filling up the implicit data contexts of our disparate variables. In this way, how we make sense of, and fill, the vacuum, our cognitions are so ordinary and ubiquitous that we hardly feel ourselves as going through them. As I discuss in chapter one, embodied cognition [Varela et al, 1991] could offer a plausibility of how we make sense of this vacuum within the scope of embodied realism [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999] explaining how we may fill the vacuum. This view revives the hard questions of our intellectual lives: Is there anything such as a/the “truth[s]”? What are its misnomers and types/categories or levels that we seek or experience through the process of social research?

An answer to these questions [instinctively] defines the scope of our survival—intellectual and methodological. Irrespective of the quality of our research findings, we find our intellect to survive incessantly. In comparison to this, methodological relativism reduces our research findings to be the “best” or the “finished” only across our limited time-space contexts, but simultaneously, sets [new] directions towards our intellectual survival. With reference to my PhD story in chapter one, my sense of the world through the maxim turf, money and ego is never over. It continues to unfold and build upon the never-ending intellectual stimuli that are implicit in the metaphor. A methodological survival owes to a [PhD

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research] time-space compromise. An intellectual survival does not. As there is no final word to “turf, money, and ego”, there is no end to its emergent contexts, and subsequently, cognitive-memetic transference. All contextually consistent extensions are welcome—ad infinitum. This is how I distinguish between a methodological and an intellectual survival. The former is learned, realist and phenomenological, and built on incapacities that lead to a series of compromises over the course of research which I explain as methodological. The latter is unlearned and built on the same incapacities, but creates an intuitive sense of implicit contexts evolved across, over, and beyond the intellectual course of the same research practice which we cannot claim as [phenomenological or realist] evidence. I now discuss the above questions and examine the truths of implicit evidence inside the scope of methodological vis-àvis intellectual survival. Hereupon, through to the rest of this book, I differentiate between [one] “truth” that is in a singular phrase; [multiple] “truths”, which is in a plural phrase; and [embodied] “truth[s]”, or truths-within-truths that I connote as embodied cognition of truths. Moving further, I consider Mead’s triad of the self, mind, and society, to shape embodied cognition—a departure from apparently distinct identities of the researcher, the object or respondent, and research setting. In this case, the philosophies of John Dewey and Merleau-Ponty also claim the researcher and respondent as embodied and not independent—a [clear] departure from disciplinary norms and viewpoints. For our intellectual survival we only follow emergent metaphors and symbols, and engage in these to reason, imagine, and interpret contextual goings on around us. Over the entire course of our intellectual history, only metaphorical reasoning would help us sustain complexity across all knowledge domains. Many technical and experimental discoveries and expansions, both

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in the physical and social sciences, have resulted mainly from metaphorical reasoning [Brown, 2003]. It is quite interesting to notice how we intuitively follow metaphor and embodied cognition in research practice, such as the choice of methods. We frequently exchange tools and instruments from our research toolbox with methods. As a metaphor the toolbox creates a cognitive viability in collection and analysis of data that may not be the same in our choice of the “method”. By selecting or extending a metaphor, we create and recreate viable cognitions in our methods, such as “triangulation” or “crystallisation”. We create a universal consistency in our methods by calling them longitudinal studies, action research, and focus group, and illustrative notions such as hermeneutic circle, reflex arc, and cognitive space. In these examples, we cross over one or more [academic] image fields—physics, geometry, and cosmology. A change of metaphor means substituting the method and altering the [entire] approach to data collection and analysis. In fieldwork methods, such as the case study and participant observation, we insist upon our study participants interpreting and sharing a setting or a situation by imagining what may not otherwise be easily described. We bring in cross-perspective empathy, openness, and diversity by asking respondents and even allowing ourselves to change positions—getting into others’ shoes or wear different hats. A consistent metaphor helps embodying the researcher, the respondent, and the setting. 2.4. Embodied cognition across time-space Within a broader phenomenological-hermeneutic claim we may say that embodied cognition (re)enacts symbols and metaphors from our past experiences, influences our choices in the present, and helps us evolve directions for the future. Because human memory serves as a sub-level of imagination [Warnock, 1994], it is likely that we make better [embodied]

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sense of implicit data contexts by relating to, and interpreting, past events and experiences and assess the present goings on and the future scenarios. Several media reports on personal disclosures reveal how embodied cognition of implicit data contexts help victims of childhood abuse or rape, for instance, to flashback and make sense of their past trauma in a more mature way. Because of emotional sensitivities, such experiences are usually hidden in a victim’s memory; in the open, however, victims’ sense of awareness is displayed unreservedly, from empathetic care to legislative reforms for abuse control, stigma management of victims, vigilant parenting, and “speaking out” role modeling for all. The victims’ image of unfamiliar or uninvited abusive acts is mostly stored in figurative phrases stuck to victims’ memories, described by their offenders, such as: “our little secret”, “a prank”, “disciplining”, or “something normal”. Such images are reinterpreted as an abuse through embodied cognition. Such phrases create self-awareness (usually called triggering) of abusive acts only at a mature age. Other than flashback recalls, when a case of childhood sexual abuse is disclosed in the media, it is likely that “one may re-categorize and remember his own childhood traumatic experiences” [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005, p. 961]. In the trials of celebrities reported in 2014-2015, I detected an [implicit] evidential value of the metaphor. The victims’ experientialintuitive sense of the offensive acts created an edge over the forensic and legal influence of the hard evidence, such as the victims’ age, consent, and degree of alleged offense. Equally, conservationists appear quite successful in their claims for bio-diversity ahead of a climatic catastrophe. In the 1970s, the initial warning about environmental pollution must have been drawn from scientific data. This data put literally would not create the sense of alarm that a metaphor did, such as: a ticking Time Bomb, a hole in the ozone layer, or ozone

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layer depletion. The metaphor sought to place the earth’s future within a multidisciplinary domain, taking over from solely ecological [scientific] concerns. The implicit evidence is stretched over images of the earth: Green, the Blue Marble, and Fragile: Handle with Prayer! The cognitive transference produced a wide range of conceptions, viewpoints and shades: the greenhouse effect to Greenpeace as well as its “light green” and “dark green” political reflections. In this regard, rather than being trapped by the hermeneutic circle or a reductionist debate, embodied cognition prevailed over these. We also come across intuitive reasoning and imagination employed to interpret symbols within cognitive transference. Imagination has been quite popular in epic fiction and nonfiction literature, the creative arts, and intelligently scripted movies. In the novel The Da Vinci Code (2003) we find a pseudo-academic effort to interpret codes as hidden barriers, and their subsequent removal as existence of evidence. In movies such as Brotherhood of the Rose (1989) and The Day of the Jackal (1973), we notice the employment of human imagination towards effective surveillance. Here, embodied cognition helps create proxy evidence to facilitate the course of tracking across time and space. In The Matrix (1999) and its sequels, there is a symbolic enactment of [real-life] global power-play positions scripted in the lead characters. Symbolic interactionism is also found in the movie Slumdog Millionaire (2008), when the lead character, a streetwise boy competing on a TV quiz show, revisits his past experiences as flashbacks to figure out the answers. In this regard, some disturbing events in his memory serve as symbols that he decodes, such as his familiarity with Benjamin Franklin as an image on the US$100 currency note, and knowledge of inventor Samuel “Colt” symbolised in a carving on the revolver. Embodied cognition also creates sensitivity to culturalpolitical interpretations of complexity, often embarrassing the

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individual or institution which becomes the victim of an insulting metaphor. This could be a reason why public figures are troubled by the media’s choice of explicit metaphors to discredit them. Such choices tempt them to react offensively or defensively. Either reaction leaves little margin for diplomatic engagements through words and spin-offs, or even body language. One example is the choice of “Deep Throat” to symbolise a hidden information source that produced a media hype vis-à-vis a public upheaval in the Watergate Scandal (1971-74). The media picked this metaphor from the title of a controversial X-rated movie released around the same time. Defeating several other accounts of the same scandal, the Deep Throat symbolism penetrated deeper into the US society in the early 1970s, and eventually led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. The metaphorical legacy created in this choice stays in the world of media, among others, in the documentary Inside Deep Throat (2005). There are many more examples of political, financial, and sex scandals whereby the metaphor releases imagination as a means to embody exploitative ends. Whether this cognitive means-to-ends justification is rational or not, ethical or unethical, the metaphor shows no mercy or intellectual relegation. Hence, it contributes to bringing Nixon’s political career to an end, and serves the means for an intellectual journey of the suffix gate (from Watergate) as a threatening perception of media reporting of political scandals. Further, embodied cognition in metaphor allows a study of implicit data contexts through explanations such as Gestalt psychology or holism, alethic hermeneutic insight, cognitive memetics, and symbolic-experiential syntheses. We often find skilled academicians not to have read every word from the text they put in their list of references. This is accepted as an academic norm. However, such norms must follow Polanyi’s

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[1958] concerns for “responsible reflexivity” and “intellectual commitment”. I discuss this plausibility with two examples. First, during my PhD fieldwork, I noticed an experienced respondent taking just a few minutes to skim through a healthcare project evaluation report and call it “intellectual prostitution”. A point was being made—blunt but intuitive! Whether he was right or wrong, why did he pick this specific phrase? Why would he not simply call the report incomplete, incorrect, or absurd? This example implies that we often do not take sufficient measures in examining textual data by word-by-word analysis, but let our experience browse that data through a compelling metaphor embodying the means-toends justification. This metaphor implies that the healthcare project evaluation report in question reflects on an improper [intellectual] “business” activity, which, as a cognitive model, follows its customary logic, such as the demand and supply. Second, we have a case of the late British foreign secretary Robin Cook’s response to the 1996 Scott Report. He claimed to have only two hours to read its 2000 pages (16 pages per minute!) before his speech on the report that both the Houses of the parliament would later recognise as one of Cook’s best performances. His speech carried symbolism as he delivered messages between the lines and through body language. He would not have received a historic standing ovation for rhetoric that was political speculation or emotively irrational. The recognition he received was also symbolic and reflexive. Did Cook read every word of the report—the hard-data evidence, or did he allow embodied [re]cognition of the report through its implicit context—for Derrida’s standards, the world real history in its entirety? In both the cases, did the readers develop an intuitive and embodied sense of implicit evidence? Were these the cases of an intellectual or a methodological survival? Similarly, the patterns I discuss earlier explain embodied cognition across

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our past, present, and the future, and help explain and fill up the hermeneutic vacuum vis-à-vis scope of implicit evidence. These patterns even assign some metaphorical truth-values to the evidence in question, which I now discuss. 2.5. Embodied truth[s] and Gadamer’s flickering Embodied cognition of metaphor and imagination allows us to reason across emergent times and spaces. Let us take the case of my PhD research as a time and space-bound episode that I recall [the best PhD is the finished PhD] and think of as finished, and not as the best. There can never be the best nor the finished. As metaphor, a PhD degree implies a relativistic measure of research capacity development; the same way a “degree” is measure of variation in temperature and angles. While PhD degrees are awarded and celebrated within a strict time and space domain [e.g. 2000 and Lancaster University], for many, like myself, a PhD serves as the end of a beginning. The hermeneutic process continues to create more provisory and relativist episodes for our intellectual survival when we reformat our findings for scholarly journals and conference papers, or writing up a book. What we see as the best or consider as the finished has meant only our cognitive survival; logistical and methodological, not intellectual! In a similar way, Lakoff and Johnson [1999] employ the “A Purposeful Life is a Journey” metaphor to describe a commonly used document, the curriculum vitae. The meaning of this Latin phrase is “the course of life”; therefore, the CV actually is a collection of directions, schedules, and stopovers that we come across in our lives. The time and place of a PhD stopover is also there. The Arabic word Tareeq usually means a road, but also interprets a course or an approach to life. The opening chapter of a PhD in the social sciences is often called an intellectual journey; and in Robert Frost’s view, for many (perhaps lucky!) among us, the PhD is The Road Not Taken.

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In this regard, the embodied mind philosophy explains human reasoning to be mostly metaphorical, emergent, and universal: “it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way our minds are embodied” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 4]. Embodied cognition is an intuitive sense that is personal and concurrent, which we share universally as an intellectual commitment [Polanyi, 1958]. Here, time-space embodiment becomes a rational process [only] through an intrinsic urge to interpret implicit complexity around us and seek the embodied truth[s]. The degree of this urge varies from one person to another, be they a scientist, poet, or a reformer, who believes in sharing the [implicit] intellectual commitment that evolves through relativist times and spaces. Most of what we reason through a research experience is actually a metaphorical paradox that appears as the truth. But we do not realise that even [the] scientific realities actually hold relative values. We celebrate achievements that are only our individual learning episodes. We hardly recognise truth[s] as embodied, and for a lack of empirical support some truths that we call eternal, absolute, ultimate, or transcendental, may never be accessible through a disembodied cognition. This claim follows the return of hermeneutic philosophy during the past several decades, inviting us to revisit intuitiveethical values of evidence for the sake of human intellectual survival. In this regard, Gadamer [1989] holds a view that: In fact history does not belong to us; but we belong to it. Long before we understand ourselves through the process of selfexamination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror…self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life…pre-judgments…more than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being. [pp. 276-77]

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Here, in returning to my concerns about the normative limits of empiricist methodologies, I once again make claim to an essential inference. The once glossy and showcased body of the data may not stay fresh for long. As the body must grow older, the data gets outdated. The data’s features fade. The figures become disfigured. Upon its demise, data is usually boxed up in the coffin or casket, for a final display of the “face” [value]. Sarcophagus practices would let the body to decompose and consume away. A similar deterioration and decomposition of data are noticeable in statistical reports and surveys that are eventually de-shelved and disposed of. As a conjectural argument, Denzin [2013] has already announced “the death of data?” In his obituary, he lists the causes and circumstances leading to the death. On the other side, we find contemporary experts of the “big data” quite worried about an increasingly large data size and a need to optimise data utility in fast growing information and media technology. Unlike the body, the soul of data stays on and evolves inside the implicit contexts, even eternally. Like history, the soul does not belong to us, but we belong to the soul. It keeps reflecting from the past and appears through to the future, in the wisdom of scholars, scientists, and poets—their insightful quotes and verses that we celebrate. Isaac Newton would call them the giants and would even stand on their shoulders to enhance his vision. Through our Internet searches, we connect to, and visit, them regularly and indent their quotes within the [cognitive] confines of our times and spaces. We also follow a procedure in “referring” to their specific [bracketed] times and spaces. We join in their intellectual movements and identify ourselves with their schools of thought. We hold their research chairs with a sense of pride. Still, in the interests of a time-space shared intellectual commitment, these scholars do not want us to duplicate them literally—or own the body of their work but reinterpret and rework their intellectual legacy.

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In this regard, the conception of democracy and its several disparate images go back to its father, Cleisthenes. Similarly, scientists keep offering us advice through implicit imageries, cognitive models, and equations (such as F=mg, Newton’s Second Law) to shape our learning and practice. It is only the implicit soul that shapes up and embodies our unconscious cognitions that follow a “consistent ontology” in our choice of “intuitive” metaphors [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 13]. In comparing the body and soul of data, we can tell how the hard, real, or factual data that makes empirical sense would remain, relative to cognitive confines of our times and spaces, and perish within the same. But the implicit influence stays, even if provisory or momentary, which Gadamer [1989] calls “only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life” (p. 276). Since our intuitive sense is folded inside the closed circuits of our intellectual histories, we feel a brief flickeringlike awareness of the embodied truth[s] only through the invisible soul. Hereupon, we need to question the relative and absolute truth-values with regard to mainstream misnomers that we all come across in the process of social research. I wonder if some [eternally] embodied truth[s] remains hidden in the eternal soul, in the essence of our intellect that directs and defines the scope of our intellectual journeys through history. Under an intuitive influence of the soul, we embody truth-seeking intellectual domains that are not only universal but eternal, across all times and spaces. I also see an intuitive influence of the soul in eternal or absolute truth[s] that distinguishes from stable truth in scientific laws and discoveries, and from common truth that we share in human purpose, empathy, and hope. The latter two are universal but not eternal. We are quite familiar with how a seemingly stable [scientific] truth turns out to be unstable across varying times and spaces. In Lakoff and Johnson’s [1999] view, even stable truths are “mediated by empirical understanding. This does

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not mean that truth is purely subjective or there is no stable truth. Rather, our common embodiment allows for common, stable truths” (p. 12). Goatly [2007] expands on this view: Truth might be attained by showing the perspectives of others which are quite different from one’s own, by recognizing that progress is cumulative not mutually destructive, and building on other people’s insights instead of demolishing them. [p. 80]

Hence, in telling truths through attributes such as absolute, ultimate, stable, common, and cumulative, or even covered, concealed, provisory, negotiated, or inconsistent, we need to distinguish rather than renounce, disregard, or obscure any relativism in these truths. This very relativist distinction in our embodied cognitive processes keeps producing empiricist, reductionist, and interactionist reflections, and it is only upon the basis of metaphorical [truth] attributes that our intellect essentially survives. Paradoxically, these attributes serve us, in one way, to join in evolution of human reasoning and make intellectual compromises over relativist interpretations of the physical and visible evidence; and, in another way, help us to survive, intellectually, through continued human inspirations, purposes, and hopes which we all instinctively share as truthvalues—universally, and even transcendently. Among the classical soul-searchers, some would become “self-aware” of the soul over momentary enlightened episodes that can be as short-lived as Gadamer’s “flickering”. Aristotle would make a sense of that to claim as follows: “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth”. When the same flickering enlightens the intellectual time and space of Newton, he would ratify that, proclaiming: “Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth”. In The Da Vinci Code (2003), a secret society of grandmasters of the Priory of Sion protects a sacred truth [value] among them all over many generations. While this truth is commonly viewed as pseudoacademic, it does make an embodied cognitive-interpretative

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sense. An intuitive influence in the first case is eternal, while the latter builds on a shared [sacred] purpose beyond timespace relativism. However, in both cases, the implicit contexts not only defy, but, arguably, validate the time-space limits, across a [periodic] mutuality—the intensity of awareness of Aristotle and Newton, or for that matter, the grandmasters. A comparison of the stable or eternal influences with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth [2006] may not be fair. Gore’s views are thoughtfully structured and “illustrated” through periodic evidence that builds on empirical logic. Even if his truth follows a globally shared [intuitive] empathy and hope, an ecological concern is not implicit or at least not interpreted as such. It is ecological relativism within a scientific reality that qualifies as a universal human purpose, hence a common truth. Embarrassingly, Phil Valentine’s An Inconsistent Truth (2012) adds more perspectival relativism to Al Gore’s truth.

CHAPTER THREE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS! SOME [SOUL] RESEARCHING

If the soul is impartial in receiving information, it devotes to that information the share of critical investigation the information deserves, and its truth or untruth thus becomes clear. However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment’s hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The result is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted. [Ibn Khaldun, The Muqadimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Rosenthal, F. 1969, p. 35]

3.1. Evidence analyses by “paralysis”! What follows is a brief review of the scope of implicit evidence and arguments in support of embodied cognition, with reference to mainstream social and organisational theory. Over the past four decades, substantial literature on social research theory has pointed to the limited opportunities which empiricist methodological norms created against the essentials of social and organisational research.1 This literature leans, in 1

A brief overview suggests at least three patterns. The first pattern underpins the scope for improvement in methodologies with regard to social research theory [e.g. Morgan, 1983; Ragin, 1987; Smithson, 1989; Weick, 1989; Sayer, 1992; Strauss and Corbin, 1998; Calas and Smircich, 1999; Weick, 1999; Ragin 2000; and Silverman, 2004; and even Atkinson, 2005; Denzin and Lincoln, 2005; Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005; Denzin, 2013]. These views recommend open or multi-perspective thought as

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the main, on critical realist, deconstructionist, postmodernist, and ethical-intuitionist philosophical views, while engaging norms of critical research, symbolic interactionism, critical discourse analysis, and alethic hermeneutics. Nevertheless, social theory is still struggling to explain complexity, paradox, and especially, the politicisation of social research. Some anxieties in the 21st century are quite alarming [Denzin and Lincoln, 2005; Denzin, 2013]. There are claims, ranging from the “demise of empiricism” [Smith, 1993] to “an end of the pretense to objectivity” [Smith and Hodkinson, 2005, p. 916] and “the death of data” [Denzin, 2013]. Hence, referring to Ibn Khaldun in opening this chapter, the choice of [research] method and quality of evidence has largely been infected with partisanship for a particular opinion, or simply political influence. As a result, falsehoods are accepted and transmitted. For this reason, social research is now considered to be “a practical and moral activity, not an epistemological one” [Smith and Hodkinson, 2005, p. 917]. Such fears stretch the debate on relativism (in chapter two) to underlying politics and ethics of social research, leading to arguments about standards of validity, funding criteria and impartiality in relation to credibility of evidence [Lincoln and Guba, 1989; Smith and Hodkinson, 2002; 2005; 2009; Hodkinson, 2004; Sociological Paradigms for Organisational Analysis [Burrell and Morgan, 1979]. The second pattern contests the basis of theory and knowledge criteria: i.e. the plausibility, validity, and credibility in social and organisational research [e.g. Lincoln and Guba, 1989; Smith, 1993; 1999; Smith and Deemer, 2000; Smith and Hodkinson, 2002; 2005; 2009; Hodkinson, 2004; Hodkinson and Smith, 2004; Kelle, 2005; Cho and Trent, 2006; and Hammersley, 2005; 2009]. A third pattern implies the need for soft methodological and organisational-symbolic shifts, i.e. interpretative approaches for negotiating complexity [Argyris et al, 1985; Morgan, 1997; Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000; Grant and Oswick, 1996; Denzin, 1992; 2001; Weick, 2001; Reynolds and Vince, 2004; Clegg and Hardy, 2006].

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Hammersley, 2005; 2009]. Hence, impartiality in choice of criteria for research project selection, and a credibility of findings vis-a-vis the source of funding has become a critical indicator of ethically responsible social research. A case in point is the series of mysterious deaths of the “Marconi Scientists” in the UK from 1982 to 1988. All 25 scientists had two things in common: firstly, a sustained technical contribution to a defense communication system project at the UK Ministry of Defense mysteriously linked to a US Star Wars project; secondly, they all lost their lives in events typically made to look like an accident. A customary empirical analysis would report the incidence in terms of the scientists’ age, to range between 22 to 60 years (averaging at 37), besides their individual academic background, ethnicity, and marital status. But an intuitive view of the events begs an explanation of how the deaths were unlikely to be caused by accidents, but rather were a case of “targeted elimination” and a professional job. Some British Members of Parliament requested inquiries into these events, which remained unaddressed owing to a shortage of political will and hard evidence to declassify and decharacterize anything hidden. This case shows how a [likely] political-policy agenda under [any] prearranged methodological “falsehoods” is bound to create ethical relativism. Such relativism adds more prejudice to already “compromised” truths with which we struggle. Without ethically measured [academic] criteria, we run into danger, more than ever in our intellectual history, of reducing social research to policy-formatted and standard-procedureguided consultancy projects. Hence, in view of these dangers, defining ethics and addressing the questions of what is, and what is not, ethical, and what constitutes responsible social research, are some of the issues I discuss in this book. The political-methodological influence on social research in the 21st century refreshes my anxieties discussed in chapter

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two; that is, how social researchers end up in three types of compromises—logistical, methodological, and intellectual. No doubt, most truth-values, or the authenticity of empiricist findings, are relativist and provisory, and we must take all relativism as a methodological limitation which we live and relive. However, this relativism must not be paralysed by macro-level political-policy externalities which contaminate both the research design [Smith and Hodkinson, 2005] and its evaluation, leading to what has been called methodological fundamentalism [House, 2005, p. 1077]. This imagery must remind social researchers to revisit the basic purpose of social research that, indubitably, is to seek a fair amount of truth alongside credibility of evidence in these truths. This purpose remains common to the physical and the social sciences [Gadamer, 1989; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Brown, 2003; Audi, 2005]. Further, with regards to Herbert Simon’s [1957] bounded rationality, we must also not become prey to overanalysing a situation, so paralysing the outcome. A paralysis by analyses does make sense in terms of methodological relativism. This maxim is certainly acceptable to responsible social research. Nonetheless, analyses by paralysis under a hidden politicalideological-methodological influence remain unacceptable! 3.2. Theoretical paradoxes vis-à-vis embodiment There are some paradoxes in mainstream social research which we customarily live by. First, from a critical realist position, Sayer [1992] brings to the fore three theoretical issues that restrain the “social science method” throughout our social inquiries. I explain these as the following: 1. Conceptualisation: This is the way we create images of the setting and objects, and their interrelationships under study. For instance, we tend to view and define “equilibrium” as a subject of physics as well as of

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economics, and “pressure” to characterise the strength of social-political groups as much as a concept of thermodynamics, which is a subject of physics. 2. Causation: This is how we cognitively regulate the settings and objects, and their interrelationships under study. For example, the forces of demand and supply producing “equilibrium” to determine the price, of say, petrol or gold. Likewise, racism and corruption in societies can be regulated by supply of equal legalpolitical and economic opportunities by the state to its citizens, and recognition of basic rights and essential socio-economic justice that the citizens demand. 3. Isolation: These are the processes that influence the settings, objects, and their interrelationships under study, while disregarding multi-dimensionality and multi-perspective-ness. For example, when the typical question of “inclusion” concurrently becomes an issue of “exclusion”. In our efforts to forge an association between two phenomena, for instance, we view petrol prices to be determined only by demand and supply, and racism and corruption to result simply from a lack of supply and demand of employment opportunities. This is a converse paradoxical relationship. I find all the three constraints to be derived from complex and abstract dynamism in human cognitive processes, and fuzzy-linguistic boundaries that presumably separate these. Here, the meanings of pressure or of equilibrium are assigned by the brain as a cognitive-sensory function rather than only a contextual interpretation of the goings on “out there”. Even if the two concepts were separable, the boundaries are too fuzzy to distinguish in terms of conceptualisation, causation, and

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isolation. Conversely, if we view equilibrium or pressure as metaphors, then we could explain the cognitive-memetic transference that evolves intuitively through the clumps and pivots, creating a synergy which is discussed in chapter one under “turf, money, and ego”. If we revisit the maxim here, we can see that it is not possible to separate “turf” from “money” and “ego” as distinct cognitive interrelationships vis-à-vis Sayer’s view of conceptualisation, causation, and isolation within these. All three clumps are loosely pivoted on a mutuality to create synergy. Reverting to Mead’s views discussed in chapter two, the same should also be true of the boundaries that apparently define us as researchers and respondents, and our settings under study. In this way, we are even uncertain as to whether our interpretations were that of a spectator, a reflector, or of an agent. This argument takes us to Lakoff and Johnson’s [1999] notion of “embodied realism”, suggesting our interactionist experience of the world around us not as dualist but as an intuitively embodied cognitive relationship that explains the researcher and the research context within one domain: But there is a deeper and more important sense in which our concepts are embodied. What makes concepts…is their ability to be bound together in ways that yield inferences. An embodied concept is a neural structure that is actually part of, or makes use of, the sensorimotor system of our brains. Much of conceptual inference is, therefore, sensorimotor influence. [p. 20, italics added]

Embodied cognition offers an explanation to resolve Sayer’s [1992] concerns—possibly a cognitive [science] solution to the [social research] methodological problem. A disembodied sense actually creates paradox, and not a cognitive mutuality. In this regard, Lakoff and Johnson [1999] strongly claim how [only] the embodied mind philosophy

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“radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction”, essentially because: In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the same neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movement) plays a central role in conception…the very mechanisms responsible for perception, movements, and object manipulation could be responsible for conceptualization and reasoning. [pp. 37-38]

Here, in support of intuitive sensemaking, we need to study whether embodiment allows conception and perception, not merely as two independent paradoxes but as one. Could we negotiate one paradox inside the other, disengaging one by simultaneously engaging another? Conceivably, this equates to creating an exceptional capacity to see the forest for the trees as much as seeing the trees for the forest! The conception-causation-isolation paradox is marked by our choice of mainstream research methods: “attention given in social science courses to the ‘methods’ is in the narrow sense of the statistical techniques, interviewing and survey methods and the like, with a blithe disregard of questions of how we conceptualize, theorize and abstract” [Sayer, 1992, p. 2]. As a consequence, we miss making an implicit contextual sense of the forest (mostly an intuitive-qualitative big picture analysis) for the trees (that are imposed on us as a striking display of visual-quantitative data in the tables, graphs, barcharts and a range of visual-statistical illustrations) [Abdullah, 2015]. In this regard, embodied cognition helps us to live by the paradox of mainstream theory, methodology, and method. Morgan [1983] also appreciates the value of “human nature” and “human consequences” for a vital role these play in social research conceptualisation and interpretation against the technical or bureaucratic norms deemphasising these (pp. 406-407). From a different, but related view, embodiment of conceptualisation, causation, and isolation, is recognised by systems analysts and organisational practitioners, who offer

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“soft” heuristic and cognitive methodologies for complexity analysis, and not the “hard” mechanistic models [Checkland and Scholes, 1999; Rosenhead, 1989; Wilson, 2001]. Yet the soft analytical models build on cognitive maps, on thought experiments and on how we rationalise complex settings only by interactionist or open worldviews. Such cognitive models serve as methods for problem solving but are deficient in offering theoretic-methodological analysis of deep-seated intuitive evidence that is folded in implicit data contexts. 3.3. Evidence-based…doctrines or doctoring? A mainstream dilemma surfacing in the last three decades is commonly called “evidence-based” research and policymaking on its scientific basis. Evidence-based practice is also claimed as an exceptionally high quality of professionalism in a field. In recent years, this tendency has become de mode even in social sciences such as education, health, and community care research. It is crucial to recognise that the shift researchers make from data-based to “evidence-based” notions is to uphold quality and guarantee impartiality. Practically, this logic works in the opposite direction, in escalating out of [intellectual] naivety, disregard for intuitive sensemaking, and creation of leniency towards a politicallynegotiated order in social policymaking—under the pretext of bringing scientific credibility to evidence. This pretext is questioned in the 21st century methodological debate that links social research to intuitive ethics and social purpose. Building on Blumer [1956], an evidence-based trend is a clear political-economic-ideological contamination of variable analysis. Scientificness of evidence certainly makes more sense, and must therefore be prescribed to parameters such as clinical trials in microbiology and medicine; though, even the apparently scientific proof in pharmaceutical and biochemical experimentation is contested on ideological or ethical grounds

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towards human, and even animal, safety issues. Conscientious clinicians do not rely completely on scientific or technological pointers in ultrasound and laboratory reports. For a disparate clinical judgment of a patient under their management, they keenly follow an experiential-interactive and intuitive sense that is unique, varying from one case to another. They usually call it a systemic [clinical] sense. The diagnostic laboratory reports also carry a note of caution that their results must relate to the patient profile, for the doctors to see the big [clinical] picture, and that the patient’s diagnostic [clinical] variables must not be measured in isolation. Here, it becomes quite understandable that a “scientific” sensemaking of evidence is not deterministic and generic, but [only] relativist and disparate. Scientific pretexts or protocol to formulate evidence in social [science] research constitutes a disregard for the subject matter of “social” science. Mainstream social research evidence is underpinned by perspectives and domains that are multiple, both in theory and in practice. The USA experience of qualitative research fully disapproves of the [so-called] evidence-based philosophy: …‘evidence-based research’...‘evidence-based teaching’, evidence-based medicine’, and other arenas where evidence is considered the ‘gold standard’—obscures the larger discourse of what evidence, which evidence, whose evidence, evidence gathered under what circumstances, evidence gathered for what uses, and for whom, shall be considered worthwhile, and thereby usable. [Lincoln, 2005, p. 173, italics added]

Inside a larger ontological-epistemological debate of evidence with regard to truth-values and attributes, these questions get even tougher. For conceptual [in]sensitivities, whether realist or conjectural, a purely science-based narrative of evidence shall never hold a place in social [science] research, because in science: “there is one source of truth—the randomized experiment… theory is not available

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for this purpose in social research and findings are often interpreted ideologically and politically” [House, 2005, p. 1080]. For a neglect of intuition and disregard of Sayers’s mainstream theoretical concerns addressed earlier, we may not be able to rationalise scientific norms even for the opensystems or heuristic-styled inquiries into complexity [Moustaksas, 1990; Flyvbjerg, 2001]. Thus, evidence-based methodological pretexts which favour generic variables against disparate variables only add another paradox—a “paradigm paralysis”. This paradox disables or denies reasoning or perception beyond the prevalent protocols to reason and to perceiving. The paradox in question fails us in many ways, especially in the quest to meet the ideals of social research, whereby social justice easily becomes a casualty. Any ethical-intuitive opinions on the hazards of biological warfare, epidemic disease outbreaks, or global warming and other calamities, would not make sense to mindsets holding illusive pretexts of scientific determinism, or in Ibn Khaldun’s words, are “infected with partisanship”. The implicit evidential context behind a political-economic or ideological agenda, or even a personal vested interest, remains hidden and unchecked. As a result, most evidential pretexts we come across are either doctored or spin-doctored: first, for political control of evidence, and second, to defeat the emergence and reporting of intuitive influence integral to responsible social research. We find some interesting incidents of political paranoia to have created such “relativist” pretexts in recent history. The preemptive doctrine of former US President George W. Bush put into practice in Afghanistan and Iraq is characterised by an absence, and not the presence, of credible and actionable evidence. The same doctrine was [implicitly] reciprocated in former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s belief in the presence of WMDs in Iraq that later proved to be a political-economic-

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ideological obsession. The history of a “special relationship” between the UK and the USA, in terms of military alliances and intelligence sharing, was evident in the likemindedness of their leaders’ beliefs and agendas, distinctly in their balancing personas. This relationship developed further in Blair’s claim of hard evidence implicitly played up in the 2001 Camp David meeting with George W. Bush. A [courtship-styled] symbolism revealed in Blair’s bashful body language and Bush’s chauvinist-styled humour, and their use of the same brand of toothpaste. Blair appeared servile, and in that sense the media reported him as Bush’s poodle—a controversial legacy that continues! Some media footage and a big volume of literature and movies produced since then, keep adding to the appearance of that [relationship] dynamic. As both were over-reactively witty in public, they did let their bodies speak [willingly] for a shared belief in going ahead with foreign invasion without a need for credible evidence. Within a wider contextual analysis, for their clear actions, and not reactions, their ensuing policies may be called “preemptive doctoring”, and not what is customarily termed preemptive doctrine in foreign policy literature. Interestingly, a claim to empirical evidence [out there] was absurd in the first place. Both leaders could have affected more realistic motivations for their invasions by proclaiming them to be predatory instincts or asserting directly a political-economic-ideological cause. 3.4. The idea of dropping our tools! Where to go from here? Living along paradoxes and complexities, and interpreting implicit evidence from multiple sources, perspectives, and levels (individual, institutional, and cultural), the scientific method is nevertheless likely to fail. This situation leads to yet another paradox—the “impostulate of theoretical simplicity” [Thorngate, 1976] that is described in terms of the degree of impenetrability or impossibility with

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which to theorise on social behaviour that we naïvely try to generalise in mainstream social research: We will never see a general, simple, accurate theory of social behavior…to increase generality and accuracy, the complexity of our theories must necessarily be increased …but the ethics and pragmatics of research set severe limits on the complexity of theories that can be subjected to empirical test…Precise and complex theories may hold the promise of being general and accurate… (but are) as unstable as those which are simple and vague. [p. 134-135]

In returning to the debate on methodological compromises, we need to examine options in social theory on which social research is typically founded. As a way forward, Calas and Smircich [1999] put forward the idea of dropping our tools: In the interest of refashioning our identities as theorists …we should drop things like writing styles, definitions of what constitutes research, and pretensions to expertise. These are dramatic shifts, but shifts happen. [p. 649]

This idea appears to be a simple solution to my thinking aloud on social research incapacities discussed in chapter two, but dropping our tools as a metaphor implies surrendering to, and not taking on, the challenges and paradoxes. The idea asserts disengagement from all methods and traditions, and serves as a provocation that eventually renounces all disciplinary and paradigmatic norms. It introduces a sweeping theoretical extreme and potentially leads to a more serious impossibility impasse, taking our methodologies everywhere, and virtually nowhere. To bring plausibility to the idea, there is a need for some cognitive reframing. The idea of dropping the tools is a hard resolve; that is, possibly putting them away. Another way is not to drop the tools and put them aside. Here, I find Weick’s [1999] advice to be practicable, i.e. to drop only the “heavy tools” but retain the essential “survival gear”:

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If theorists drop their heavy tools of paradigms and monologues, they retain the equivalents of survival gear. They still have their intuitions, feelings, stories, experience, awe, vocabulary and empathy. Most of all they still have their capacity for attentive listening. Once these resources are in place, the theorists can converse about what tools they should drop. Early questions in those conversations might include: what are the theorist’s heavy tools? What are the theorist’s survival tools? And what are the occasions when heavy tools need to be dropped. [p. 804, italics added]

I wonder if we were ever able to break free from influence of the heavy tools—the scientific paradigms and mechanistic protocols that have practically possessed our academic psyche over many centuries. Heavy tools have their own utilities and dropping them will demand depersonalising ourselves from within, which is impossible, because researchers mostly think “historically and interactionally” [Denzin and Lincoln, 2005, p. 1083]. Even Calas and Smircich [1999] would not give up their identity as “refashioned theorists” (p. 649). Moreover, as the list of the tools to be dropped must surely be a long one, the idea may not be as simple as it appears. Hence, we could put aside the heavy [mechanistic] tools, but within our reach, so as to utilise them when and where they are needed. Thereupon, we must learn to “live by” the survival gadgetry towards an interactionist sensemaking of implicit contexts throughout the research process, from initial questions to the write up. Weick’s [1999] list of survival tools are “intuitions, feelings, stories, experience, awe, vocabulary and empathy” (p. 804). Writing up is the last but most critical stage of a research process; it shapes cognitive evolution. It is experiential and intuitive, and hence embodied. Richardson and St. Pierre [2005] refer to writing as a conceptual schema in social research that helps examine and validate a [unique] paradoxical sense of the researcher’s trust vs. doubt in the choice of method and source of evidence:

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Postmodernism suspects all truth claims of masking and serving particular interests in local, cultural, and political struggles. But conventional methods of knowing and telling are not automatically rejected as false or archaic…The postmodernist context of doubt, then, distrusts all methods equally. No method has a privileged status…a postmodernist position does allow us to know “something” without claiming to know everything. Having a partial, local, and historical knowledge is still knowing. [p. 961]

Could we consider our research inquiry and writing up not as two, but essentially as one process—embodied cognition? In this case, the metaphor of a “research instrument” gets along with inquiry-writing—a cognitively evolved human skill after all: “the researcher—rather than the survey, the questionnaire, or the census tape—is the ‘instrument’” [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005, p. 960]. Ellis [2004, in Ellingson, 2009, p. 12] claims narrative ethnographies and autoethnographies to be inquirer-writer domains that shift continually and intrinsically intertwine the researcher’s self, others’ experiences, and the definition of social roles and interactions between these. Could an experiential-intuitive sense of embodied cognition in metaphor provide social researchers with an essential survival (methodological and intellectual!) toolkit to live by? 3.5. Living by essential survival tools Reflecting on questions and concerns reported earlier [Weick, 1999; Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005], I will go on to discuss the choice of essential survival tools. In this regard, we must comprehend the scope of these tools vis-à-vis a cognitive-methodological viability: - Which “heavy” and “survival” tools? - Where and when to drop the “heavy” tools?

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- How to doubt and trust all methods equally? - When is partial knowledge, still “knowing”? 3.5.1. Which “heavy” and “survival” tools? Since the 21st century, there has been a rise in literature on social research and its contributory qualitative paradigms. The 1500-page Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods [2003], the 1200 and 766-page respectively Handbook of Qualitative Research [2005 and 2011], and related texts, explain the scale of the rise. In their Epilogue, Lincoln and Denzin [2005] claim that the “advances in qualitative methods and models of inquiry appear to be developing somewhat more swiftly than in the past” (p. 1116). In the size and scope of this literature, the choice of method continues to expand both in qualitative width and contextual depth, signifying a methodological evolution of the survival tools. Here, I suggest that we may disengage from the [usual] method in favour of normative practice. There is certainly a growth in big data-based information-technology systems and mechanistic models for collection, analysis, and control, representing the heavy tools—the body of data. Yet there is a proportionately increasing cognizance of convergence in the qualitative norms that empower human values—the soul. The latter recognises the researcher, the setting, and the method as indivisible, making up an inseparable representational form, as in the Creative Analytical Practices (CAP) [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005]. In view of poststructural and postmodern practices in social research, CAP submits four [normative] criteria that shape the quality of evidence (p. 964): -

Substantive and deeply embedded perspectives; Aesthetically satisfying and not boring; Reflexivity vis-à-vis self-awareness; and Creation of an emotional-intellectual impact

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A choice of the survival tools within CAP or similar practices must ultimately produce a social science art form as opposed to method (ibid. p. 964). In studying “race” and “gender”, for instance, Richardson and St. Pierre [2005] assert that: “the implications…would be stressed, not because it would be ‘politically correct’ but rather because race and gender are axes through which symbolic and actual worlds have been constructed” (ibid. p. 964). A sizable consensus is building up on the scope of tools inside embodied cognition, i.e. a minimalist norm of inseparable representational form for our survival—both intellectual and methodological. 3.5.2. Where and when to drop the “heavy” tools? This scenario implies a methodological need for survival tools with a view to criteria of validity and credibility of the method and evidence in question. When evidence is only in monologue it is a suspect for masking and serving particular interests in the name of truth! Therefore, in choosing the survival tools, it is critical that we tally our research interests along impartial assessment criteria [Smith and Hodkinson, 2005]. To interpret evidence, these criteria must employ tools and protocols that follow ethical-intuitive norms. Such tools are expected to probe evidence-doctored prescriptions and a likely immunity (such as political correctness!) these might produce to compelling arguments of [critical] social research built on ethics, intuition, and empathy. In this regard, Calas and Smircich’s [1999] argument of the essential “dramatic shifts” that “must happen” (p. 649) points to the treatment and recovery of social research from incapacities that Denzin and Lincoln [2005] think led to a fractured future. To sustain the dramatic shifts as normative practices I discuss earlier, our social research tools must make a claim for ethical-intuitive evidence in embodied cognition. These shifts could depoliticise the research criteria developed

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on the pretexts of relativism at best, and scientific objectivity at worst [Smith and Deemer, 2000; Smith and Hodkinson, 2005; House, 2005]. In this pursuit, the survival tools could engage in minimalist yet rigorous ethical-intuitive criteria for validity of 21st century evidence that needs special attention: Because of certain events over the past few years, including governmental attempts to mandate research criteria in both the United States and the United Kingdom, it is clear that the relationship of power, politics and criteria must be discussed at much greater length…Because there is no possibility of theoryfree observation and knowledge, the subject-object dualism of empiricism is untenable and the claim to objectivity is a chimera. [Smith and Hodkinson, 2005, p. 915, italics added]

In this context, any political-power-played [up] evidence could be surveyed in two ways: first, in a study of criteria for its research funding, evaluation, and publication, and second, through credibility of its sources. Such concerns have emerged in the literature specific to USA-UK empiricist protocols that (in the spirit of a special relationship discussed earlier) appear to ratify social research criteria in favour of “a politics of avoidance of the compelling arguments…and a politics directed at marginalizing the messengers” [Smith and Hodkinson, 2005, p. 916]. Despite the odd anxieties of 21st century social research, we could examine these challenges by rejecting the “subject-object dualism of empiricism” that is considered “untenable” [Smith and Hodkinson, 20005, p. 915]. As I argue in chapters one and two, this is where and when we must examine the time-space embodied cognitive influence of implicit evidence, and conceivably, stretching its “context” to Derrida’s notion of all [realist] human history. Thereupon, a wider intellectual-methodological purview or embodied cognition of history could reinterpret, and even answer, the concerns of Smith and Hodkinson [2005, p. 916]: especially, what is “the politics of avoidance”; what are the

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“compelling arguments” and how these are raised; who are the messengers, what are their resolves, and how and to what extent are they marginalised? Furthermore, if “dualism of empiricism is untenable and the claim to objectivity is a chimera” (ibid.), then [how] could embodied cognition and metaphor find any answers to these questions? 3.5.3. Doubt and trust all methods equally! This scenario explains the exclusive scope for survival tools alongside theoretical paradoxes which we [must] live by; allowing the doubt and trust in a method to coexist. Because methodological solutions to complexity are never simple, every new method eventually results in more relativism. I make this point in chapter one to characterise the contestations of the Seventh and Eighth Moments of qualitative research. As relativism in thought evolves, there is increasing risk of divisions through the course of social inquiry leading towards: “a number of specialist domains of qualitative research that are too often treated in isolation” [Atkinson, 2005, p.1]. In this regard, we could minimalise complexity in inquiries over time-space intersubjectivity and intertextuality, in allowing embodied cognition in metaphor to restrain a tendency towards methodological relativism. First, we can explain “disciplined” imagination across the domains of intersubjectivity [Madison, 1988]; that is, to hold or expect our research arguments or findings, not as leading to [absolute] truth-values, but to doubt-trust these findings as only provisory across experiential-interactionist sensemaking. Thus I reemphasise the need to distinguish any [21st century] “half-truths” from methodological relativism addressed in chapter two as an essential covenant of qualitative research. Second, we may even doubt-trust metaphorical insights across intertextuality [Fairclough, 2003], i.e. making sense of a metaphorical half-truth in terms of another, recontextualising

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and reenacting our past experiences in the present. In this regard, the need for cognitive-memetic syntheses of openended understanding of complex realities is embodied in an intuitive [inter]connectivity that is mostly symbolic, even in punctuations—the indented, italicised, underlined, bracketed, and hyphenated textual emphases in our research writings. 3.5.4. When is partial knowledge, still “knowing”? This scenario signifies the cognitive-methodological scope for survival tools in terms of embodied norms of ethical intuitionism. In this regard, we need to evaluate the essential survival tools with a fair amount of optimism in the reemergence and recognition of intuitive ethics among [basic] human values [Lincoln and Denzin, 2005, especially Part V]. The extent of openness in ethical-intuitive research values expressed in metaphor indicates the metaphor’s deeply seated influence on human empathy. Hence, an implicit metaphorical truth-value, even of supposedly impartial (that may still be partially subjective and provisory) paradoxical knowledge, could be taken as part evidence, and hence a half truth. Lakoff and Johnson [1999, p. 103] identify three levels of embodied truth[s]: the neural, phenomenological, and cognitive unconscious. First, the neural truth belongs to neural circuitry corresponding to scientific and experimental values. Second, the phenomenological truth is within reasoning that is either conscious or accessible to it: “the feel of experience, of the way things appears to us and of qualia… phenomenology also hypothesizes non-conscious structures that underlie and make possible the structure of our conscious experience” (ibid.). Third, the cognitive unconscious truth gives structure to and makes possible “conscious experience, including understanding and use of language” (ibid.). I find these three truths as inseparable that cannot be interpreted in a disembodied value. Also, their truth-value is paradoxical, and

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for this reason, partial. Hence, what we think that we know is what we only partially know because all truth[s] learned over the course of social researching are cognitively embodied: “because our ideas are framed in terms of our unconscious embodied conceptual systems, truth and knowledge depend on embodied understanding” (ibid. p. 555). Building on this paradox, social researchers may put to the test their doubt-trust in partial knowledge such as the “imagination” that Brady [2005] calls educated and Weick discusses as both disciplined [1989] and reflexive [1999], and find our survival in “intuitions, feelings, stories, experience, awe, vocabulary and empathy” (ibid. p. 804, italics added). In this regard, a methodological survival in metaphor could be worthwhile when studied through such norms in social theory. Truer to Wieck’s [1999] concerns for survival, the qualitative research literature I referred to previously fits in well with the metaphor. Truer also to Calas and Smircich’s [1999] claim, such shifts are major and must happen; nonetheless, within [normative] practices that are consistent. First, a researcher’s integrity must not yield to the “aftershocks” of a [so-called] methodological fundamentalism, selective morality, political correctness, or pretexts of the ground realities that Smith and Hodkinson [2005] appear referring to as: “certain events over the past few years” both in the UK and the USA. Second, all scientific and mechanistic evidence-based criteria—the hard tools, must be put aside due to their incapacity to comprehend the emotive and ethical-intuitive intricacies of social research. Pinter [2003] calls morality a gadget, and defines it as an “assembly of neural circuits cobbled together from older parts of a primate brain and shaped by natural selection to do a job” (p. 270). For morality to function as a survival gadget, the role of metaphor’s embodied [cognitive] evolution is the key to unfolding implicit evidence over the intellectual history of social research. Such shifts do not break in paradigm walls of

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the heavy tools but must alter the course of all-mechanistic or partisan thought, and pave the way for survival tools that are intuitively rich and ethically robust. Throughout the course of embodied cognitive evolution, metaphor may even revisit the scope of the Darwinian “biological” evolution and reinterpret it as a critical cognitive-memetic discourse. Hence, Calas and Smircich’s [essential] survival gear is a [giant] leap towards an era that is post-paradigm, post-method, and ultimately, postdisciplinary. It is at this juncture that I call upon social researchers to put aside the heavy tools and take the leap! 3.6. Embodiment as an intellectual survival toolkit Embodied cognition has an encompassing influence not only on our intellectual experiences but on our social lives. In explaining methodological and intellectual survival, embodied cognition suggests that we cannot hold the researcher and the context/respondent as two separate entities or data sources in an emergent experiential-intuitive domain. For instance, my PhD respondent who shared with me “turf, money, and ego” as challenging for collaboration over an interview in 1993, held a view that was not just empirical. He had followed an embodied cognition of foreign policy context and all politicaleconomic-ideological factors so as to offer a coherent and minimalist explanation of the scope for collaboration in the health services I was studying. His reply echoed Derrida: it-isall-over-realist-human-history-and-forthcoming. With an odd grin he did tacitly add: “Look, collaboration is more complex than that required of a PhD fieldwork interview here; its intellectual domain is way beyond the limited methodological sense that you are naively trying to create [here and now]”. As such, a researcher-context/respondent serves SourceTarget Domain of cognitive metaphor within essentially one embodied agent-cause domain. The Source Domain draws out from a cell function or neural circuitry of a researcher’s body

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whilst the embodied Target Domain concurrently expands to the [disparate] research context, appearing empirically limited but spanning across the [expanding] celestial universe. So, a research setting such as PhD fieldwork, in a way, converges in a researcher’s neuron to simultaneously unfold, in another way, a realist-phenomenological yet cognitively unconscious [intuitive] time-space. In this way, the embodied cognition of metaphor is actually its embodied Target Domain—all-overrealist-human-history-and-forthcoming that is found within a single cell as much as it is across the entire universe. Embodied cognition does not follow a particular belief, tradition, or paradigm. It builds on human intellect across all times and spaces vis-à-vis the empirical here and now. Whether hermeneutic or inter-subjective, our ethical-intuitive cognition speaks through the metaphor across social research engagements. For instance, the Creative Analytical Practices (CAP) that Richardson and St. Pierre [2005] suggest is one pattern of the shifts towards embodiment. Quite likely, this shift, and similar other ones, shall run into history as relativist norms if CAP were unable to balance off a [dualist] here and now along an embodied sense of all-realist-human-historyand-forthcoming. Simply put, a cognitive balancing of intellectual-methodological survival is to our ultimate gain. Here, I consider the social researcher to be a springboard diver performing a somersault, having to ensure a [cognitive] methodological balance of her or his limbs—drawing them closer on the [intellectual] springboard for an effective launch and a neat finish—the initial research questions and the final write up. Even that is not sufficient. Embodied cognition is a critical intellectual advantage towards the quality of research in relation to the scope of implicit evidence. Towards their embodied cognitive-methodological roles and responsibilities, social researchers must check any slippery intellectual-moral grounds—the springboards and foundations on which these

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are built, and avoid intellectual embarrassments and dangers of fractures, as in Denzin’s fractured future. The purpose is to ensure that philosophy may not stumble and become a victim of its own ideals, expressly, seeking the truths. 3.7. Metaphor as a methodological survival tool I now converge on the concerns I have successively raised, and make some assumptions as a basis for discussion in the coming chapters. First, all human knowledge, whether explicit-empirical or implicit-intuitive, mainly concerns evidential truths—the unknown, unknowing, and unknowable that [must] incurconcur known, knowing, and knowable. A knowledge based only on explicit-empirical evidence gained through the course of social research is deficient, defective, or both. Second, social research is essentially a sustained process of embodied cognition, enacted by cognitive metaphor for converging in the research context. As most social research [processing of] evidence is provisional across a researcher’s time and space, all truths a researcher seeks to enrich his/her knowledge are basically evolving and provisional. Hence, an emergent metaphorical sense helps in both recognising and assigning the provisory limits. As such, all social research turns out to be a process of embodied cognitive survival—a conscious methodological survival vis-à-vis an unconscious intellectual survival. All social research’s purpose is only a [metaphorical] degree of pledge to knowledge acquisition, expansion, or upgrading—defining the scope for our [own] choice of survival. In this way, social research may follow two parallel approaches. The first seeks answer(s) to the research question(s) in terms of a physical or visible body of evidence, and leads to methodological relativism and a methodological survival. The second approach evolves intuitively, reasoning through the invisible or implicit soul of

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evidence, taking us to intellectual relativism, and a provisory intellectual survival. Through the social research process, the two approaches take us to visual-physical, or simply empirical evidence, in concurrence with intuitive evidence that is hidden inside the same empirical variables of study. The embodied evidence holds multiple truth-values that unfold only in the metaphor. The physical and visible evidence is [only] relativist, and is explained in a range of mainstream philosophies that offer interpretative positions attributed to a range of truth misnomers. In search of the implicit evidence, the truth-values in metaphors offer only a [flickering] paradoxical sense over researchers’ limited times and spaces. Third, truth-values produced in social research depend, to some degree, on our sense of ethical responsibility to qualify these values as “tenable” truths. In interpreting the two key variables of implicit evidence, corresponding to the dependent and independent, we unconsciously seek moral reasoning and an ethical-intuitive regulatory sense inside a third variable, which may be similar to moderating or intervening variables in empirical research. Conceivably, this variable regulates the [embodied] cognition of truth[s] across a tenable metaphor’s Source Domain and Target Domain within intuitively shared mainstream contexts of human purpose, empathy and hope. Fourth, an intuitive sense cannot be defined or confined by empirical or mechanistic norms, but can be interpreted in cognitive metaphor as implicit evidence of complexity. The implicit evidence effectually builds on interaction, emergence, and embodiment across our past experiences, present settings, and assumptions for the future. Through the metaphors of the body and the soul, we characterise physical evidence as the visible “outer”, and implicit evidence as the invisible “inner” explanations to the worlds that we embody and live by. Fifth, metaphor helps negotiate theoretical paradoxes and mainstream complexity such as “analyses by paralyses” and

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“paradigm paralyses”. It also assigns minimalist versions to the implicit data contexts and regulates human imagination by allowing it to sustain comprehension with specificity. Here, I conclude Part one of this book. In Part two, I outline the foundation, conceptual-theoretical framework, and operational schema of cognitive-methodology-metaphor, and its implications on evidence in social research practice.

PART II

CHAPTER FOUR PRODIGY: EXPECTATIONS FROM THE PRODIGAL SON

But the greatest thing, by far, is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others, and it is also a sign of genius…a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of similarity of dissimilarities. [Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Ross, WD 1459, p. 5, italics added]

4.1. Prodigal-prodigy schema Building on the body and soul of evidence, I now discuss a schema of arguments in support of cognitive-methodologymetaphor. I shape my arguments around the imagery of “the prodigal son” in Biblical stories. In this regard, Kittay’s [1987] description helps us to distinguish metaphor from the literal discourse in mainstream social theory: Like the Prodigal Son, who violates the rules of the community by straying off but, on returning home, is still more prized than the ever obedient child, metaphorical use of language is often more valued than literal use…the violation of conceptual constraints inherent in the meanings of the terms brings about a new conceptualization, a new way of conceiving some content domain. [p. 177, italics added]

The notion of the prodigal son adds several secondary metaphors, such as rule violation, community, straying off, returning home, family, and obedience. It invites us to study a cognitive-normative approachability in research, by tracking a unique identity of metaphor that we also find in humans. The prodigal is wayward and a violator, and as such, parallels

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figurative thought, as it is free of constraints. However, I find the prodigal identity to mutually reciprocate with another unique human trait—the prodigy, which, in contrast to the prodigal, is compliant and disciplined. Here, I disengage from Kittay’s view. I identify the prodigal son with figurative and poetic language, and the prodigy with cognitive metaphor. It is to the father and the family (of figurative language), and his community (the literal use) that the prodigal son (the traditional theory of metaphor) had generically belonged, and strayed off from, but finally returned [with]in the prodigy of cognitive metaphor. In The Poetics of Mind, Gibbs’ [1994] view is similar to my explanation of prodigy in the cognitive metaphor, that is to say, the way I see metaphor’s utility in the figurative (closer family), and not in the larger linguistic (community) or literal use. My contrast of prodigal and prodigy expands Kittay’s [1987] view and finds support in Gibbs [1994]: Figurative language is not…unconstrained imaginative thinking…but a systematic and orderly part of human cognitive process…figuration is not an escape from reality but constitutes a way we ordinarily understand ourselves and the world in which we live. [p. 454, italics added]

Here, the prodigal son’s experience of the world is what Gibbs calls unconstrained imaginative thinking; while a systematic and orderly aspect of human cognition and not an escape from reality, is established in the prodigy of cognitive metaphor—an awareness in the initially wayward experiential sense justifying a normative compliance—a homecoming. It is my recognition of a paradox: a straying off from, as much as a returning home to, the family—the figurative norms—a [cognitive] mutuality that creates a methodological utility for understanding our own selves and the world around us. In Kittay’s [1987] view, it is probably “a new way of conceiving some content domain” (p. 177). In the prodigal, I

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see an exclusivity of metaphor, allowing us to learn from experiential and critical insights (the broadly traditional theory of metaphor) of figurative language in relation to a fairly disciplined methodological sense within the prodigy of cognitive metaphor. Kittay [1987] considers this recurrence and concurrence to be a unique feature of metaphor. 4.2. A methodology within paradox Aristotle’s tribute to an eternal legacy of metaphor, with which I open this chapter, leaves no margin for higher praise. His lines are not limited to the persuasive rhetoric that he appears to have recognised, but go beyond that. “But the greatest thing, by far…” serves as the briefest review, as much as it is an expansive overview of the metaphor. “It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others” points to an untaught skill—perhaps a [transcendental] cerebral-intuitive talent that one cannot teach, or be able to learn or vanquish. In “by far…” the master polymath makes a further hint that the use of metaphor is never over. In this regard, I find metaphor to create a strong impulse towards the scope of responsible social research. Building on critical social theory, alethic hermeneutics, and symbolic interactionism, I find the prodigal vs. prodigious identities, i.e. the paradoxical emergence of divergence-convergence in our cognitions, to create a unique methodological utility. Such a “unity of inconsistencies” that Aristotle appears to have called an “intuitive perception of similarity of dissimilarities”, cited above, is not attended in mainstream social research. In paradoxical cognition—prodigal-within-prodigy, metaphor survives on implicit contextual insights that are unconstrained but compliant; open, yet reflective; wasteful but coherent. Through the course of social research, we engage with, and disengage from, these identities, intuitively, emergently, and simultaneously. A cognitive synergy produced in this paradox

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allows intuitive thought trials to fill the hermeneutic vacuum under discussion in chapter one. These thought trials go on interpreting the implicit data contexts of the research variables under study, for our intellectual survival. Here, I humbly diverge from Aristotle’s view of metaphor as a “similarity of dissimilarities”. I find there to be a similarity within, and not of, dissimilarities, because I see the intuitive strength of metaphor within a paradoxical [blended] space—as a single cognitive domain; embodied cognition. As such, the prodigal identity is inseparable from the prodigy, and a methodological utility only within embodied cognition, takes us to wide-ranging yet disciplined norms of social and organisational inquiry. My view expands on a typically poetic abstraction that Lakoff and Johnson [1999] call the traditional theory of metaphor; here, presumably, “Aristotle was also mistaken about metaphorical language being only poetic and rhetorical” (p. 123). Because a methodological sense is only found within paradox, the prodigal-prodigy tendencies reject mainstream dualism in social research. The prodigal son’s homecoming embodies the intuitive and experiential sense to negotiate a methodological compliance, and overcome the Cartesian anxiety [Bernstein, 1983]. This methodological shift finds support in the relativism of truth [Gadamer, 1989; Polanyi, 1958; 1967] which I discuss in chapter two. Further, the prodigy-within-prodigal schema allows the cognitive processes to open up options and reinterpret complexity as a built-in reassurance of social research responsibility. Moreover, I do not hold a preference for any mainstream terminology or vocabulary of conceptual designs for social research, such as research methodology, social inquiry, or qualitative research. All such conceptions are, in their own way, unique and worthwhile. Any contextually consistent metaphor could define or redefine these as a research process. The concepts representing “research design”, “research plan”,

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or “action research”, are intuitive regulations sustained in our choice of metaphor. Our cognitions adjust to a range of normative positions from which a research purpose is chosen, consistent with our unique individual selves. Interestingly, that is also how we identify ourselves as academics, research project consultants, journalists or inquiry commissioners. In the sections below, I explain the prodigal strength of metaphor—the ubiquitous unconstrained imagination, within the embodiment of prodigious compliance. With the support of social research theory, I examine how metaphor represents figurative discourse. From these explanations, I claim that a utility of cognitive-methodological-metaphor allows us to think through the intuitive data and validate implicit evidence. 4.2.1. Figurative family norm Metaphor truly represents the figurative family. In this role, the prodigal tendency of individual freedom restrains within it a prodigious return to family compliance—from the traditional theory of metaphor to the post-1980s cognitive theory of metaphor, and from the first-generation of cognitive science to the second-generation. The paradox recognises the close relatives in the family as [re]turning to where the cognitive [emotional] strength truly belongs. A representative role of metaphor in the figurative language family is justified [only] in a homecoming. A justification of this role builds upon an open schema of the family: the nuclear and joint, extended and blended, large and small, in terms of cognitive embodiment—gene vs. genre. The figurative discourse, such as symbol, analogy, simile, metonymy, and even body language, euphemism, and neologism, follow a relationship similar to what we normally share within the family. The notion of the “nuclear” or “single parent” family is relatively simple, but we tend to follow loose definitions for a joint or extended family with parents, and hyphenate for a

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family “in-law”. The community is a wider relationship that Kittay [1987] implies in “the literal use” (p. 177). Weinrich [1958] extends community not to one, but to all languages; to the “world of images as an objective, substantial possession of metaphors within a community” (p. 227). In this context, while positioning the metaphor in its family for an inclusive methodological advantage, we must allow ourselves some cognitive-memetic convenience of theorisation. Thereon, we may generalise the role of metaphor in the figurative language family and identify its community inside the literal use. As such, the ubiquitous cultural transference of metaphor over all the world’s languages must support “the extensive ancestry of the cognitive approach” [Jakel, 1982, p. 9, italics added]. For the sake of convenience, I see the generic cohesion in metaphor as embracing diversity in figurative language. As the father’s symbolic homecoming embrace is generous and unconditional, there is a point in accepting and not rejecting diversity in figuration. Spitzer [2004] suggests the notion of an “umbrella metaphor” to cover diversity in simile, trope, and metonym. Similarly, “metaphorical idioms” are viewed as broadly conventional mental images, and as knowledge about images [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999]. A representative role of metaphor may therefore seek three homecoming embraces. The first takes up anecdotes, idioms, proverbs, and maxims, the story of the prodigal son being one such case. The second includes symbols, analogy, simile, metonym, understatement, irony, oxymoron, hyperbole and sarcasm, as well as memes, neologised phrases, slang, and slant. To the third, we can add body language, proxemics, tones, and undertones. A loosely conceptualised metaphor family of figurative relations and the ensuing arguments may not be all right or all wrong. A metaphor family is similar to families we are a part of; basically a relativistic social-cultural norm that prohibits strict criteria for membership size, and inclusion or exclusion,

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whilst we characterise relationships as genetic-generic (father and mother, brother and sister), pledged (wife and husband), hyphenated (step-parents and in-laws), or neologised (adopted and newfound), and so on. A figurative relativism does not divide the family norm because all unavoidable perspectival [in]cohesions, whether cognitive-linguistic, social-emotional, or bracketed-hyphened, are embodied within the paradox. 4.2.2. Diversity inside family A prodigal-prodigy conceptual overlap is undefined and perhaps immune to definition. This is a point the father raises against the disciplinary logic of the obedient son. For its illustrative, interpretative and transformative capacities, metaphor is closer to simile and symbols. Simile compares one entity to another, for example, how an atomic structure is like the universe. As in metaphor, the simile involves a transfer of an image from the Source Domain to the Target Domain; but unlike metaphor, in terms of comparison, it conceptualises explicit points as similarities. A demarcation of the two notions is unrewarding for paradoxical diversity within cognitive reflexivity and comprehension. Similarly, from varying viewpoints, irony and sarcasm create a linguistic sensitivity in the mainstream. As a result, journalistic angling, messages through body language, as well as slurring overtones and undertones, all render a simple description even more complex. But then, this is what irony and sarcasm are all about. In treating irony and metonymy as conceptual siblings of metaphor, Gibbs [1994] notes that: “irony is traditionally seen as the representativeness in metaphor that contrasts what is expected with what occurs or as a statement that contradicts the actual attitude of the speaker” (p. 359). In agreement with this opinion, we need to examine how and why irony implicitly serves as “our most powerful weapon in everyday speech: a device for concealing

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our true intentions, for avoiding responsibility for what we say” [Muecke, 1969, p. 13]. Gibbs [1994] argues further: The presence of irony, hyperbole, understatement and oxymora in the way we speak about our common experiences…our conceptualization of incongruous situations motivates the need for speech that reflects these figurative schemes of thinking. We can maintain and modify social relationships by recognizing incongruous situations and then commenting on them directly in ironic terms… [p. 397, italics added]

This argument can be extended to all inherent conceptual incongruities and paradoxical overlaps in figurative thought. Homophones and the different ways we spell and pronounce the same names also produce intuitive slants. Here, I refer back to the metaphor analysis in chapter one. In comparison with “health sector is a market” and “conflicts are territorial” we may find sarcasm and irony in expressions like “for good reason”. What is “good” can be either literal or metaphorical, and contingent on “the early ‘moments’ of comprehension” [Giora, 2002, p. 487]: the specific context of immediate utterance—body language, tone, and emphasis, all matter here. While “heart-burn” and “people would be cut down to size” appear as sarcasm and an idiom, any body language in devious grins, or abusive slang for a donor agency’s colleague in the native language, could reveal intuitive links which then accumulate. “Strings attached to the funding” [hinting at unfriendly donor aid conditions] is both symbolic and proverbial, as by tradition, large purses literally had strings. Yet, both market and strings are metonymies for money and capital, implying, among other monetary issues, foreign policy controls and economic-institutional trade-offs, respectively. With more examples, one could argue further how and why momentary cognitive viabilities across multiperspective overlaps make sense in interpretations rather than demarcations, even within syntactic parameters.

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Hence, for methodological convenience in sensemaking of implicit evidence, we must appreciate rather than avoid conceptual overlaps with related siblings, such as irony: “the perceived notion of an incongruity, or a gap, between an understanding of reality, or expectation of a reality, and what actually happens” [Gibbs, 1994]. Therefore, the scope for an implicit evidential gap must allow multi-perspective norms to settle in rather than unsettle the normative family generosity and acceptance despite individual-cognitive diversities. Even trying to segregate metaphor from popular cliché and proverbs is challenging and unproductive. It may not be practicable for a cognitive-methodology-metaphor to leave out connotation in idiomatic and proverbial jargons, symbols and anecdotes, and even memetic themes, because of culturalcognitive transference. The notion of family creates the scope for embracing cognitive-memetic relativism in membership size and contextual variation. This claim fits into the looselydefined and all-embracing norms of 21st century qualitative research [Denzin and Lincoln, 2005, final set of chapters]. 4.2.3. Probing in: Unapproachable, anticipatory Spitzer [2004] offers an interpretation of the idea of metaphor epistemology as an Aristotelian Telescope. In terms of a telescope’s capacity to observe the sun, Spitzer claims that a unique utility of metaphor allows for investigation into entities, such as the sun—that is, the “untouchable and unapproachable”; and “the return of conceptual metaphor to the humanities since the 1980s”, that I call the homecoming, as an enhanced “cognitive capital”. He finds such a utility of metaphor “to reprove blemishes on a perfect body…to which we can never have direct access” (p. 1-2). This view opens up prospects, initially of recognition, and subsequently, of explanations of the social researcher’s insights of implicit evidence which were hitherto [normatively] untouchable or

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unapproachable. This brings the metaphor to a parallel review of the hard or physical evidence (a perfect body!) that any mechanistic-scientific and partisan norms may have described erroneously or politically. As such, metaphor functions as do the probes of a clinical endoscopy or laparoscopy procedure for examining the internal organs of a human body which, in a realist sense, are “in there,” yet unapproachable and untouchable in a physicalphenomenological sense. Probing in the hidden, through the directional and conduit metaphor, is quite common: an inside job, in-camera briefing, as well as outsourced militancy, undercover or an underground operation, underworld mafia, backchannel diplomacy, and behind closed doors. A similar inbuilt iconicity in metaphor may help to create “reflective metaphorization” [Debatin et al, 1997]: a cognitive process that synthesises current thought along concurrent signs of past familiarities to create fresher additions and understandings: …anticipatory evidence and reflective metaphorization in rational discourse…can bridge the gaps between experience and thought, between imagination and concept, and between the new and the unknown…the iconicity of metaphor, which selectively evokes sensory perceptions and integrates them into meaningful constellations…conceptualization of experience but also the linkage of new to prior experience. [ibid. p. 2, italics added]

Towards the iconicity of metaphor, there appears a fair consensus in the information technology industry that normatively, or intuitively, chooses metaphors and symbols for creating a humanistic sense that is frequently amusing, to soften up the technical complexities. In this regard, metaphor overstretches both hardware and software technologies: virusinfection, the mouse, motherboard, search engines, surfing, and the smileys. The world-wide-web, which is the essence of Internet use, extends to, among others, software like Spider

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and the Deep Web. Similarly, waiting for our attention, most desktop monitors go to sleep. Google Scholar repeatedly instructs us to follow Isaac Newton’s ideals: “stand on the shoulders of giants”, making a point of academic lineage. In this way, we are bound by our instincts to produce evidential “linkage of new to prior experience” (ibid. p. 2). Building on probing in, we see how in straying off from the relativist norms and generic “variability” criteria (like the prodigal son), metaphor leads to the evidence hidden in the disparate variable, away from prevailing epistemological and ontological norms. Here, Richardson and St. Pierre’s [2005] claim that “language does not ‘reflect’ social reality but rather produces meaning and creates social reality” (p. 961). They argue how the choice of one metaphor over another creates a different methodological reality, as in “theory building” that extends to foundation, construction, deconstruction, and so on. A probing in [theory] building is perhaps more consistent in comparison with metaphors such as illness or story. This view suggests that only by selecting a consistent metaphor we can cognitively transform the entire research process. Replacing triangulation with crystal is not a mere change of phrase; it allows cognitive transformation “from the plane geometry of research to light theory” (p. 963), breaking through boundaries of the disciplinary genre of the metaphor. Crystallisation is an essentially scientific process, but allows for openness and diversity in perspectives and inbuilt reflexivity with which to theorise on social research in the crystal. As such, it allows an embodied representation of evidence, both physical and implicit. The cognitive schema is not confined to a method, or an angular perspective. The term crystal dissolves the three-cornered cognitive constructs of triangulation and the normative ideals of validity—three angles, perspectives, or methods, that are actually inconsistent because an emergent reflexivity in research fieldwork is not

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confined to only three methods [Abdullah, 2010]. In terms of “different colours, patterns, and arrays casting off in different directions” [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005, p. 963], crystallisation rejects limited emphasis from perspectives that are possibly partisan or spin-doctored. Crystallisation fits in to the prodigal-prodigy paradox: the prodigal—a limitless figurative reflexivity within prodigy—the cognitive metaphor, and how reflexive thought processes extend to directions: up and down; under and above; left and right; back and front. The physical aspects of the crystal, displayed in diversity— colours, patterns, and arrays, create anticipatory evidence in cognitive-memetic extensions, e.g. the colours in the human race, and patterns in philosophical and political-ideological divides, producing multiple arrays of literature. By substituting the metaphor, we refurbish or repair the method and transform perceptions of realities around us: the research setting, the subject/object of analysis, and even our own normative position. In the phrase crystal clear, we tend to suggest views that are transparent and open to all directions and angles of a social inquiry. Regarding the idea of dropping our tools in chapter three, our choice of a particular metaphor would only drop or reject a tool in terms of doing away with the method. We do not drop the [cognitive] methodology. As such, we retain the multi-perspective viability in our research, in terms of its purpose, justification, and even hypotheses, but allow one cognitive metaphor to take over from the other. Survival gadgetry in metaphor helps research methodology to work its way through embodied cognition. These claims highlight a re-emphasis on metaphor that has been in progress since the early 1980s, which follows up on, if not coincides with, postmodern and deconstructionist thought, by first explaining and eventually pervading it. As such, social and organisational analyses rested mainly on cognitive metaphor [Morgan 1986; Grant and Oswick, 1996;

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Clegg and Hardy, 2006]. Hence, the scope of our intellectual survival seems to take shape within a paradoxical recognition of “prodigy” in the metaphor [Abdullah et al, 2014]. 4.2.4. Objectivist-subjectivist rationality The sensitivity to prodigal-prodigy paradox builds upon the son’s individual-subjective travel experiences that embody an objective-rationalised return to the family. Here, I view the family as normative ideals and criteria, and the homecoming as getting back to these, whereby the experiential values no longer remain individual, but become embodied. The norms which reveal only the prodigal character, i.e. the conventional theory of metaphor, are aesthetically gratifying, but viewed as the same old wayward subjectivity in individualistic choices, which turn the strength of experiential wisdom into weakness. Because a cognitive-methodological utility of metaphor draws from instinctive strengths—both objective and subjective, metaphor’s contextual emergence incurs-concurs across all prodigal-prodigy times and spaces. It is beyond a politician’s media speech, or the fieldwork schedule and library hours of a researcher. As such, in social research practice, a prodigalwithin-prodigy paradox creates an intellectual-methodological convenience, i.e. an experiential-intuitive interactionism which is embodied across time-space contextual variation. This convenience makes possible an intellectual survival, in living according to poststructural and postmodern thought processes: rationalising and sustaining unique individual experiences concerning “all in data”-based methods, such as ethnographies, case studies, and idiographic inquiries [Folger and Turillo, 1999]. Here, embodiment philosophy explains how, despite all the openness that we want in our subjective experiences, the cognitive metaphor helps both to rationalise and sustain a social research inquiry. Towards an experiential synthesis of subjectivist within objectivist claim positions, the

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knowledge we produce is a mutually reinforced embodiment of both. In support of cognitive metaphor, Lakoff and Johnson [1980] are quite assertive: “We reject the objectivist view that there is absolute and unconditional truth without adopting the subjectivist alternative of truth” (p. 192). As such, in a world that is emergent and relativist, the prodigal-prodigy paradox helps us engage-disengage in cognitive negotiation, be that emotional, ethical, or aesthetic, and allows for a sustained sense of complexity. Lakoff and Johnson [1980] reassert: Metaphor…unites reason and imagination. Reason, at the very least involves categorization, entailment and inference. Imagination is one of the many aspects, involves seeing one kind of thing—what we have called metaphorical thought. Metaphor is thus imaginative rationality. [p. 192-193]

Our frequent choices in the metaphors of culture and system, for instance, signify the staying power of robust metaphors that sustain an objectivist-subjectivist sense over an extensive temporal and spatial coverage. Indubitably, these metaphors are everywhere in our social-organisational and technological lives. For their interpretive common-sense, these are no longer an expression of any [nonrepresentational] waywardness, but subjective-objective realities way beyond their respective histopathological and physiological genres. These have now become quite familial. Every time metaphor reinterprets it adds critical insights of complexity. An inclusivity or openness which we demand in cognitive-methodology-metaphor allows for a preferential choice towards a more consistent metaphor. Survival of the fittest rules a cognitive evolution of metaphor, allowing the context (social, cultural, and linguistic, etc.) to incur-concur over the course of viable reemergence. More importantly, a paradoxical [in]consistency in the prodigal-prodigy schema allows the cognitive-memetic regulation (or inclusion and exclusion criteria) to deny a paradox by laying claim to it.

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Hence, in terms of cognitive-memetic evolution, a choice of metaphor is provisory across time-space variability. For a lack of sufficient support of fresher and more critical insights, one metaphor “gives in” or “gives way” to one which makes better contextual sense. The cognitive-memetic life-cycle of metaphor resembles the human biological life-cycle. As in the case of humans, the conception, growth/retention, and maturity of metaphor is sustained in viable contexts, and ends up in an expiry when the contexts become inconsistent. This intuitive evolution creates a unique methodological utility. Through the progression of scientific sensemaking, we have been describing the earth as spherical, flat, and elliptical in our choices of terms; the marble, the pancake, and the egg, respectively. In July 2006, owing to its smaller size, the planet Pluto, the smallest in the solar system, was declassified as a dwarf. One metaphor gives in to another, but never dies. As a paradox, metaphor lives through methodology. As such, metaphor helps in the rationalization of, and cognitive adjustment to, objective-subjective truth-values— oscillating across time scales of seconds to millennia. The metaphor of the “solar system” has persisted for centuries, as most cognitive extensions of the term “solar” are validated intuitively in the cognition of the system. Similarly, most space-bound cognitive negotiations are equally evolutionary, as outcomes of broader social-cultural-linguistic contexts which we rationalise by assigning objective-subjective truthvalues to them—both intuitively and experientially. 4.2.5. Cognitive-linguistic minimalism Cognitive metaphor is minimalist common-sensemaking. Embodied cognition is minimalist intellect. As our sense of the world around us is inherently constrained by cognitive relativism or “bounded rationality” [Simon, 1957], we never have enough “quality” or “quantity” of evidence available for

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probing into the complexity under study. Metaphor assigns [common-sense] limits to cognitive-economic rationalities visà-vis open choices for emergent learning. In today’s fast growing big data-crunching age and its demands, cognitiveeconomic minimalism in metaphor helps us keep our sanity, and sustains our aesthetic and cognitive-linguistic superiority over the machine. In terms of minimalist common-sense, the prodigy in metaphor helps create an intellectual optimality by filtering through the prodigal surplus of random experiential evidence that would not qualify a robust [cerebral-intuitive] process of cognitive-economic viability. Among others, Tourangeau and Sternberg [1982] suggest that metaphor creates an interactive domain in which to study a subject from multiple angles through fleshing them out; in other words, when the choice of a particular angle enhances the conceptual schema inherent in the metaphor. However, when the prodigality in open-ended imagination fleshes out in thought experimentation, a prodigy within pulls imagination back—converging in the viabilities. This view is in support of conceptual blending [Fauconnier and Turner, 2002], whereby the cognitive limits of such convergence and divergence are embodied rather than “bounded”, solving the boundary problems of most dualists and pre-deconstruction relativists: …We perceive various things in the natural world as entities, often projecting boundaries and surfaces on them where no clear cut boundaries or surfaces exist naturally. [Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, pp. 161-162]

Metaphor leaves boundary demarcation, a challenging operational issue in fieldwork research, to the cognitive contexts of the researchers, who reflect, process, and expound “contextually viable” images over multiversal times and spaces [Abdullah, 2000a]. I view this as embodied boundary cognition of metaphor and disciplined imagination. In a cognitive-minimalist utility, metaphor incurs-concurs with a

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complexity in a range of bounded perspectives—socialpsychological, linguistic, political, and so on. Therefore, most debates over relativism, the boundaries of knowledge, ethics, and truth, in relation to structuralism and deconstructionism, possibly settle in embodied cognition. Similarly, a minimalist worldview in embodied cognition allows us to overcome the difficulty in “levels” of analysis, because the individual and institutional conceptual planes incur-concur within the same cognitive domain. This explains individual-institutional identities as one embodied cognitive variable. The prodigal son’s individual view of “autonomy” is embodied within the prodigious sense of a return to family—a “regulatory” institutional domain that sustains a minimalist worldview, cutting across the individual and institutional levels [Morgan, 1986; Abdullah, 2000a]. 4.2.6. Experiential-compliance syntheses The prodigal-prodigy paradox combines openness in thinking vis-à-vis experiential compliance. Critical insights developed through experiential and interactionist journeys, trigger back naturally towards a homecoming—a recognition of embodied methodological ideals. The notion of journeys I suggest here is embodied cognition of times and spaces: from a researcher’s sense of early childhood familiarity to evolved futuristic assumptions through metaphor for which I argue in chapter two. Such experiential-interactionist journeys create a pluralistic cognitive-linguistic and social-cultural synthesis. Jakel [1999] considers metaphors to be “multiversals” (p. 20), expanding on Weinrich’s [1976] view that: “different cultures may have surprisingly similar image fields” (p. 335). Hence, a sense of homecoming is within a time-space that is physically distant and socially diverse, yet instinctively nearer and more closely related. In this regard, a typically cognitive-linguistic

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and social-cultural sense of the mother or motherhood that is embodied in the metaphor of “nurturance” is multiversal. Aristotle’s appreciation of metaphor alluded to in the beginning of this chapter speaks of experiential syntheses in metaphor over millennia. He makes clear there is no shortcut to becoming an expert in metaphor usage: it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others, because such expertise builds either on a cerebral-intuitive prodigy or experientialinteractionist maturity in the prodigal tendency. In The Sociological Imagination, Mills [1959] claims experientialreflective synthesis to be an art of the social sciences. Strauss [1987] also considers experiential data “a conceptually dense and carefully ordered theory that is plausible, useful, and allows its own further elaboration and verification” (p. 11). In this regard, with the help of a priori insights, metaphor even allows theorising on the “hypotheses of plausible causal mechanisms” [Weick, 1989, p.11]; i.e. our emergent learning from thought trials, which is both intuitive and experientialinteractionist, and produces posteriori conclusions, however provisory. Here, Strauss adds that the data “in the head”, meaning the researcher’s cognitive schema, “should not be ignored because of the usual canons governing research” (p. 11). Gibbs [1999] expands on this view, recommending the value of taking metaphor out of our heads and contextualising it for improved sensemaking. I also find metaphor to be a resourceful interpreter. The mainstream notions such as the grounded theory [Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss, 1987; Layder, 1993; and others]; interpretative interactionism [Denzin, 2001; among others]; metaphorical insights as interpretative processes [Bailey, 1996]; contextual reflexivity [Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000]; and reflective metaphorization [Debatin, 1995], assert that data gathering, analysis, and description actually result from researchers’ day-to-day interactionist interpretations. Debatin

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[1995] claims that metaphor helps create a “linkage of new to prior experience” (p. 2), and: “…orients theory and research in one direction [and]…underlies the development of detailed models and research frameworks” (ibid. p.11). Simply, as a cognitive methodology, metaphor allows contextual analysis without a hardcore theory or any vocabulary-restricted reasoning. Metaphor picks up implicit evidence in the public opinion and popular media, and travels swiftly to “the corridors of power” to make a point. Even before a piece of key legislation is initiated, metaphor conveys its implications on public policy and helps in assessing public opinion, softly but promptly. Whilst it negotiates an opinion’s evidential density within a prodigal-prodigy schema, i.e. experientialcompliance, a minimalism in embodied cognition makes the process appear quite simple. 4.2.7. Robustness vis-à-vis perceptibility We regularly come across paradoxes and dilemmas when the inclusion and exclusion criteria paralyse the strength of a research method. In producing relevance, we miss the forest for the trees just as we miss the trees for the forest. In our efforts to unfold all details, we fail in precision, and in trying to be precise we tend to lose out on detail. Present-day social inquiry demands a method to be strong enough for us to live by both the extremes. On the one hand by stretching out our imagination to the limits, as in the case of crystallisation: “an infinite variety of shapes, substances, transmutations, multidimensionalities, and angles of approach” [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005, p. 963], but concurrently being able to converge back, complying with the research purpose. Hence, a return of the prodigal son must essentially come of prodigious learning from, and not giving in to, experiential overindulgence. In facing up to travel hardships (on intellectual journeys), such as the far-reaching and deep-seated comprehensions, the

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prodigal tendency of metaphor proves to be robust and thickskinned. By comparison, the prodigious insight thins down the travel adversities. In social research, we need to balance off both tendencies, with a view to gaining a methodological advantage which holds “thickness” and “thinness” together in data description. The prodigal element allows inclusive penetrability in deeply imbedded sensitivities with the help of methods like historiographies and thickly described case studies. The prodigy attends to methodological norms that qualify these as research “case studies”. As such, in bridging cognitive gaps metaphor shows how “an abstract concept’s thin, stripped down quality can actually provide rich insight” [Folger and Turillo, 1999, p. 742]. In most ethnographystyled thick descriptions, metaphor works around creating thin titles and headlines, as brief yet inclusive critical evaluations. This utility of metaphor is common in both academic and journalistic circles whereby thin and catchy slogans lead the thick data description. We frequently notice ironic placard jargon that draws media attention to public protests. Examples run into the millions. I give only two here. It is reported that Edward Lorenz’s choice of the phrase Butterfly Effect was a simple solution to his struggle with the title of a conference paper in 1972 on technical data and computing equations for modelling meteorological comprehension. Likewise, the 2003 UK media “retorting” to, and not merely “reporting” of, the Hutton inquiry controversy appears to have summed it up: initially, as Sexed Up, and later, the Whitewash? A retort using the whitewash metaphor has a claim in political history—an embodiment of experiential prodigality in a return to intuitive prodigy. An earlier use of this metaphor was a similar retort to the official inquiries into the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy in 1963, in a series of books entitled: Whitewash [Weisberg, 1965; 1966, 1967; 1993]. As these writings criticised the likely state cover-ups, there is a

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time-space embodied cognition of these with the criticism reported against the Hutton inquiry in the UK. A contextual sense in social inquiries also speaks through the indigenous choice of metaphor. Social research into cases of regional disparity—political-economic, ethnic, or geographical, for instance, is frequently criticised for its use of narrative that is insensitive to local realities. In this regard, preset barriers explained as sub-cultural, normative, linguistic, and topographic, usually sweep the richness of the “native” setting under the rug of their own [common-sense] making. As a result, most ethno-methodological accounts of indigeneity face the criticism of lacking scientific significance. My PhD story in chapter one is one such example. In this respect, metaphor produces not only an original image of complexity, but allows context-friendly embodiment across multiversal time-space. A locally-generated perspective creates a local metaphor and also interprets it. As such, metaphor works as a handy soft evaluation tool, usually for case studies. Also, in identifying and interpreting any regional conflicts, metaphor brings to the fore the cultural, social, or political-economic sensitivities in question. By allowing contextual consistency, metaphor puts up with most linguistic biases, cultural values, and social norms. It keeps negotiating the scope and evolution of a reconciliation effort in the native cognitive-cultural parameters which originally created such inconsistencies. Hence, a prodigal tendency in the metaphor takes up case studying to evolve “indigenous social science research” and aims at exploring the lost identities of indigenous settings [e.g. Smith, 1999; Brady, 2005; Kovach, 2009]. Richardson and St. Pierre [2005] question, and put to test, the criteria for qualitative researching vis-à-vis a methodological survival: “How can I make my writing matter? How can I write to help speed into this world a democratic project of social justice?” (p. 967). In this regard, if the prodigal tendency pledges some

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access to implicit contexts and finds answers to these queries, a prodigy within serves as inbuilt cognitive criteria to ensure a social and moral purpose to “return” not only to our research norms, but also to our writing, as a method of social inquiry. 4.2.8. Evidence in the deviance! The prodigality of metaphor leads to intellectual surplus and overindulgence. The poetic and rhetorical sense produced inside the divergent and disembodied norms of the traditional theory of metaphor is against the ideals of the cognitive theory of metaphor. Idiomatically, overindulgence leads to hitting rock bottom, that is, a position of extreme intellectual expense, when there is little left to compromise, or to lose. The prodigal son loses his self-esteem, status, money, shelter, and finally food; all is lost, in a reversal of the classical hierarchy of human needs for survival. Only one hope is left, in the homecoming. This imagery develops the metaphor’s ubiquitously excessive figurative utility (and an unviable methodological rationality), in the prodigal style, to the point of being addictive in at least two ways. First, an apparently “good life”-style is generally linked to material excess. Data consumerism and fetishism are revealed in the visual-physical or empirical logic: the sensuality in big data-crunching, sizzling “steaks”, and gambling “stakes”, that likely degrade extended family values and social-moral responsibility. Some normative failings in the social media like a visual obsession with Facebook, Instagram, and selfish “selfies” are all-pervasive. Many millions of pornographic websites also speak for a lifestyle that induces compulsive addictions and disorders such as hyper-sexuality [Carroll et al, 2008]. Second, the “compulsive” pretexts of the scientific or mechanistic norms create an addictive culture of politicised perversion of evidence in data [Denzin, 2013; Smith and Hodkinson, 2005; among others]. A display of this sort of

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evidential decadence is quite common in “intelligent” bodyimplants and “political” facelifts of empirical data which are not real, but play up hyper-sensuality in the mass media. In both cases, any overdose can cause dysfunction and even “the death of data” [Denzin, 2013]. Conceivably, it is metaphor’s prodigy that embodies the prodigal [intellectual] extreme to bounce back within a sense of “social and moral justice and transformation” and try to rescue the data. Embodied cognition of a shared social-moral resolve produces a self-assured homecoming. This view is supported in a series of symbolic interactionist studies in the USA on addictive alcoholism and its effects on individual behaviour, societal norms, and rehabilitation [Denzin, 1987a; 1987b; 1992]. Such studies are humanistic and methodical, and serve a fitting case of responsible social research that I claim to be metaphor’s methodological-reformative utility, to be possible only within a deviant-compliant paradox. Metaphor’s divergent character is equally creative, and finds support in cognitive psychology. If a divergence results in improved problem solving [Frost, 1992], an intuitive sense in playful divergence “promotes freedom and self-expression” [White, 2008, p. 7]. Runco [2007] considers such playfulness to be a form of creativity that, in the case of metaphor, explains the honing theory and conceptual blending. Nogales [1999] also views an insightful metaphor as a “powerful tool for provoking catharsis or some other desired emotional reaction” (p. 3). In such cases, metaphor can create a “surprise value” [Siegleman, 1990; in Gibbs, 1994]; a case in point is the homecoming event—a welcoming of the prodigal son, the father’s compassion and festivity, and the obedient son’s resentment—all emotional responses. This prodigal deviance, viewed in light of a joyful but surprising acceptance, follows Basso’s concept of creativity [1976, in Kittay, 1987]:

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…creativity in metaphor consists in the use of existing structure to forge new ones…what distinguishes the two more sharply…is that the former is achieved through adherence to grammatical rules while the latter is achieved by breaking them. [p. 117]

A plausible creativity in metaphor may therefore be within a deviance-hope-surprise cognitive schema, which I discussed earlier as probing into the unapproachable and anticipatory. A heuristic approach to surprise is quite familiar. The entire Archimedean Eureka legacy builds on this. However, Gibbs [1994] has concerns about it: “metaphor may play a heuristic role in early scientific discovery; science might find metaphor to contaminate the precise meanings it attempts to discover” (p. 170). Such misgivings signify the value of deviance along with a methodical discipline in the initial stages of a social inquiry. Richardson [1994], and particularly Bailey [1996], seek metaphor’s creative role through to stages of data analysis and interpretation, i.e. when the data evolves over matured insights. In the time-space contexts of the research stages, a “prodigal-prodigy heuristic” lets data collection and interpretation incur-concur and evolve: from an absorbed library index searching, to the Eureka bath-tub episodes, and from formal and high profile interviews to lavatory humour. A deviant-creative utility of metaphor helps to interpret complexity with inductive-deductive heuristic thinking into paradoxes such as addiction-recovery, repulsion-compulsion, and divergence-convergence. Metaphor facilitates heuristic learning (which is viable and insightful) to glean a deeper sense of the implicit data contexts by violating traditional norms, but also renders it possible to bounce back creatively from rock bottom. Here, a “prodigy within” works its way up through critical and emergent insights. If the prodigal incurs creativity, the prodigy concurs within a diligently discovered when, how, why, and where, to bounce back from.

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Violating the family’s [relativist] norms is not simple. It risks plunging one to rock bottom. Even when the father welcomes the prodigal son back into the family, the obedient son would not value the brother’s transformational recovery, but only dredge up his deviance. Perhaps the obedient son, in Denzin’s [2013] opinion, follows “a 21st century neoliberal audit culture anchored in a postpositivism that will not go away” (p. 355). For cognitive-methodology-metaphor to value deviance, it is essential that we value the errant experience, in order to combine it with the normative discipline. Simply put, the implicit evidence we seek is within deviance! 4.3. Within: Embodied norms of social research The prodigal-prodigy schema allows implicit evidence to build upon critical, experiential, and emergent commonsensemaking options, over [re]interpretation of the empirical evidence. In a way, this schema explains the reversal theory in psychology that pairs up extreme personality or motivational domains [Apter, 1989, and others]. However, I emphasise an embodiment, not an isolation of the reversal tendencies. In this schema, I do not contest, engage in, or disengage from, Plato’s carnal vs. spiritual sense, or a Freudian sense of the manifest vs. the latent, or Carl Jung’s notion of individuation. I only posit a unique paradox that presumably follows Plato’s argument of the mutuality of opposites. Also, the prodigal son is not a sexist view but a paradox explaining the human mindset. Jeffrey Archer’s The Prodigal Daughter [1982] helps my claim through fiction. But Archer’s story identifies prodigal-prodigy embodiment in the lead character that he, in a disembodied fashion, calls the prodigal; perhaps, wrongly! In noticing behavioural-cultural tendencies in the metaphor, we, rather unconsciously, induce ourselves to methodological norms that are sensitive to human stigma, and create images of human dignity and progress. The

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paradox probably lets go of many social research fallacies, in actually living by these, helplessly, but diligently. Importantly, the prodigal-within-prodigy paradox serves as an intrinsic cognitive norm to help negotiate incurrenceconcurrence in the process of social research: waywardness within rationality, subjectivity within objectivity, context within content, thickness within thinness, and deviance within compliance. With particular reference to the discussion in chapter two on “variable analysis” in social research, metaphor’s prodigal character explains all divergence in the disparate variable, namely the broader socio-linguistic and memetic insinuations, whilst the prodigy converges within the generic cognition of the same. A far-reaching prodigal strength in metaphor cuts across the disciplinary norms, and a prodigy within compliance brings an embodied homecoming towards the scope of responsible social research methodology.

CHAPTER FIVE “SINGING THE SOUL BACK…”! AN EMBODIED HOMECOMING

He who desires the soul, who plays with the soul, who makes love with the soul, who attains ecstasy in the soul, becomes his own master, and wanders at will through the worlds. But they, who know otherwise, are dependent. They dwell in perishable worlds and cannot wander at will. [Chandogya Upanishad, cited from: Singing the Soul back home: Shamanic wisdom for every day, p. 21: Matthews, C. 2002; italics added, and a phrase from the title quoted for the heading of this chapter]

5.1. Metaphorical Imagination: Introduction Building on the theoretical arguments given in chapter four, I now present Metaphorical Imagination (MI) as a cognitive-methodology-metaphor that unfolds and reinterprets implicit insights through the course of social research. I refer to the methodological salience of MI in at least four ways. First, MI is an embodied cognition of thought trials that incurs-concurs through intuitive and emergent reasoning, and interprets metaphorical-paradoxical truth-values that lead to Implicit Evidence (IE). We can compare this process with the mainstream stages of initial research questions, hypothesis development, discussion, and data collection and analysis. Second, MI rejects dualism in social research by enacting two opposing yet complementary identities of the metaphor— a prodigy-within-prodigal, to take up the challenge of variable analysis (both generic and disparate), unfolding deep-seated contextual complexity. The prodigal-prodigy identities incur-

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concur within “the opposites” paradox, and interpret cognitive values that are wayward-disciplined, extravagant-minimalist, impulsive-rational, and deviant-compliant. Third, MI allows body-soul embodiment of qualitativepersonal reasoning in the context of quantitative-impersonal analysis, again, creating a normative balance which is required in an intuitive-experiential-interactionist approach for responsible social research. MI is not to replace, but rather to foster and sustain mainstream empiricism1. Fourth, MI treats metaphor and imagination as embodied cognition that is ubiquitous, creative, and dynamic, such as the yin and yang. Imagination is unrestrained when lacking cognitive-memetic influence of the metaphor; a conception, and subsequent extension of the metaphor is unviable without imagination. A cognitive synergy produced in the paradox allows reasoning to evolve over contextual reinterpretations. 5.2. MI: Rationale Metaphor is simply the source of all human reasoning: “eliminating metaphor would eliminate philosophy” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 129]. Metaphor and imagination are our finest intellectual resource. They have both challenged, and 1

Here, I refer to Socrates calling himself midwife of the soul, in taking up the responsibility for seeking truth(s) in the philosophical discourse. To that role, I add surrogacy and fostering of the soul, to examine how philosophy serves its purpose of seeking the “intuitive” truth(s). As a surrogate methodology, MI could prove to be viable in (re)producing truth-values in the intuitive if not an empirical sense [Abdullah, 2010]. It may assist in conceiving and delivering evidence when and where mainstream empiricism fails in inconsistent settings. MI could produce viability in conceptions, corresponding to complexity and taking over from empirical methods, to help surrogate mother-intellect recourse, reinterpret, and reproduce. Hence, surrogacy is embodiment only in a limited sense. Physically, socially, emotionally, and even ethically, it is painstaking. It is not an ideal choice, yet rewarding in some ways.

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yet enabled, our cognitive capacities, across all times and spaces; helping to rationalise poetics and philosophy as much as industrial robotics and medical discoveries. Embodied cognition of the metaphor and imagination in MI is therefore ubiquitous, emergent, and intuitive-experiential: We acquire a large system of primary metaphors automatically and unconsciously, simply by functioning in the most ordinary of ways in the everyday world—from our earliest years. We have no choice in this. [p. 47, Lakoff and Johnson, 1999]

This view is similar to conceptual blending [Fauconnier and Turner, 2002] and universal conflation [Grady, 2005]; MI only adds a methodological value by justifying and validating the role of cognitive synergy, regulation, and evolution. Polanyi [1967] would probably call MI “a responsible act” of philosophical hermeneutics. I see an inherent linkage of MI with a cognitive-hermeneutic compliance, whereby an embodiment serves the purpose of interpreting the tacit sense, claimed as something inevitable: …suppose that tacit thought forms an indispensable part of all knowledge then the ideal of eliminating all personal elements of knowledge would, in effect, aim at the destruction of all knowledge. The ideal of exact science would turn out to be fundamentally misleading and possibly a source of devastating fallacies. [p. 20, Polanyi, 1967]

Hence, towards embodiment of knowledge, MI does not limit when and where a prodigal identity ends, and how and why the prodigy begins. Concerning the norms of impartiality and ethical responsibility, MI does not hold one identity to be any better in comparison to another. In “establishing contact with a hidden reality” (ibid. p. vii), MI draws strength within a divergence and convergence of human knowledge. MI follows Immanuel Kant’s view that perception with no conception is blind and conception without perception is

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empty. In MI, the contributory cognitive domains of metaphor and imagination not only coexist, but also co-survive. By dissolving the body-soul dualism of evidence in social inquiry, MI creates mutuality in access to physical-visible, intuitive-hidden, and generic-disparate evidence, (re)enacting emergent and consistent domains. Johnson [1987] probably justifies MI as a “metaphorical elaboration of image schemata that creates, explains, and regulates cognitive constructs” (p. 73). Ricoeur [1978] expands further on this: …a psychology of imagination has to be integrated into a semantics of metaphor…a bad psychology of imagination in which imagination is conceived as a residue of perception prevents us from acknowledging the constructive role of imagination. [p. 153]

Ricoeur would even consider “feelings” to be embodied in the semantics of metaphor, calling imagination a “function of schematization of the new predictive congruence” (ibid.). Miall [1982] overviews how we connect the “semantic” sense with the “imaginative” sense to create contextual insights, providing new meanings, viable constructs, cultural transference, and systematicity. An intuitive contextual sense is created within rigorous conceptual-causation embodiment of settings and events vis-a-vis the researcher’s feelings that I discuss in chapter four, as the prodigal-prodigy paradox. 5.3. MI: Time-space embodiment If metaphor evolves human reasoning through time-space embodied cognition, imagination permits that to happen: Imaginative projection is a principle means by which the body (i.e. the physical experiences and its structures) works its way up into the mind (i.e. mental operations)…By the term ‘body’ I want to stress the non-propositional, experiential, and figurative dimensions of meaning and rationality…this produces a

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geography of human experience. [pp. xxxvi-vii, Johnson, 1987; italics added]

Here, it is essential to expand on how MI helps to embody a spatiotemporal cognition that is intuitive-within-empirical— producing Johnson’s [ibid.] geography of human experience, towards a methodological advantage: First, regarding time, MI shapes metaphorical content to incur-concur within emergent imaginative contexts, opening up to rigorous thought trials of contextual complexity. Lakoff and Johnson’s [1999] claim of Time Is a Spatial Dimension metaphor permits explaining the present, past, and future as time domains that concur-incur within spaces. In this regard, time regulates thought trials by producing transformative (re)interpretations held within cognitive-memetic spaces: (i) past interactions—memories, experiences, and vocabularies, and the sensitivities we assign to these; (ii) present emergent contexts—the ground realities and anxieties about shared human purpose(s) and empathy; and (iii) future ideals and presumptions—the shared visions, dreams, and hopes. Further, as we measure the time domain (whether linear, biological, or cosmological) through space, and explain space across a timeframe, both are embodied cognition. As time is dependent on events, and events dependent on time “we cannot measure time in itself…we can only define time to be that which is measured by regular iterated events” [p. 154, Lakoff and Johnson, 1999]. In this context, a significant feature of Weinrich’s metaphor model [quoted in Jakel, 1999] is the hypothesis of metaphor necessity: “we cannot refer to time without speaking metaphorically” [1963, p. 316]. Hence, in explaining a social research process, the empirical here and now sense creates only a generic (as opposed to disparate) and disembodied “variability” of space and time. Secondly, with regard to space, Johnson’s [1987] “image schemata” allows for cognitive spaces across experiences in

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time—past, present, and future, explaining how MI carries our minds and (because our minds are embodied) our bodies across all times and spaces. Shared times and spaces validate our meanings and interpretations as universal. Jakel’s [1993] overview of the work of Immanuel Kant, Hanz Blumenberg, and Harald Weinrich supports the conceptual basis of MI— adding to it a space dimension, by extending the imaginative context across the metaphorical content. Jakel refers to Kant’s [1781] notion of true knowledge as symbolic sensualisation that blends conceptual understanding and sensual intuition. For his intense interest in analogy and symbolism, Kant would claim: “…I can achieve a relational conceptualization of things that are utterly unknown to me” (p. 14 in Jakel, 1999: italics added). Jakel refers to Blumenberg’s [1960] notion of metaphorology to suggest metaphor’s spatial dimension as the key to a contextualised meaning: to “…get at the substructure of thought, at the subsoil, the nutrient solution to systematic crystallization” (p. 11, italics added). Here, metaphorology orients us to enact the world around us as a cognitive space. Here, Jakel’s position of a cognitive space which is relevant to MI is Weinrich’s “image fields” [1958] that I call the field theory of metaphor. Interestingly, the notion of image fields covers image donors and image recipients—the same way as the Source and the Target Domains of cognitive metaphor, allowing cognitive metaphorologists to carry out a “systematic investigation” (p. 285, ibid.). Weinrich [1958] further claims: …every metaphor is rooted in the image field…in fact, every word could take a metaphorical meaning, every matter can be addressed metaphorically, and imagination knows no bounds. [p. 286, ibid]

Putting together Weinrich’s [1958] notion of the universal metaphor community (that I call a cognitive-spatial-memetic domain), and Jakel’s [1999] idea of the multiversal, one can

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claim that: “image fields belong to the metaphor world view of a whole culture” (p. 287). Here, Weinrich argues further that an image translation is not restricted to just an individual interpretation, but viewed as the image field, described by a wider community of languages, with only a “cultural deficit”, i.e. contextual limitations. Elsewhere, Weinrich [1976] adds: …even between cultures there may be surprisingly similar image fields, which then would give voice to certain anthropologically basic experiences of all mankind. [p. 335]

In Apter’s [1982] view, metaphor produces a cognitive synergy that I discuss in chapter one under “turf, money, and ego”. In our choice of such multiversal metaphor or an image field, it is likely that our intuitive truth-seeking stimuli enact experiential syntheses—embodying cognitive times-spaces, to help share Johnson’s [1987] geography of human experience. 5.4. MI: Methodological compliance As all scientific-empirical discoveries have resulted from imaginative skills, Gentner [1982] considers scientific model building to be a kind of substitution theory. In MI, metaphor’s individual prodigal-experiential tendency is embodied within a multiversal intuitive-prodigy. In this regard, to claim a link between metaphorical compliance, disciplined imagination, and cognitive modelling, I refer to some views in systems and organisational sciences. Tsoukas [1991] finds metaphor to be quite useful in cognitive makeovers: “…initially inevitable but eventually detrimental to theoretical development” (p. 566). Weick [1989] claims a utility of metaphor in the process of initial drilling that leads to cognitive transformation, whilst providing “the initial insights leading to the hypotheses of plausible causal mechanisms” (p. 13). Nelrich [2005] thinks that good metaphors expand the mind and fire up imagination to create “cognitive and possibly neurological bonds between

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conceptual and mental domains” (p. 2). Towards compliance, embodied cognition in MI enacts viability in intuitive and multi-referent perspectives, to produce what I claim in chapter four to be a paradoxical incurrence-concurrence: …imagination lies at the crux where perception, memory, idea generation, emotion, metaphor and social interaction intersect and interact. [Nelrich, 2005, p. 3, italics added]

Moreover, in endorsing a role of disciplined imagination in theory building, Weick [1989] criticises mainstream practice: Methodological strictures that favour validation in theory construction de-emphasize the contribution that imagination makes, and diminishes the importance of ‘alternative theorizing’ like mapping, conceptual development, and speculative thought. [p. 516]

Weick [1999] also describes imaginative reflexivity “as a response to paradigm wars and postmodernism” [1999, p. 803]. This shows how theory-driven reflexivity may bring discipline in random cognition and create viable sensemaking options through the course of social inquiry: “when theorists selectively modify some of these components of imagination” (ibid). Also, by seeing metaphor as a cognitive instrument that we usually substitute with a research method and tool, we recreate a cognitive transformation in imagination. Folger and Turillo [1999] consider the speculative aspect of imagination as “a technology… crucial to theory development” (p. 742). Towards a reductionist utility of imagination, they consider narrative simulations to be the soft models of speculative thought trials similar to the hard computer-based simulations. Still, for embodiment in MI as the normative position, I do not divide the method to qualify what is Implicit Evidence and what is not. The divisions take us back to the objectivitysubjectivity impasse that I discuss in chapter three. MI seeks the middle road—a position that balances preunderstanding

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and understanding—alethic hermeneutics2, that: “dissolves the polarity between subject and object into the primordial and original situation of understanding characterised instead by a disclosive structure… revelation of something hidden” [Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000 p. 57; emphasis original]. In this regard, the prodigal-prodigy norms in MI produce a sense of social [research] responsibility—an intuitive-experiential compliance—a preunderstanding within understanding, and a priori within posteriori, across cognitive times and spaces. 5.5. MI: Cognitive hypotheses Intuitive and experiential reasoning is established on the basis of cognitive metaphor hypotheses. Gibbs [1994, citing Ortony, 1975] outlines three features of metaphor hypotheses, which, in comparison to typically literal or empirical formats, create an embodied cognitive-methodological organisation3: Inexpressibility hypothesis: Metaphor conveys ideas that are difficult to comprehend or express literally, such as an emotional and conceptual paradox, a dilemma, or a myth. It unfolds Implicit Evidence through critical insights, for 2

Alvesson and Skoldberg [2000] discuss the subfields underlying this concept, which I find closer to my arguments: existential hermeneutics by Heidegger and Gadamer; poetic hermeneutics by Ricoeur and others; and hermeneutics of suspicion by Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. 3 These hypotheses are not exhaustive. From the tenets of cognitive metaphor theory, Jakel [2002] suggests nine metaphor hypotheses: (1) Ubiquity: pervasiveness in ordinary discourse; (2) Domain: linking the Source to Target Domain; (3) Model: capacity for multiple contextual interpretations; (4) Diachrony: scope for integration and systematicity; (5) Unconditionality: openness regarding directions, times, and spaces; (6) Invariance: no perceptive variation in basic format from the Target to Source Domain; (7) Necessity: coherence of abstract, inaccessible, and complex domains; (8) Creativity: a consistently regulated heuristic utility; and (9) Focusing: adjustable but focused on the Target Domain.

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instance, calling a paradoxical economic-cultural necessity a dependency syndrome [Abdullah, 2000a]. Compactness hypothesis: Metaphor interprets complexly shaped ideas through minimalist intellect. For instance, the way we reduce conceptual density in challenges of interagency collaboration by comparing these to eternal conflicts, as in turf, money, and ego [Abdullah, 2000a]. Vividness hypothesis: Metaphor conveys explicit images, such as fetishist or humourist rationality. For example, calling an inflated, shallow, and duplicitous healthcare report, intellectual prostitution [Abdullah, 2000a]. In terms of MI hypotheses, the Dependent Variables and Independent Variables of an empirical study may correspond to Source Domain and Target Domain of the cognitive metaphor, respectively. As the Dependent Variable is influenced by an Independent Variable, the Target Domain characterises its Source Domain; for instance, turf as a Source Domain identifies and extends to Target Domains, such as the cultural, ideological, or institutional turfs. In distinguishing a metaphorical sense from the literal, and the prodigal identity from prodigy, these hypotheses serve as a cognitive interface of the MI methodology. As discussed earlier, it is not only impossible but indeed, undesirable, to demarcate the prodigal and prodigy identities. In this regard, irrespective of the number, these hypotheses serve a unique methodological paradox that tends to customise an intuitiveexperiential sensemaking of evidence in a manner similar to seasoning or marinating in the culinary art. 5.6. MI: Conceptual plane The MI plane embodies at least three cognitive processes: intuitive-experiential reasoning; paradoxical thought trials,

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and; emergent interpretations. Among other choices that may explain the MI plane as such, I discuss the Jigsaw Puzzle. First, in terms of intuitive-experiential reasoning, the puzzle pieces serve as contextual stimuli. Most beginner-level jigsaws come in square and rectangular shapes; therefore, we begin disciplining our imagination in a square or rectangular format: creating cognitive limits of the MI plane to four corners and staying within these. Hence, a search for corner pieces is a priori reasoning that is intuitive for novices and experiential for grandmasters. This is how we distinguish the jigsaw MI plane and its ensuing cognitive processes, intuitive or experiential, from MI planes in other choices, such as a maze or games of Scrabble, chess, or poker. Second, paradoxical thought trials begin by arranging pieces within the MI plane through sustained cognitions. In the world map jigsaw puzzle, we symbolically link the light blue coloured pieces to oceans, brown to mountains, and green to the plain areas. All trials take place across two positions: a priori (induction) and posteriori (deduction), and follow an intuitive-experiential reflexivity. The central claim in my choice of the jigsaw MI plane is that the existence of every piece of the puzzle on the conceptual plane is evidence of its one and only place that we do not know of, but are able to locate through an emergent sense, whether intuitive or experiential, or both. The location hidden in a symbolic code would never mean it was unapproachable. And we only must discover, and not invent or twist, the [location of] evidence. An intuitive or experiential failure, that is temporal, to fit in the pieces exactly, does not prove the inexistence of spaces as evidence. Also, we code difficulty levels in the density (i.e. number of pieces) and format (incongruent constructs) of the puzzle that correspond to a mainstream research domain and scales of complexity in its conceptual framework. However, a four-cornered frame for a [cognitive] methodology would

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remain unchanged. Whether a jigsaw puzzle is of four or 1000 pieces, a four-cornered cognitive frame and intelligently designed evidential spaces for all pieces are always the same. Third, regarding emergent interpretations, an intuitivist or experientialist may take only a few minutes to complete a jigsaw, whilst others may take hours or days. Many would just give up. The key is in the ability to think metaphorically; which, according to Aristotle, cannot be learned from others. Here, we need to examine Implicit Evidence in terms of the notions of creativity and discovery. Creativity is the prodigal. It is the means. It is described as the expert level in Dreyfus’ model [reported in Flyrbjerg, 2001] that typifies creative insight with coherence, holism, synchronicity and intuition— concurrently. Where and when (empiricist here and now) any disciplinary limits are imposed, creativity is no longer there. Creativity is in the means that lead to a wider range of evidential options across consistent thought trials. It may even take one to rock bottom, but cannot, as a paradox, tell when and where to bounce back from. Discovery is the prodigy. It is the ends. It is [within] an emergent sense of bouncing back. Importantly, discovery holds both an a priori position, such as the Newtonian4 apple fall (albeit a presumptuous story), and a posteriori position, as in the Archimedean Eureka. As such, discovery-within-creativity enacts an embodied cognition that is distinguishable, but, paradoxically, inseparable. Further, for a methodological homecoming to result out from reasoning

4

Isaac Newton was well-known for his intuitive trials that embodied across empirical “events”. Methodologically, the apple fall was just one such event. John Maynard Keynes [1947] gives Newton a homage: “his peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen straight through it…due to his muscle of intuition being the strongest and most enduring…Newton could hold a problem in his head for hours and days and weeks until it surrendered to him its secrets”. [italics added to emphasise embodied cognition]

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that is fulfilling yet restrained, MI engages in, and disengages from, multidisciplinary norms. In the subsections below, I discuss these three cognitive processes further. 5.6.1. Intuitive-experiential [heuristic] reasoning The intuitive-experiential reasoning in MI is explained by the contextual patterns of our social research conceptions visà-vis their interrelationships that we comprehend, try out, and unfold. In this regard, we tend to interpret the presumably quantifiable generic variable within a qualitative variability from the surplus stimuli—the disparate variable—a wide ranging [cognitive-memetic] reflexivity in metaphorical hints, body language, and slants. A disparate emergence is enacted by anecdotes, idioms, ironies, similes, or other symbolic notes that we instinctively hold in our past experiences. In this way, an interpretational bias or contextual inconsistency is actually examined across an [embodied] intuitive-experiential capacity of heuristic probing, which I shall now discuss. The term heuristic shares its etymology with the ancient Greek word Eureka that means “I have found it”. While a heuristic modelling of the metaphor has been studied as a methodical schema [Black, 1962; Tsoukas, 1991], a heuristic function of metaphor is also approved of in social psychology [Moustakos, 1990]. In MI, if a prodigal sense of creativity is meant for setting a direction, the prodigious stimuli within this direction, create a heuristic probing sense to discover the unapproachable and anticipatory evidence that is likely to be out there, whether provable or not. Therefore, a heuristic in metaphor serves as a stimulant to discovery-within-creativity. The creativity component only eases up evidential complexity en route, as the means, not the ends, to Implicit Evidence. The ends in a heuristic discovery are provisory; because heuristic probing continues on to contest the (re)interpretations across

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emergent metaphorical insights. In this way, a heuristic brings [cognitive-memetic] viability into the choice and extension of a metaphor: to “transfer knowledge from the source domain to the target domain” [Tsoukas, 1991, p. 14]. It helps the Source Domain of metaphor to converge within diversity of the [prodigal] Target Domain, allowing testable hypotheses in a minimalist cognitive time-space—the [prodigious] return. By allowing fresher insights for plausibility vis-à-vis minimalist intuitive choices, a heuristic probing even replaces or reworks the MI plane which it initially builds upon. In this way, MI serves both as a systemic science and a creative art of discovering hidden evidence, across tendencies that characterise the prodigal-prodigy paradox. The intuitiveexperiential reasoning corresponds to a clinical endoscopic procedure of social science research. The heuristic guides the methodical camera movement into the internal body organs. The reflexive insights work as the camera vision. Creativity is in the means by which we move in the camera, to seek the evidence that we anticipate and approach. The discovery can be either a normal finding (presence of no evidence) or a pathological finding (presence of evidence). Here, I refer to the Silver Blaze mystery probed by Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional character), and reported as a case by Weick [1999]. Holmes could solve the mystery of a stolen racehorse by probing not what had happened as a chain of events, but the paradox, by what did not happen. The dog in the stable did not bark! The probing insight was divergent but creative—noticing an [in]significant event—the silent dog; that eventually led to discovering, i.e. suspecting the person whom the dog would not bark at. Evidence of no evidence! A heuristic function allows a revisit of the MI plane, and to move out from the jigsaw puzzle and choose another plane, such as the games of Scrabble, chess, or poker. A shift in MI plane by a more viable metaphor is possible, but a shift in

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methodological-normative reasoning is not. The choice of a game of Scrabble means replacing the jigsaw pieces with A-Z letter tiles that are drawn out randomly, allowing the cognitive processes to create an altered route to an intuitive-experiential sense. In Scrabble, the density is stable, as the number of tiles is 100, to be spread across 225 possible spaces. Here, in a comparison with jigsaw abstractions, the complexity levels correspond to intuitive-experiential skills of the players in a tactful positioning of the tiles for the maximum score and not allowing favourable openings for the opponent. In the game of Scrabble, the intuitive-experiential logic incurs-concurs an inbuilt-randomised chaos the players negotiate to live by. 5.6.2. Thought Trials: Source and target domains System is perhaps the most widely used metaphor I have come across. Its cognitive strength and convenience is evident in ubiquity, consistency, and evolution across multiversal times and spaces. Its strength is not built upon a particular academic discipline, for which reason, I explain system as a schema for thought trials in MI. I refer to Beer’s systems modelling [1965; 1966; 1984] and its application to metaphor [Tsoukas, 1991]. I expand on how “system” continues to be a consistent cognitive metaphor that, for Beer [1965], embodies the world, the flesh, and the metal as its prerogatives. In another place, Beer [1966] also offers an interesting view on system as an image and as a cognitive transformation model: A scientific model is a homomorphism onto which two different situations are mapped and which actually defines the extent to which they are structurally identical. What is dissimilar about original situations is not reflected in the mapping, because the transformational rules have not specified an image in the set the model constitutes for irrelevant elements in the conceptual sets. [p.113]

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A metaphor produces homomorphism in creating cognitive [structural] maps, for instance, by characterising the earth as: Fragile, Handle with Prayer. We drop the mountains and the oceans as lower order relations or dissimilar cognitive maps, emphasising the identical and higher order sense of ecological empathy. Here, towards systemic sensemaking, disembodied philosophies suggest cognitive mapping across two positions, induction and deduction: the a priori and the posteriori. Beer’s [1966] model helps us to recognise a transformational utility of metaphor in yet another way: the thought trials over MI plane holding the a priori position to correspond with the Source Domain of metaphor, and posteriori to correspond only with the homomorphic cognitions in the Target Domain [Tsoukas, 1991; Abdullah, 2005a; 2005b; 2006]. Here, I build further on an incurrent-concurrent domain for cognitive trials taking place between the two positions, defined by time-space cognitive transformations within these. I suggest the a priori and posteriori positions as embodied cognition. In the case of Newtonian apple fall, we detect an intuitive a priori position to evolve across intuitiveexperiential blends, discovering the law of gravity. Much earlier, the Archimedean Eureka event tells of cognitive trials that sustain many years of intuitive-experiential syntheses, leading to the discovery of the buoyancy law within a posteriori position. Such events appear sudden, but are actually enacted over rigorous thought trials that consistently weave back and forth between intuition and data-based theorising [Bourgeois, 1979], and between induction and deduction [Nelrich, 2005]. In these events, we can distinguish the inductive a priori position from the posteriori deduction, but cannot separate them. Importantly, in both the events, the laws “discovered” had existed already (like the hidden and coded locations for all the jigsaw pieces); beyond a, then, Newton’s and Archimedes’ here and now time-space-bound

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cognition of their respective events. Like many more, the two discoveries were embodied cognition. I now introduce three frequently discernable thought trials (illustrations: 3a1-3a2, 3b and 3c) on the MI plane that we could generalise in terms of cognitive times and spaces. 5.6.2.1. Pendulum/precession movements These cognitive trials follow the classical pendulum or oscillatory movements to produce pure translations (or realist interpretations) that incur-concur the same reference points continuously across two positions of the MI plane [Illustration 3a1]. The cognitive trials are bound by space, from a priori Source Domain X to posteriori Target Domain Y, but not by time. Between the two positions, there are possibilities of pure thought translations, allowing a discovery of Implicit Evidence through a change in time but not space. As in the jigsaw puzzle, evidence stays hidden on the MI plane, translating to allocated spaces for each piece. The time is free. It depends on the number and quality of intuitive-experiential thought trials by the player and levels of jigsaw complexity. The time span of a thought trial, from one position to the other and back, is the period, ranging from a momentary experience (or insight) to its emergence over millennia.

Illustration 3a1 MI plane: Simple pendulum movement of thought trials

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I further explain this by allusion to how we usually refresh the inbox of our email browser. We follow emergence of a time period (over minutes, hours, days…) spanning across a cognitive cyberspace in the mail box. Within a time-period, our cognitive space-trials “translate” the MI plane, such as “nothing new”: message of no new evidence, to a periodic emergence [in the message]: you have mail! Also, challenged by a divergence or higher complexity level of MI plane, thought trials may follow the Foucault pendulum [Illustration 3a2]. In this case, the space on a MI plane is held by a rotational axis that remains constant at 360 degrees, but unlike the classical motion, the pendulum rotates clockwise and creates periodic precessions or pivotal changes in orientation on the same rotational axis. In this movement, metaphor’s Source Domain X (the rotational axis) oscillates across multiple Target Domains Y allowing multi- and crossperspective sensemaking options to pivot across 360 degrees planar thought trials. Here also, time is free, from momentary insights to lifetime judgments. For instance, the notion of turf discussed in chapter one, serves as a Source Domain X. Turf produces multi- and cross-perspective extensions over 360 degrees of Target Domain Y—the ideological, institutional, cultural, and physical turfs, and even more. Such precessions induce responsible social researching, in living by the Eureka sense of discovery in every moment of the fieldwork.

Illustration 3a2 MI plane: Foucault pendulum movement of thought trials

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Across a spiritual conception of MI planar time-space, the Foucault thought trials follow a 360-degree human whirling movement, as in the mystic dervish dance. The precessions in thought concur-incur within an embodied cognition—a sense of loss-and-found—unconscious, but aware. Here, every whirl unfolds a new meaning, new evidence, and even new truth[s]. Over a different plane, celestial bodies, like the sun and the moon, also appear to practice the whirling precessions—a cosmic mysticism—in infinite time-spaces of an expanding universe. On another plane, we imagine the electrons whirling around the nucleus, inside the atom. [To make the complex microscopic structure of the atom understandable, in 1911, Ernest Rutherford offered a similar description—the planets revolving around the sun]. The opposites, the negative and the positive charges, create an embodied domain. A prodigalprodigy paradox—a repulsive compliance, explains the atom. A common-sensemaking of complex scientific phenomena! 5.6.2.2. Yo-Yo/swing movements These are the swing motions or glided patterns of thought trials. Here, sustained [space] swings create an extensive synergy on the MI plane pivoting across a priori Source Domain X; back and forth between the posteriori Target Domain(s) Y [Illustration 3b]. Thought trials are free of [any] angular or perspectival directions such as top-down and bottom-top, or left-to-right and right-to-left. The movement is not bound by, but swings across, space, and time free. Fresher opinions and stances are created as critical insights and assumptions sustained over time-space and cognitive-memetic variations in the swings. A Yo-Yo motion creates the scope for discovery of Implicit Evidence the same as the Foucault pendulum, but also allows additional experiential-creative insights within glided arrays of emergent thinking that synergise and enhance the scope of such evidence.

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Illustration 3b MI plane: Yo-Yo movement of thought trials

Swing movements could be observed in the 1999 sex scandal of former US President Bill Clinton. A metaphorical emergence in a sexual act, a sexual relation, or a particular sexual activity (or “passivity”) enacts the Source Domain X in relation to the Target Domain Y position to swing across the event and its spin-offs. Some swing can be noted in Clinton’s remarks: “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”, and how a “sexual act” is contextualised in terms of giving or receiving sex. A metaphorical time-space trajectory is created in “is” and “sex”. Here, the latter charge, initially denied by Clinton, identifies the Source Domain of the legal, moral, or physical metaphor, enacted by US laws and the social-cultural norms of US society. Even after Clinton was acquitted of the legal-forensic here and now impeachment, the journalistic or “public opinion” swings kept adding neological evidence through insights, such as “existential willie” [Noah, 1998] and “The Clinton Syndrome” [Levin, 1998]. This indicates that even if the legal-forensic-physical [evidential] trial is over, an intuitive [evidential] trial persists within embodied cognition. Further, as the Yo-Yo thought trials reveal political spinoffs and spin-doctoring, these can be examined or explained at an expert-level (i.e. contextually consistent Yo-Yo swings), for interpreting higher-level complexity, such as a conspiracy.

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A “sleeping” status allows the Yo-Yo to keep spinning at one end for longer time-periods. Some Yo-Yo tricks are explained metaphorically, such as “walk the dog” and “rock the baby”. As in Clinton’s case; the sexual act and its swings in Target Domain(s) Y, which he finally admitted as “not appropriate”, the two phrases here also convey suggestive slang. 5.6.2.3. Spiral movements This pattern of thought trials maintains a central position that takes shape along a screw axis [Illustration 3c]. The spiral motion takes a priori Source Domain X as the axial “pivotal” point, and the posteriori Target Domain(s) Y as incremental position(s) that incur-concur to produce emergent insights on the MI plane. Space is not bound but incrementally evolves across a free time, embodied within spiraling thoughts of the past, present, and future. The a priori source and posteriori target of these thoughts is unknown. Only the trials, evolving on the same plane, produce intuitive-within-experiential sustenance, in pivoting across cognitive times and spaces. Our personal memories and lessons that we appear to learn from history, for instance, serve the pivotal a priori Source Domain insights that tend to spiral across posteriori Target Domain Y.

Illustration 3c MI plane: Spiral movement of thought trials

The childhood abuse imagery that I discussed in chapter two as disciplining, our little secret, a prank, or something

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normal, serve as posteriori Target Domain(s) Y, “triggering up” awareness to define the “abusive acts” within the a priori Source Domain X. A cognitive evolution allows the spiraling thought trials to sustain between the two positions. Here, all embodied extensions can be justified in an all-realist-humanhistory-and-all-forthcoming [cognitive] time-space contexts. 5.6.3. Emergent interpretations Through the entire course of our intellectual journeys, we interpret evidence across our unique times and spaces for an essential survival—both intellectual and methodological. In relation to the three movements I discuss above, when the origin was, and when the end of our thought trials shall be, cannot be defined within the relativist time-space domains. In terms of time, a cognitive trial may take a moment or millennia to interpret. A relativist degree of predictability and validity by itself creates the scope for generalisations in the evidence, characterising our interpretations, not the evidence, as relative to time across space. Eventually, relativism in our evidence regresses. The higher the number of thought trials, the more skewed the intuitive-experiential learning curve of evidence [Illustration 4]. Regarding space, with reference to the view of image field I discussed earlier, any irregularity in the learning curve and the dotted lines of uncertainty depends on what we consider as [optimally] rationalised number of thought trials and their time-space interpretations. Even in the “presence” of physically unapproachable evidence, there is no guarantee of a discovery. A discovery only depends on the intuitive strength of the metaphor and its time-space-sustained extensions that help unfold a complexity. Tsoukas [1991] describes the transformational sense of a discovery in metaphor as the “bingo”; but Siegleman [1990] only calls something a discovery if it holds a surprise value. Some discoveries are serendipitous—the pleasant surprises,

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as in the case of penicillin for Alexander Fleming in 1928, and the microwave oven for Percy Spencer in 1945. Explicit metaphor, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s erratic slang, or the 2016 US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s racist remarks, also produce hostile propaganda and spin-offs. Such use of slang creates a priori cognitive constructs within an embodied public appeal—to seek a political bingo. Still, in social research, most discoveries [only] fill up intuitive gaps.

Illustration 4 MI plane: Relationship of time-space with thought trials

Even upon reaching a bingo stage, social researchers take a momentary [intellectual] break, and move on to a different MI plane, with better or altered metaphorical choices, and even take cognitive U-turns. The bingo in social research is a quiet celebration: in self-discovery and disclosures of experience, such as a matured sense of childhood abuse, connecting the dots in media stories and state intelligence, and picking up mystical hints in romantic poetry. The researchers [may] only become wiser, and perhaps fit in, at some later stage, to Aristotle’s celebrated status of a master of metaphor. Generally, as argued earlier, within provisory discoveries we preclude-conclude our sensemaking options: as in shaping the earth as spherical, flat, or elliptical—withdrawing from respective metaphorical discoveries of the marble, pancake, and egg. Paradoxically, in concluding our thought trials over

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one metaphor, we must engage in another. Hence, emergent discoveries create only a time-space sustained insightfulness: that being embodied cognition is unrewarding in a material sense; understandably, not so exciting for many. 5.7. Implicit Evidence: Key characteristics Implicit Evidence and its truth-values that incur-concur on the MI plane are essentially postdisciplinary, paradoxical, and embodied cognition. I discuss these as the following: 5.7.1. Postdisciplinarity Contrary to its ideational appearance, postdisciplinarity is not an intellectual doomsday scenario. It is only an [a priori common-sense of cross- and multidisciplinary] assumption(s) that unfolds posteriori evidential insights within a minimalist domain, which is postdisciplinary. The evidence in intuitive metaphor is not derived from strict disciplinary norms5, nor a particular philosophy or academic specialism in thought and practice. For instance, the insights of turf, money, and ego in recognising the challenges of inter-agency collaboration, do not belong to a particular discipline. Even if these insights seem to fall within the disciplines of cognitive linguistics or embodiment philosophy, or meme-complexes, a metaphorical sense of turf, for instance, is reflected in a range of causal domains, such as culture, ideology, poetry, and even sports, leading to cross- and multidisciplinary contestations. Similar contestations are the case of money and ego. As the MI plane engages cross- and multidisciplinary views, a choice of method for data collection cuts across the 5

Discipline usually refers to a branch of knowledge or learning. I see it as a metaphor of prodigious compliance that emphasises [boundary] controls in [academic] categories, thereby extending to practices of obeying rules or codes of behaviour, systematicity, and self-restraint.

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disciplined prodigy and wayward prodigality; such as the “gut feeling”, paranoia, speculation, propaganda, and even the Conspiracy Theory. The prodigal-prodigy paradox embodies the hearsay-academic divisions in blogosphere in a manner similar to the hemispherical divides in cerebral-geographical times and spaces—living by norms of postdisciplinarity. In this regard, if it was not for a postdisciplinary assumption, a disciplinary evidential domain of cases such as Clinton’s sex scandal would produce an awkward number of hyphenations: political-behavioural-urban-feminist-workplace-sociologicalpsychological-ideological-ethical-zooanthropological-moralcriminal-legal-media-sexuality. The hyphenation can go on to the completion of this chapter, and with the assistance of an encyclopedic taxonomy of disciplines, possibly the book. We negotiate a minimalist intellectual survival only in embodied [postdisciplinary] cognition. Else, the unending theoretical or contextual influence would take us past the multi-perspective deconstructionism. The cognitive trials may never end. Most discoveries of vaccines against diseases, such as polio and anthrax, had initially fitted only in the discipline of medical science, and had been founded on positivist evidence. On entering the public heath domain, the disciplinary identity of a vaccine stretched from economics and marketing, to political-economics, and to geo-political and military geostrategy and media propaganda and further, even to biological warfare and mega-intelligence project design in its present form, losing disciplinary norms to a postdisciplinarity—from scientific positivism to intuitivism. We notice a disciplinary loss in the organization of some US Department of Defense committees with experts, not only in conventional [military] warfare, economics, and foreign policy, but in bioherbicides and artificial intelligence. Also, most international academic curricula and its bylaws at different levels of formal learning,

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cater to blurring [memetic] norms of ideas marketing and technology uptake, which tend to be postdisciplinary. 5.7.2. Embodied cognition Postdisciplinarity is a state of mind—the embodied mind. As the embodied mind (re)interprets an individual concept or event within a multiversal time and space-defined context, embodied cognition identifies the same as Implicit Evidence. Conceivably, postdisciplinarity puts an end to the calls of a “hyphenated era” of social research [Denzin and Lincoln, 2005], that keeps adding hyphens and slashes, back and forth, creating disembodied alternatives in our thought. The text we hyphenate, bracket, or separate with a slash, is the intuitive display of an essential intellectual paradox—disembodimentwithin-embodiment. Just as human social identities hyphenate race or ethnicity, e.g. black-American, which are customarily seen as offensive, so is stereotyped sense of disembodiment. Implicit Evidence embodies truth-values in prodigal vs. prodigy identities of metaphor, thereby helping us to live by our time-spaces within paradoxical embodiment of opposites: theory-practice, academic logic-hearsay, personal attitudeworkplace ethics, and many other ways through which we define-undefine our experiences. In courtrooms all over the world, across all faiths, we note the [empirical] here and now affirmation by individual testimony “by the” faith value. The actual truth remains hidden. Thereby, if the witness takes that piece of evidence out of his/her mind, it shall become “hard” and serves a legal-forensic purpose. Some decades ago, there was a serious debate in the US judiciary circles on the plausibility of evidence revealed over the course of a trial. Customarily, the witness or the accused is asked to recall an event (such as a murder or a rape), which actually induces her or him to recreate evidence, something impossible in a legalempirical disembodied sense. It is only within an embodied

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cognition of time-space image field that a reinterpretion or reenactment of such legal requirements could be possible. Embodied thought trials producing Implicit Evidence are independent of the levels of analysis. A cognitive regulation of metonyms, for instance, “boots on the ground” in a military operation, helps unfold evidence by individual imageries of the soldiers within institutional ones, that is, the army. 5.7.3. Paradoxical sensemaking A paradoxical sensemaking is quite rich in the [primarily poetic] traditional theory of metaphor. However, in MI, I attempt to find plausibility for common-sensemaking within the very paradox. If corruption is called a cancer for society, then “cancer” also interprets a corruption in the human body, at the microscopic-cellular level. Hence, a paradoxical sense of Implicit Evidence creates a priori Source Domain X of the metaphor to serve as a prodigy in our reasoning, for the posteriori Target Domain Y to incur-concur within a prodigal sense: at times, giving answers by asking questions! In this regard, to identify and regulate X’s identities vis-à-vis Y’s identities, we conduct thought trials to link the Source domain X across [paradoxical] metaphorical shifts within Target Domain Y; simply, seeing the forest for the trees the same as the trees for the forest! Finally, postdisciplinarity, embodiment, and paradox, all concur-incur as a postdisciplinary embodiment paradox. We find this in the celebrated lyrical legacy of: “I can’t live with or without you” (performed by a number of singers), which could well be telling the story of why most illegal immigrants seeking refuge from war try reaching out to countries that inflict that war on them. On 2nd September 2015, a three-year old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, was found dead on a Turkish beach. An empirical disembodied approach to evidence in this case is quite simple: name, age, sex, nationality, and the place

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and likely cause of death, are there—visible in the boy’s body. But an embodied cognition of this evidence leads to a series of questions. What philosophical thought best explains this context? What methodological paradigm best analyses this event? Which perspective would best explain this scenario? What empirical-forensic investigation might comprehend this incidence appropriately? Which statistical software assures the optimal reliability and validity of this evidence? What ethical protocols are to be followed in this case study? Which faith system would a human sensitivity best belong in? What “turf, money and ego” is in question here? The retorts to all these questions are: not one, and everyone! Further, what is the cause of Aylan’s death? What is to be blamed—the cold water or the cold hearts? Whose death is it: a human’s, or of all humanity’s? What are the colour, race, and gender of humanity? What is the religion of humanity? What is the political-geography of humanity? Who and how many are to be held accountable for the death? Who and how many are to be punished for the death? No one, but everyone! One deviant view (an MI plane precession event!) of the image of Aylan dead on the beach is that it was faked!

CHAPTER SIX COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING: FROM DUALISM TO EMBODIMENT

…the central imaginary is the crystal, which combines symmetry and substance, with an infinite variety of shapes, substances, transmutations, multi-dimensionalities, and angles of approach. Crystals grow, change, and are altered, but they are not amorphous. Crystals are prisms that reflect externalities, and refract within themselves, creating different colors, patterns, and arrays casting off in different directions. …Crystallization provides us with a deepened, complex, thoroughly partial, understanding… Paradoxically, we know more and doubt what we know. Ingeniously, we know there is always more to know. [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005, p. 963, italics added]

6.1. A Scope of MI through the crystal I now discuss how the conceptions of Metaphorical Imagination (MI) and Implicit Evidence (IE) render social research implications. I focus in particular on a cognitive transference, from dualism to embodiment; how as cognitivemethodology-metaphor, MI produces IE within a physicalvisible evidential domain that corresponds to implicit-intuitive explanations. In stressing an embodied cognition of the bodysoul of evidence, I endorse the notion of “crystallization” in social research as a test case [Richardson, 1994; 2000; Ellis and Ellingson, 2000; Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005; Ellingson, 2009]. Towards cognitive transference, the crystal symbolises the touchstone of social [science] research. As already discussed in chapter five, Richardson and St. Pierre

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[2005] consider the crystal, and not the triangle, to be the symbol of research validity in mixed-genre postmodernism. The cognitive parameters in the triangle are constrained, but in the crystal, we find a stable, physical, and visible body of evidence that creates openness towards the nonphysical and invisible evidence equally. In studying crystallisation as a case1, we are intuitively inclined to embody the social-withinscience and science-within-social, as a viable [cognitive] paradox which rejects any categorical division in mainstream qualitative and quantitative research. In crystallisation, I make a claim to embodied cognition of the physical body and the implicit soul of evidence. The body is visible in a structural character of the crystal—the chemical properties, physical laws, and trigonometric shapes that represent crystallisation in a manner similar to scientificmechanistic methodologies. The soul is the invisible-implicit character of the crystal that produces [metaphorical] parallels of the physical—reflexivity, arrays, density, colours, angles, and clarity of human thought within intuitive sensemaking. Embodiment prohibits a single genre, an exclusive discipline, or a normative position, to separate the empiricist body from 1

I have chosen crystallisation as a MI plane to show how an embodied cognition of the physical and intuitive senses is shaped within a single domain: a “case” as a container of the physical evidence, and a “study case” that claims the consistency of implicit insights. In crystallisation, I find the physical and intuitive senses to concur-incur a paradoxical sense of prodigal within prodigy in interpreting Implicit Evidence. Here, I depart from Ellingson’s [2009] statement that: “the only position crystallization does not complement is positivism; researchers who truly believe in objectivity and the discovery of ahistorical, unbiased, universal truth will not find crystallization amenable” (p. 4). In defense of the same paradox, I also disagree with her view of positivism, or scientific objectivity, and interpretivism, or subjectivity, as the two ends of an art and science “continuum” of the crystallisation methodology (p.5). Her disembodied view is impracticable and appears to be only a renewed account of Plato’s Divided Line of truth-values.

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the intuitivist soul of evidence. By assigning some categories to “researchers” and “research types” we tend to restrain the quality of research and even the quality of evidence [Miller, 2000]. Categories delimit both researchers and their findings to their specific disciplines, leading to embarrassing aloofness and lack of [intellectual] empathy. In crystallisation, we find an enlightened postdisciplinarity, beyond any categories. I add three more reasons as to why crystallisation makes a strong case to describe embodied cognition of the physical and implicit evidence. First, there is growing attention from qualitative researchers given to this metaphor to explain the scope of openness in poststructural social research. As I claim in chapter four, crystallisation produces both theoretical depth and width in a prodigal-prodigy paradox, serving as an exclusive methodological utility of metaphorical reasoning. Second, crystallisation helps us out from a limited cognition of geometry and physics, to the light theory of qualitative research [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005]. At this juncture, with reference to Denzin’s [2005] anxieties about a fractured future, I do not notice any fracture in the openness created by the light theory symbolism. Third, crystallisation allows the same intellectual comfort and sustenance that we have lived by in metaphorical choices of system and culture, which, interestingly, were also borrowed from the physical sciences. 6.2. Crystal substance: Physical within implicit evidence There are two ways in which the substance of the crystal may describe evidence: a physical-material substance that is hard or firm, and reflexivity within the same substance that is implicit-figurative. For instance, in the phrase: a woman (or a man) of substance, the “substance” carries both a physicalmaterial and an implicit-figurative sense. Hence, the physical evidence in crystallisation as a research model is based upon scientific empiricism—atomic and light theories, physical

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growth processes, deviations, refractions, optical illusions and distortions, angles, colours, and physical times and spaces, as well as compositions that are chemical and shapes which are trigonometric. The implicit evidence is held in metaphoricalparadoxical value, i.e. (re)cognitions and (re)interpretations of the physical-within-intuitive emergence. As such, a unique reflexivity in the “multiversal” evidential image fields of the crystal embodies cognitive times-spaces, explaining policy deviances, propagandist distortions, and deceptive slants. The role of light is most vital in crystallisation. Both the physical and the intuitive sensemaking options are enacted in the presence of light—within an embodied cognition. Light shapes ubiquitous cognitive-memetic transference: a sense of awareness of physical and external stimuli out there within an insightful [personal] self, and the internal stimuli in there. In chapter one, I call this view the body and soul of evidence, and in chapter four explain the same as a prodigal-prodigy paradox, whilst in chapter five I discuss this transference by thought trials across a priori Source Domain and posteriori Target Domain of the cognitive metaphor. At this point, with reference to the emphasised quote in the opening of this chapter, I discuss how a transference of the physical vis-à-vis intuitive sense is embodied cognition. 6.2.1. Structures and shapes Physical evidence: This describes the effect of any of our five senses. Through sight, it is visible in shapes and structures that are definite when seen with the naked eye, or on the microscopic level: the atomic, molecular, ionic, and other configurations of multiple sizes, varieties, compositions, and physical forms. Implicit evidence: This corresponds to effects of invisible, open-ended, and micro-behavioural or deeply-imbedded sense which is only intuitive. It is through an intuitive capacity that

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we evolve and shape our emotions and traditions in a variety of thought, whether philosophical, scientific, or poetic. For instance, we develop cognitions of shapes and structures that explain methods in structuralism and poststructuralism, or arguments that are structured or not. In terms of heights; the tallness of buildings for instance, usually symbolises economic-ideological control, vision, and even a psychological complexity. From ancient Egypt through to the contemporary Middle-East, especially UAE, there is a [silent] architectural emergence in the image of a tall building, in terms of economic prosperity. By comparison, the implicit soul, i.e. the tall building’s “purpose”, is barely observable. If the building is meant to house offices, the purpose is depicted implicitly, e.g. the workplace norms and attitudes, ethicalprofessional priorities, gender empathy, and equity. A visible display of institutional vision and mission [statements] is usually found on the walls and noticeboards, but the spirit in practice could be different, or even missing. Similarly, the shape of a building meant for residential purposes reveals the residents’ lifestyle priorities and socialcultural norms. Physical spaces that are open, such as terraces, balconies, or shorter boundary walls, for the sunlight, fresh air, or scenic views, hint at openness in the residents’ views or ideals. Anything plain typically means lowland or flatland, revealing a simple mindset, as in the stigmatised, homely, and a boring image of the Plain Jane in the US reality TV series. Moreover, shapes reveal a “frame of mind”. The squares imply a sense of equality that we seek in square deals, games and accounts, and even meals. In circles (or loops) and spirals we realise a sense of completeness and growth, respectively. 6.2.2. Faculties Physical evidence: The disciplinary faculties can be, among others: physics, chemistry, and geometry (including

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Cartesian coordinates), connoting the scientific explanations of forms, substances, compositions, and unique orientations. Implicit evidence: The disciplinary faculties can be cognitive- linguistics, metaphysics, and social-psychology etc. There is variety in the categories of conceptualisation: poetry, academic and fictional writing, persuasive rhetoric, lyrics, media reporting, symbolic movie scripts, design, art, and architecture, amongst others. An implicit meaning is carried in representative genres: defined, blurred, and hyphenated; within ideological orientations, such as progressive, colonial, conservative, skeptical, or feminist. A thought composition is implicitly displayed in disparate writing styles and practices, such as critical, analytical, and reflexive. 6.2.3. Dimensionalities Physical evidence: This constitutes the physical-visible dimensions, which, depending on the substance, create multiple internal and external [contextual] arrays of similar patterns across physical time and space. Implicit evidence: This is the scope of descriptions over an intuitive and inter-subjective cognitive time-space (internal, external, and extra-sensory stimuli) shared in human history. Some examples are: Et tu Brute, Divide and Rule, and Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream to adjoin John Lennon’s I am a Dreamer. The legacy of the US Watergate scandal continues to be embodied in most media reports of the suffix “gate” that profiles political scandals. A pattern of covered-up political inquiries in recent history is summed up in phrases such as the Whitewash, which I have discussed in chapter five. Arrays of embodied cognition are frequently revealed in the metaphor: “hit” songs that are remixes and cover versions performed by new singers, movie “sequels” and “remakes”, and reworking the “stock characters” in movies and dramas.

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6.2.4. Transmutations Physical evidence: Crystallisation is characterised by growth and transmutations, which lead to physical effects. At the cellular level such transmutations produce visible effects that can be studied scientifically, like the [biological] notion of “evolution” among species (survival of the fittest!), and specific mutations in body cells that can lead to cancer. Implicit evidence: A physical transmutation corresponds to an implicit [cognitive] transference and transformation. Metaphor explains a cognitive-memetic evolution in terms of the same survival of the fittest struggle over robust thought trials that are experiential and intuitive. The metaphor of corruption, for instance, offers a wide range of denotations and explanations. It interprets immorality and perversion (primarily sexual); bribery (mostly financial); technical errors (in translations—language, text, and computer files); a rotten status (physical, in a bad smell or decay); an infection (biological, e.g. viral, bacterial and fungal); altered (intellectual, from originally good to bad, or bad to evil), and, improbity (workplace, as in an unethical exploitation of cultural-institutional environment). The verb “to corrupt” also means “to adulterate” (as in adulterated food or fuel, or sexual adultery), i.e. mixing/culturing an impure or inferior substance in place of a valuable original ingredient. On this basis, when we term human corruption or racism cancerous to society, we tend to embody a cognitive-memetic course of evolution, corresponding to how cancer cells mutate on the microscopic level to invade the normal body cells. This happens in a manner similar to how bribery or racist mindsets are built on “fixated” perceptions and threaten society as a whole. This is how cancer evolves a cognitive transference. Why the metaphor of corruption is an embodied-paradoxical cognition is because we cannot separate the sensemaking of cancer from corruption, or of corruption from cancer. In the

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Arabic language, the notion of Fasaád means anything that corrupts or contaminates the original truth of the nature or a system, such as a fatal viral infection, which can range from a human micro-cellular level to the macro-level global politicaleconomy and “cultural” perceptions of contagious diseases. Interestingly, a virus can survive unfavourable conditions by transforming into crystalline forms, and bacteria into spores. Corruption also “transmutates” its forms and images! One is bribery that becomes a norm under different pretexts: greasing palms or the wheels, glove money, and speed money. As a result, corruption “metastasises” from one institution to another and, as a memetic drift, society as a whole surrenders to that. Gender harassment in the workplace becomes an existential norm, and pseudo-intellectual media turn into top opinion-makers. This explains how cancer cells actually grow at the expense of normal (good-natured) body cells, gradually taking over tissues, organs, systems, and ultimately, the body. 6.2.5. Colours Physical evidence: Colours are visible and multiple, and have distinct shades, depending on the source of light and the crystal’s shape, density, and composition. Implicit evidence: These are the perceptions and images of colour in human lives. Both black and the white typically demarcate an ethnic-social class, but equally reflect a [racist] mindset, built upon Orwellian irony: “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”. A white-collar crime is linked to the affluent class and a white-collar job implies an urban or better category of workplace. Speaking of “black market” or turning “black money” into white implies a mindset in which black is illicit while white is valid or lawful. However, colour is a cognitive paradox. The embodied mind thesis claims that: “colours are not objective; there is in the grass or the sky no greenness or blueness independent of

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retinas, color cones, neural circuitry, and brains. Nor are colors purely subjective; they are neither a fragment of our imaginations nor spontaneous creations of our brains” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 24-25]. In the following chapters, I discuss how an embodied cognition in metaphor distinguishes a sense of “black” from dark, and “white” from fair. 6.2.6. Reflections Physical evidence: Reflections are multiple and depend on angles of incidence of light and the physical distance between the object and the observer vis-à-vis the images produced. Implicit evidence: Through the eyes, we reflect the physical world of the “here and now” around us. Through the heart, we reflect an intuitive world of the soul, as in, among others, The Reflective Heart [Morris, 2005], and The Heart Is a Mirror [Alexander-Frizer, 2007]. Distances are divides: ideological, socio-economic, and cultural, producing societal reflections and incidences. As a result, society divides cognitively: the affluent, privileged, and celebrated vs. the poor, marginalised, and vulnerable; the developed world vs. the developing world; a clean neighbourhood vs. the rough areas, ghettoes, and the slums; and “Wall Street” vs. the “High Street”. What is more, there are numerous incidences of racist and sexist insults that create distortion of images. The angles of such [co]incidences explain the slurring notes through a range of slants and takes. The following excerpt is from the eulogy of Rosa Parks by Oprah Winfrey, on 31st October, 2005, that visibly reflects embodied cognition of a multiversal time-space: Rosa Parks was a hero to me long before I recognized and understood the power and impact that her life embodied. And then I grew up and had the esteemed honor of meeting her. …And I thanked her then. I said, ‘Thank you’, for myself and for every colored girl, every colored boy, who didn't have

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heroes who were celebrated. …And I’m here today to say a final thank you… to serve us all. That day that you refused to give up your seat on the bus, you, Sister Rosa, changed the trajectory of my life and the lives of so many other people in the world. I would not be standing here today, nor standing where I stand every day, had she not chosen to sit down. I know that. I know that. I know that. I know that, and I honor that…for confronting history. And in that moment when you resolved to stay in that seat, you reclaimed your humanity and you gave us all back a piece of our own. I marvel at your will. I celebrate your strength to this day. [Italics added]

Reflections help in embodying and unifying human thought across an implicit sense that reflects human history over many generations. In the case of Rosa Parks and Oprah Winfrey, an embodied cognition is reflected in their struggle with colour and class so that the latter recognises: “I would not be standing here today” and “you give us all back a piece of your own”. Similar reflections shape gender, ethnicity, ideology, and nationality, and embody the variables that are intuitive. Only a disembodied sense creates the here and now divisions in human thought. The classical divider is the notion of turf, money, and ego, discussed in earlier chapters. 6.2.7. Refractions Physical evidence: Human vision is measured in terms of visual acuity, e.g. 20/20, 6/6, or complete physical blindness. Refraction of light leads to image formation that the brain interprets as the physical world of “here and now” around us. Vision or the sense of sight also depends on the density and clarity as well as a thickness or thinness of the media through which the light passes. A loss in clarity of media may result in different levels of visual impairment, and an alteration in thinness and thickness of these may result in refractive errors, leading to blurred or distorted image formation.

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Implicit evidence: Intuitive sensemaking explains insight, foresight, and hindsight, as spatial recognition and qualitative options, such as visionary reforms or a visionless leadership. Similarly, we develop unique images (e.g. abstract art and minimalist architecture) and follow imaginations (in genres of literature and movies) to intuitively interpret the physical world around us. These images also interpret the complexity in mass communication media (print, electronic, virtual, and social); a thickness and thinness of description (academic, journalistic, and poetic/lyrical); and the density (photographic resolution and the Big Data). The media can produce both a convergence (focusing on a particular viewpoint, and create an obsessive fixation over a particular source of evidence), and a divergence (moving away from a point of focus, and create deception and propaganda), i.e. blurred or distorted images of [realist] truth(s). Corresponding to visual impairment, this tendency may lead to one’s loss of insight. Further, the media industry refracts society to create a density in news hypes (i.e. a hypersensitivity to angles of approach in the headlines, breaking news, and tickers) and cherry-picking takes and slants of partisanship and fixation. 6.2.8. Disorders and illusions Physical evidence: This comprises refractive errors such as myopia (near-sightedness), hypermetropia (far-sightedness), presbyopia (blurred near vision), and astigmatism (distorted vision). Uncorrected refractive errors can lead to disorders like amblyopia (lazy eye), whilst errors in the alignment of the eyes can lead to conditions such as diplopia (double vision). Implicit evidence: This implies near-sightedness (myopia) and blurred near-vision (hypermetropia and presbyopia) as approaches to Implicit Evidence. One is going for too much details or a fixation over evidence (as in the media trials), whilst the other is blurring the value of evidence by focusing

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it out of proportion, such as creation of media hypes and media circuses. Some social stigmata, stereotyping, phobias, and halo effect also lead to perceptual illusions such as the “rabbit and the duck” effect, hybrid images, and the “colour phi phenomenon”, mostly in the 21st century evidence. The notions of education, happiness, freedom, loss, and beauty etc. are disparate variables that are illusive and only represent a provisory [cognitive] status of an individual. For instance, would beauty or health qualify only in the physical sense? Isn’t the fairytale maxim of “who is the fairest of them all” an illusion of what constitutes fair? Is fairness a depiction of complexion or thought? And who is freer, the one who has less [fortune] to lose or more to lose, or nothing to lose? The [Biggest] Losers on the “reality” TV are actually the winners of weight-loss competitions. This paradoxical sense of loss is conveyed in different international versions of the TV show— leading to cognitive-memetic transference. Moreover, hybrid pictures and fake footage are played up and down to produce perceptual complexity and a blurring of evidence. The practice of implanted and embedded journalism creates impacts just as the same as illusive physical implants. The latter are meant for physical enhancement, as in the lips, buttocks, intraocular lenses, and Nano chip devices; whilst the former create an implicit capacity of surveillance, such as the agents of influence, sleeper cells, and embedded politicians and lobbyists. In espionage, T.E. Lawrence (alias Lawrence of Arabia), Eli Cohen, and Kim Philby are classic examples. Here, a question arises as to whether Implicit Evidence is subjected to illusion. As I argue in chapter four, for Aristotle, metaphor is not something that can be learned from others or taught. Therefore, only within the prodigal-prodigy paradox and an intuitive sense of the homecoming, can we distinguish illusive disorders from insightful truth-values. I discuss this

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point later in this chapter, especially by comparing Implicit Evidence to the conspiracy part of the Conspiracy Theory. 6.2.9. Space groups Physical evidence: This is expressed in the physical planar spaces that define symmetry in the space point groups of a crystal, e.g. pure translation, glided planes, and screw axes. Implicit evidence: This is seen in intuitive cognitive planar space groups that allow inductive-deductive thought trials to take place along symmetrical movements. I outline three cognitive space groups in chapter five, which explain these: translations/oscillations—classical pendulum and the Foucault pendulum, glided planes (Yo-Yo), and screw axis (spiral). As MI is embodied cognition of time-space, our choice of metaphor is intuitively a multiversal cognitive-physical sense of space groups. Here, I discuss the case of the mother2. The time-space origins of the concept of mother are hardly known or established, yet it carries a cognitive-linguistic-emotional consistency in the image of embodied sustenance, i.e. physical nurturing along an intuitive sense of care for offspring, both in humans and in animals. All subjectivity in the character of the mother as a metaphor is across a secondary level social-cultural variability. Here, we may assume that the closer we are in a relationship, the more intuitively consistent and multiversal it becomes as a metaphorical truth-value. For the notion of the mother, mama, mummy, or mom in English, other languages create a similar cognitive-linguistic and phonetic sense. Some of these include: ammi and ummi in Arabic; ima in Aramaic; mƗma in Chinese; máma in Czech 2

I disagree with views of the mother as a dead metaphor, the same as system and culture. For as long as metaphor keeps creating [embodied] extensions it remains living and livable. It can become dormant, less applicable, and unpopular, leading to a provisory death; yet, like the soul, intuitive evidence in the metaphor never dies.

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and Ukrainian; maman in French; em or imma in Hebrew; mamma in Icelandic, Italian, Latvian and Swedish; ma and mama in Indonesian; Eomma [pronounced, ‫ݞ‬mma] in Korean; mama in Polish, German, Russian and Slovak; mader in Persian; mamãe and mãe in Portuguese; mƗ˾ and mai in Punjabi; mor in Pushto; mama in Swahili; ammi, maa, and amma in Urdu; mater, mata, maa, and maai in Sanskrit and Hindi; mamá, mama, ma, and mami in Spanish; má or ḿ in Vietnamese; and mam in Welsh. The instinctual sense shared among all is the mamma (Latin for mother’s breast), partly including ma and mater, emphasising the unique role of the mother to sustain body-soul embodiment in all mammals. Normally, the baby’s first utterance is ma or máma; an innate sense of embodiment indicating a deep connection and sensitivity of a mother’s role in the child’s whole life. A vital [biological] embodiment of the mother-child relationship builds up from the time of conception and develops through embryonic growth, birth, breastfeeding, and neonatal support. Later, in social-cultural sensemaking, we follow up embodied cognition of the mother in the notions of the mother figure, mother love, motherland, mother country, mother Earth, Mother Nature, momism, and even go on defining matriarchy, matricentric, matricide, and matrilinear. We make sense of motherhood, motherless, and motherly vis-à-vis the stepmother, foster mother, surrogate mother, mother-tongue, and the mother-in-law, and expand on through to the mother hen, mother goose, mother ship, mother pearl, and even to the motherboard in PC hardware. Clinical specialties, such as Obstetrics-Gyneacology, and public health projects, like the Mother and Child Health, also hint a cognitive inseparability. Further, we shop for our newborns at Mothercare outlets (an absence of the hyphen implies embodied cognition of the mother and care), we disapprove of grown-ups tied to their mother’s apron strings, and with amusement recall the BBC’s

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1970s sitcom: Some mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. Even the vulgar slang, like “son of a *****” and “mother******” create a multiversal image field, as instinctual symbols of contempt for someone. The latter is also used as rhythmic [cognitivelinguistic space] filler in hip-hop music. 6.3. MI: Correspondence with mainstream models The schemata of all social research inquiry are barely distinguishable. The difference is only in the intuitive capacity that creates viability for our cognitive choices in terms of the scope and approach that we call “methods”. We shift our choices of the MI plane as a cognitive frame [only] by replacing the metaphor, e.g. the jigsaw puzzle to the game of chess, or triangulation to crystallisation. In this regard, the MI plane serves as a cognitive-methodological interface of a thick sociological description in traditions, like Symbolic Interactionism, and a thin cognitive-linguistic application, such as the Researching and Analyzing Metaphor. By combining a broader impulsive sense alongside a narrower disciplined sense in the two approaches, MI brings a societalhistorical intellectuality to metaphorical analysis, making the most of both—the prodigal within prodigy! Similarly, MI adds a research methodological dimension to the abstractions of conceptual blending to bridge across cognitive approaches, such as imaginization [Morgan, 1993]; intuition and emotion [Simon, 1989]; symbolism [Pondy et al, 1983]; reflexivity [Hardy and Clegg, 2001]; organizational learning [EasterbySmith et al, 1999]; and sensemaking [Weick, 1995]. MI is distinguishable from other methodological norms of social research in at least three ways. First, MI produces a paradoxical-embodied cognition: contextual-within-personal, prodigal-within-prodigy, body-within-soul, and empiricalwithin-intuitive sensemaking, to serve as a cognitive regulator of social inquiry. Second, MI helps negotiate complexity over

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the entire course of social inquiry. As keen social researchers, in order to convey a tangible credibility in our inquiries, we wish to gain some systematicity in our research. The same happens to a die-hard structuralist, who, in an effort to remain impartial and scientific, measures up every pinch of social behaviour but eventually gives in to some cognitive paradox. A scenario builds up: social researchers struggling across their times and spaces spread over a range of positions, empirical vs. intuitive, and from scientific objectivity to lay subjectivity. Here, MI lets the two positions negotiate—cognitively. Third, MI prevents a locking in and blocking up of ideas by robustwithin-flexible thought trials of complexity. The Source and Target Domains of metaphor, i.e. the a priori and posteriori positions, are embodied and sustained in emergent variables and hypotheses over the course of thought trials. As Schmitt [2005] also notes, emergent metaphors help us to systematise our sensemaking of complexity in its entirety. The prodigalprodigy paradox prescribes the embodied cognitive-normative limits to such experiential-intuitive sensemaking. I now discuss the typical stages of a social research process (that are considered scientific and systematic) vis-à-vis the cognitive norms of MI methodology. Stage 1: Research problem statement: This stage corresponds to the intuitive sensemaking options of a research problem or a question that is emergent, metaphorical, and paradoxical. With reference to chapter one, let us say, a research problem (or question) reads as: “is turf, money, and ego challenging for inter-agency collaboration?” Whether this intuitive sense is in contestation or in confirmation, it is essentially in parallel [support] to the empirical emphasis of a research inquiry. An intuitive sense of a typical research problem is developed in the embodied Source Domain of MI metaphor. Its contextual consistency is examined, validated,

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and explained by gradual extensions in the Target Domain(s) over the later research stages that incur-concur. Stage 2: Research objectives and rationale: This stage may correspond to the process of refining and rationalising the choice of a particular Source Domain of MI metaphor visà-vis the research objective(s). A cognitive consistency of the MI plane depends on its capacity to qualify the intuitive sense in the metaphor it builds upon, sustained across [only] a convergence-divergence of historical-experiential contexts. Stage 3: Literature review: This stage corresponds to the typical literature review in an interesting way. It is minimalist yet open: an overview that also shapes a review and preview of Derrida’s all-real-world-historical-context. An overview within review cuts across multiple arrays of thought: both inter-subjective i.e. intuitive and personal-experiential angles of inquiry, and inter-textual, i.e. a cross- and multidisciplinary analysis of available literature. A researcher’s choice of a MI metaphor helps shape up any big picture comprehension or alternative theorising, through the tacit [paradoxical] sense that is usually found in [any] hidden agenda, inside stories, and open secrets. There is a need to interpret the data sources intuitively, such as “the gatekeepers”, “the insiders”, the firstname and need-to-know basis, and “restricted” access levels. In this regard, “without the knowledge of the world that an experienced researcher brings, this level of interpretation will remain elusive. The ‘richer’ in knowledge the researcher is, the ‘richer’ will be the links that can be produced” [Schmitt, 2005, p. 378]. Further, corresponding to mainstream research indexes and search engines, a “multiversal” image field of the computational linguistics offers a wide range of databases and corpora for an empirical study of viable Target Domains of the cognitive metaphor. What literature and whose database or

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a search engine the data comes from, become unimportant, because only the consistent metaphor takes on the challenge of social-cultural-political contexts of the data; letting deeper contextual insights tell apart information from the noise. Stage 4: Variables and hypotheses: These correspond to the basic study variables in empirical research, i.e. the Dependent and Independent Variables. Here, the MI plane allows a built-in cognitive consistency to study the Independent Variables as disparate variables that are usually mistaken as generic, e.g. a respondents’ age, ethnicity, gender, and level of education, which I discuss in chapter two. In this regard, the Dependent and Independent Variables respectively parallel the Source and Target Domains of the metaphor characterising the MI plane, and for that reason, the number of variables of study for the latter is not fixed. An Independent Variability in the Target Domain results from a range of experiential-intuitive emergence, in terms of recognitions, reinterpretations, and causal interrelationships. In parallel to empirical research, any ethical-intuitive or timespace consistent transcendental sense in the metaphor may explain the typical moderating variable. MI hypotheses are emergent but compact, and vivid. The typical format, such as conditional (If-Then) or unconditional, is an embodied cognition and not a “documented” statement. Emergence in unwritten statements is periodic, ranging from a moment to a lifetime. An If-Then condition is implicit in the cognitive processes, corresponding to prodigal-within-prodigy paradox. The Source Domain of metaphor provides a priori insights that lead to plausible hypotheses. All critical insights serve operational hypotheses, i.e. an inductive a priori Source Domain and a deductive posteriori Target Domain, as the two positions in thought trials validated by the heuristic function.

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Stage 5: Conceptual-methodological framework: Here, in order to analyse and scrutinise variables and hypotheses under study, MI allows metaphorical conception, evolution, and extension. The Source Domain of the metaphor regulates its cognitive limits through disciplined imagination, across a multiversal image field that I discuss in chapter five. For the MI plane of a jigsaw puzzle, the four corner pieces maintain “discipline” in the methodological frame. A positioning of the rest of the pieces is left to cognitive thought trials, across comparisons, and validations—staying within the same frame. The size and density of the jigsaw defines the level of complexity of the meta-analysis’s frame and the scope. Stage 6: Data collection methods: Within a prodigalprodigy paradox, MI engages in and disengages from, draws upon and pulls back from, to validate and to exclude, a range of stimuli both empirical and intuitive. In this regard, MI also negotiates with research norms or methods that are otherwise unsolicited—the [prodigal] world of wayward speculation, impulsive paranoia and conspiracy, and extravagant propaganda, that uniquely incurs-concurs within a prodigious compliance in normative meanings and structural protocols. Hence, data collection methods here are built upon a distinct methodological paradox that embodies and sustains empirical learning vis-à-vis intuitive reflexivity. Regarding any need for sampling usually felt in empirical research, here, a “contextually viable MI plane” corresponds to a representative study sample. The Source Domain serving as the research problem is the unit of analysis for the Target Domain, which corresponds to the typical target population. The sample size corresponds to the number of thought trials vis-à-vis limits of the cognitive, rather than physical times and spaces under study. The Source Domain inside the “research problem” sustains the incurrence-concurrence of the empirical

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and intuitive time-space contexts of the MI plane by rejecting any inconsistent data insights in the Target Domain(s). Thus, only the viable cognitive metaphor embodies a representative status of the intuitive research problem on the MI plane. Stage 7: Data collection: Built upon a variety of methods and disciplines, and corresponding, as such, to the interview, questionnaire, and participant observation, among other methods, a heuristic helps in creative probing of the data. Probing takes place emergently, and, depending on both the empirical and intuitive indicators, leads to an analysis of complexity, if not guaranteed discovery. A heuristic reduces the density and diversity of data insights. It also helps in converging on contextual experiences. In view of research objectives and rationale, a heuristic extends and even revisits and reworks the metaphor in a renewal and reinterpretation of the MI plane. To explain truth-values in evidence, the researcher must engage in time-space embodied intuitive-experiential thought trials to take place on the MI plane across a range of motions: oscillations, precessions, swings, and spirals. These thought trials engage in two positions of induction and deduction, which correspond to a priori and posteriori Source and Target Domains of the metaphor under study. In this way, MI empowers a researcher to survey data cues regularly rather than intermittently, and induce the cognitive metaphorical content in the Source Domain towards analysis across diverse intuitive-experiential Target Domains. For a qualification as evidence of contextual goings on, the insights are cognitively regulated in the Target Domain(s) over disciplined, holistic, and rigorous interrelationships and reinterpretations. Stage 8: Data editing and cleaning: This stage [mostly] corresponds to examining consistency in data elements in

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terms of levels and categories, and in the measurement of data trends. This stage is marked by an intuitive sensitivity of multiversal time-space embodiment in MI leading to ensuing transference of [only] critical metaphorical insights as basis of Implicit Evidence. These insights are meant to minimise any critical [in]sensitivity that we find in the disembodied practice of empirical research. An apparently negative aspect of the Implicit Evidence, such as an element of conspiracy or propaganda, could be tested here for its contextual unviability in time-space embodiment. Stage 9: Data analysis and interpretation: The units of data analyses in mainstream methodologies are individuals, dyads, groups, organisations, and societies. In MI, the units are all the same, however, recognised only by paradoxical insights. The unit can be one individual and all—no one and everyone, expressed over a moment in time, or a lifetime— across spaces that are physical or cognitive, or both. Therefore, a validity of Implicit Evidence is interpreted across cognitive metaphorical [content] analysis that corresponds to typical steps of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. In search of Implicit Evidence, we may end up creating an infinite number of metaphorical extensions that rigorously sustain time-space transference. Ultimately, a “bingo” state of findings can be reached to conclude the thought trials, but only tentatively. Some degrees of unpredictability and bias (of the researcher and the time-space context) may actually degeneralise the Implicit Evidence. However, with a reference to the metaphor of mother discussed earlier (section 6.2.9), a consistency in insightful thought trials over contextual depths and widths, helps in skewing the intuitive learning curve. Stage 10: Conclusions: In a fight for the [cognitive] survival of the fittest, the weaker metaphorical extension in

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the Target Domain gives in to the stronger. Usually, the latter induces a priori constructs to initially lean, and eventually build upon, a time-space embodied cognition of evidential complexity until the “bingo” stage is reached. The bingo is a paradoxical state of [in]conclusive findings that are [only] episodic and emergent. However, strength of hypotheses and a frequency of critical insights do create multiversal timespace embodied cognitive consistency to unfold the likely truth-values, even if paradoxical. 6.4. Implicit Evidence and the Conspiracy Theory My claims about the Implicit Evidence and metaphorical truth-values are likely to be questioned for their validity in social research. I leave the discussion on truth-values for a revisit to the epistemology and ontology of evidence in the next three chapters. Here, I defend Implicit Evidence as a step unifying social science inquiry that is divided in its customary qualitative and quantitative norms; filling up an intellectualmethodological vacuum by intuitive-experiential embodiment across inter-subjectivity and inter-textuality. In an adversarial sense, Implicit Evidence may still be treated as an unwelcome gate crasher—a memetic (philosophical-methodological) drift meant to work for some paranoia doctrine, and in the worstcase scenario, panache of the Conspiracy Theory. Implicit Evidence stands on its own theoretical worth that builds on three key features that I discuss in chapter five: embodied cognition, paradoxical and metaphorical truth[s], and postdisciplinarity. With regards to these, I touch upon the Conspiracy Theory doctrine in particular for its mainstream hostility and its likely reproach to my assertions. 1. Embodied cognition vs. the Conspiracy Theory: Because Implicit Evidence builds on embodied cognition, there is some cognitive-memetic space for “a conspiracy”

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element likely within the Conspiracy Theory doctrine. In this regard, a conspiracy or wayward paranoia element in human thought does contribute to cognitive trials of an MI plane. This element may depict an oscillating, swinging, or spiraling tendency that is developed in emergent contexts (realist, phenomenological, historical-experiential) of a priori Source Domain of the metaphor vis-à-vis intuitive posteriori within the Target Domain. Nevertheless, MI thought trials could help rationalise the abstract theory part by probing a conspiracy element in the Target Domain. Here, ethically responsible investigative journalism and social research could fill in the implicit [disinformation] gaps in evidence over contextually consistent thought trials. It is within this consistency that weblogs and social media, viewed as unsolicited by academic research, appear to create some [blogospheric-hermeneutic] sense. Such evidence embodies the genres of critical social theory and insightful reporting. In social research methods, such as participant observation and research focus groups, we assign the value of data (not evidence!) to the level of experts and original sources. In such methods, we even resist the rigid protocols of data collection. In weblogs we are privy to reviews by veteran journalists, professionals, and even some weak voices of a multiversally embodied cyberspace that tends to communalise the data (again, not evidence!) from seemingly volunteer-powered sources and their natural settings. Still, weblogs are viewed as unwarranted data sources. In this regard, ethically responsible social research could follow the norms of embodied cognition to differentiate data and evidence—transferring the former into the latter. Thereby, we may move beyond debates on the criteria, validity, and funding of social research, and put to the test the Conspiracy Theory, without getting frustrated by its weird pseudo-intellectual defiance. To expand the embodied mind theses, cognitive scientists could also put to the test their

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notion of “embodied realism” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999] through explaining the Conspiracy Theory. 2. Paradoxical truths vs. the Conspiracy Theory: As a pseudo-intellectual doctrine, the Conspiracy Theory serves a paradoxical inverse of Implicit Evidence. In playing up empirical truth-values that are abstract or hidden, Conspiracy Theory assumes a cognitive paradoxical control over implicit truths, in playing down the same, as in true lies, open secrets, and half-truths. In the case of Socrates, for instance, drinking poison hemlock is the classical metaphor of defending (or interpreting) a truth-value, but sentencing him to death by serving the drink is a conspiracy to conceal the same truthvalue. In this way, Conspiracy Theory concurs-incurs with the truth-values of Implicit Evidence held inside “a conspiracy”. A concurrence-incurrence is in conflict and not in agreement, because Conspiracy Theory reveals falsehoods and covers up the truth, whilst Implicit Evidence only reveals the half-truth. Noam Chomsky [reported in Burnett et al, 2005] calls the Conspiracy Theory an “intellectual equivalent of a four-letter word…used by people who know they can’t answer arguments and they can’t deal with evidence” (p. 11). Here, Chomsky’s allusion of evidence is probably the way we tend to ignore implicit truth-values. In this regard, the Conspiracy Theory serves intellectual-paradoxical “cover ups” of critical truths; or rather, an evidential landfill used for dumping these truths. Implicit Evidence in the metaphor actually takes the challenge of (re)interpreting such [preemptive] indoctrination of truths produced in the Conspiracy Theory. Frederic Jameson characterises the Conspiracy Theory as “a poor person’s cognitive mapping” [Burnett, 2005, p. 9]; again, a pseudo or naïve sensemaking of indoctrinated truths. In this regard, it appears that the Conspiracy Theory maps up some untruths to replace some truths. Let us presume a half of

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the contents of the Conspiracy Encyclopedia [2005] to be the untruths in a realist-empirical sense; how about the rest of the half that were realist facts? All evidence in the Conspiracy Theory is usually paradoxical or abstract empiricism—a truth that usually unfolds its abstract theory part at a later time. But not always, or in all cases! The scope of a historically embodied [re]cognition of truth[s] in evidence remains open. Returning to Clinton’s sex scandal, there are two ways of seeing it as an evidential paradox. First, whether Clinton had engaged in a sexual act or not is indeed a question of Implicit Evidence, which I probe with the help of a metaphorical discourse. Second, was it a set-up to incriminate Clinton? If the answer is positive, then why and by whom are seemingly conspiratory questions, hence, swept under the carpet of the Theory: a “conspiracy” hidden inside the “Theory” and vice versa! Eventually, as a classical paradox, we cannot see a conspiracy forest for the theory trees, the same way as the conspiracy trees for a theory forest. Keeley [1999] also notices this paradox. He characterises the Conspiracy Theory as “errant data of two types, that is, unaccounted for and contradictory” (p. 10), adding further: By invoking conspiracy hypotheses, large amounts of ‘evidence’ are thrown into question…conspiracy theories are the only theories for which evidence against is actually construed as evidence in favor of them. The more evidence piled up by the authorities in favor of a given theory, the more the conspiracy theorists point to how badly ‘they’ must want us to believe the official story. [p. 14, italics added]

This view takes us to my prodigal-prodigy paradox model, i.e. how a wayward sense in the conspiracy is rationalised within the theory. If the conspiracy and the theory are taken as separate, the conspiracy part produces or projects a stigma: “a conspiracy theorist is to be paranoid, marginal, crazy, and uninformed” [Burnett et al, 2005], perhaps fitting into the

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stereotypical role Mel Gibson plays in the movie Conspiracy Theory (1997). Here also, the theory part serves a proxy intellect to help legitimise, hypothesise, and destigmatise the untruths of an event. Further, in terms of Keeley’s argument of evidence against vs. evidence in favour, even a piece of research on a conspiracy is seen as a part to the Conspiracy Theory. Dan Brown introduces his best-seller The Da Vinci Code (2004) with an unusual [truth] claim that all accounts of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in the novel were accurate. The novel would still be viewed as conspiracy theory literature. 3. Postdisciplinarity vs. the Conspiracy Theory: There is a [realist] relationship between a range of schools of thought, political-economic histories, and institutional-power agendas that create or expand on the Conspiracy Theory doctrine. Implicit Evidence only takes this debate to its 21st century postdisciplinary era to help us recognise the cover-ups of critical truths. Here, we live and unlive by the paradox of media indoctrinated half-truths: evidence of no evidence; a compelling deception—the most spellbound presentation of the Conspiracy Theory ever in human history. At this point, I conclude Part two of this book. In Part three, I discuss, in three successive chapters, the pedagogical, epistemological, and ontological rationale of Metaphorical Imagination and Implicit Evidence. In particular, I emphasise the truth-values that are paradoxical and embodied, and study their implications on social research theory and practice.

PART III

CHAPTER SEVEN THE DATA IS DEAD? LONG LIVE THE EVIDENCE

We live in a depressing historical moment, violent spaces, unending wars against persons of color, repression, the falsification of evidence, the collapse of critical democratic discourse, repressive neoliberalism, disguised as dispassionate objectivity prevails. Global efforts to impose a new orthodoxy on critical social science inquiry must be resisted. A hegemonic politics of evidence cannot be allowed. Too much is at stake. Imagine a world without data, a world without method…A world where no one counts data and data no longer count…a world where utopian dreams are paramount...Just imagine. [Denzin, 2013, p. 355, italics added]

7.1. Revisiting body and soul: “Imagine” In gratitude towards Norman Denzin for these words, I wish him a long life in peace. His intellectual discourse appears to embody the hope-within-despair sentiment of singer-lyricist John Lennon’s classic Imagine [1971]. Amongst other social research reformers, I see Denzin [2013] as having joined Lennon, reassuring him that he was not the only one. Similarly, Denzin’s sense of protest-within-social research responsibility also reflects another lyrical anti-war metaphor of Lennon’s: “…give peace a chance” [1969]. This is how one can detect that Denzin is also trying to stop a war here. A war being fought on epistemological and ontological fronts, to conquer intellectual spaces; a war that brings death upon rationality; a war geared to assault the integrity of

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evidence and invade research ethics; a war of hegemonic politics of evidence that puts the sovereignty of truth at stake. Lennon’s [1971] utopian thoughts convey a wish to repeal, and for negation. He desires no heaven; no hell; no countries; no religion; no possessions; and no need for greed or hunger. Such imagery certainly threatens the life of a celebrity because the forces of the status quo do not welcome [such] challenges to the truth-values it represents. Besides, the dejection in Lennon’s imagery reflects idealism-withinescapism, or, perhaps, deconstructionist reasoning. The prodigal son, through his verses, takes us too far—almost to all the outer reaches of the hermeneutic vacuum that need filling with empathy, both in human thought and conduct. Nonetheless, Lennon equally demands above, only sky; living for today; a brotherhood of man, and—living life in peace, keeping open the scope and value of sensemaking in life beyond his sweeping pessimism. Here, one can assume that it is Lennon’s prodigy that builds up within shared hope—a homecoming of human compassion. Through his lyrics, he is seen to seek a return to embodied intellectual spaces, almost ascetic standard of living, and a political-economicideological empathy towards humanity in order to define a purposeful life in peace. Perhaps only within homecoming, and not utopia, do we return to a shared purpose in life, and discover where and how to find peace. In a similar manner, as discussed in chapter one, when Newton declares his love for truth to be greater than his love for Plato and Aristotle put together, perhaps he means in spite of any philosophical divide between them. An alleged divide between the two greats of antiquity is defined by their individual truth-values: Plato believing in the higher “embodied” forms, whilst Aristotle, perhaps erroneously through history, in having inclined towards dualism, the lower “here and now” of a more materialist form of empiricism.

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Such situations possibly rationalise Newton’s sense of truthvalues within both views. Lakoff and Johnson [1999] presume this to be the unconsciously struggling common-sense: We not only feel this struggle within us, but conceptualize the ‘struggle’ as being between two distinct parts of our self, each with different values. Sometimes we struggle and think of our ‘higher’ (moral and rational) self to get control over our ‘lower’ (irrational and amoral) self. [p. 13]

In keeping an intellectual loyalty both to Plato and Aristotle, the truth Newton seeks is within and despite the two views—towards resolving the classical standoff in human intellect. In his poetic way, Lennon wants the same. In this context, the turf, money and ego maxim I discuss in chapter one needs further analysis. As metaphor, this maxim creates a material sense in the Source Domain. A referent sense of the ego is also material, i.e. the empirical here and now egocentricity of the material world built on the physical body, and not the intuitive soul. Before our birth, our turf, money, and ego did not exist, and from the moment we are deceased, they will cease to exist. All evidence produced in the Target Domain of this maxim is indeed a minimalist view of the here and now—the disparate variables of a long-term research study that conceivably embody the totality of human physical-cognitive times and spaces. Still, I find turf, money, and ego to be an illusory and misleading sense of embodiment that is soulless; and, as a life purpose, unconvincing for the scope of human empathy in which Lennon probably believed. 7.2. Body vs. soul: Is purposeful life a journey? Lakoff and Johnson [1999] study “A Purposeful Life is a Journey” as cognitive metaphor. They provide embodied insight into “who we are, how we experience our world, and how we ought to live” (p. 551). Here, I offer a broader scope

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of this metaphor with a view to questioning the purpose of life in an illusory materialist sense of evidence in the body of data that has its last “stop-over” in the event of one’s death. But the evidence in the soul travels on and lives through the soul. Spanning a lifetime, mainstream intellectual contestations— the cognitive goings on, are built around only two ways of living by evidence—the embodied and the disembodied. In the case of disembodied cognition, the evidence in the soul loses to the material world of turf, money and ego. In embodied cognition, the evidence in the soul prevails upon the materialist norms, in recognising the need for empathetic and purposeful reforms for humanity; but the accompanying body might paradoxically have to pay a price here for the soul to win. As a result, most penetrating [political-ideological] reformative contestations would end up in bodies terminated with extreme prejudice, and forced to finish off the journey. Lennon is one example. Nonetheless, one’s life’s purpose, when embodied, goes on. The evidence survives in symbols and metaphors of affection—Aristotle’s impressions of the soul that [must] stay “the same for the whole of mankind” (introduction of chapter one) across all times and spaces. For this reason, Lennon’s soulful impressions of a purposeful life are quite visible in Denzin’s intuitive choice of metaphor. I discuss further how a life purpose followed in social organisation is reflected in the way we spend our lives: how cognitive sustenance in metaphor embodies our way of life and lifestyle, and even our death and “deathstyle”. Simply, our choice of cognitive metaphor not only defines the purpose of our lives but also reveals the way we live or unlive by our purposes. For instance, a sense of materialism in the metaphor of turf, money, and ego, corresponds to valuing the [material] body of goings on around us, and not the [immaterial] soul. In this regard, I first argue that the popular metaphorical constructs in healthcare organisation and marketing practices

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are borrowed from the warfare norms, disengaging human purpose and empathy from healthcare. Strangely, nowadays, the marketing metaphor is enacted back to warfare, revealing the paradox in metaphor. Second, I assert that the embodied cognition of a “purposeful life [is a journey]” treats turf, money, and ego only as shallow and transient values, and takes us to the immaterial and invisible soul. In this case, we live by, and take intuitive sustenance from, shared truth[s], hopes, and ideals, even at the expense of the material body. 7.2.1. Marketing: From healthcare to warfare We find the [impressions of the] soul losing to a material body in the healthcare organisation metaphor, giving way to the metaphors of marketing and marketplace. Frequently, in private hospitals, we come across imagery of the front-desk reception, corporate finance expertise, market rivalry, brand franchising, and returns on investment ratios. The celebrated Hippocratic Oath1 on delivering healthcare to “humanity” ironically turns into the hypocrites’ oath [Abdullah, 2000a]. The purpose of saving human lives and treating critical ailments has cognitively evolved over the past five decades to primarily commercial projects. Healthcare marketability makes way for cognitive restructuring, from patient care to customer care, and from health-based human needs to marketinduced needs or customer-demand exploitation. As a result, hospital bed capacity, bed utility, and the cost of patient care, are bound to correspond to business profitability, in terms of

1

An oath taken by new physicians in most parts of the world, believed to be in practice since Hippocrates (460-370 BC). Alongside other humane ideas, it suggests the need to avoid the twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism; seeing medical care as an art as much as a science, for empathy to outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug; and treatment of patients’ illness to matter more than their economic status.

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units of service outlets, periodic point-of-sale performance, and operating [profitability] margins, respectively. 7.2.1.1. Marketing is war! Over its several editions now, Strategic Marketing for Health Care Organizations [Kotler et al, 2008] serves as a standard textbook for graduate students all over the Englishspeaking world. Its subtitle is: Building a Customer-Driven Health System. In a brief, generalised, and elementary analysis, I can show how an all-“customer” emphasis initially transmutates the human mindset, and, evolving over time and space, transmutates human conduct. A metaphorical frame that builds on materialist norms holds back the “purpose” of a hospital—frequently disguised in dispassionate objectivity [Denzin, 2013, pp. 355]. The cognitive metaphor: “a HOSPITAL is a MARKETPLACE” induces a physician to rationalise and emphasise saving a patient’s life against his/her socioeconomic and political status as the primary concern. The patient’s illness (a clinical profile and medical diagnosis) is likely to become a secondary issue. Further, a hospital’s clinical consultation is strategically organised on the pattern of production and assembly line of a factory. A sense of profitability has now moved out of the business of industrial production to one that saves lives. The patients are segregated into individual (retail market) and panel patients under group insurance (wholesale market), and almost all financial and accounting terminology follows in the same metaphor. A provision of medical care adheres to marketing, rather than clinical, protocols. As a result, many “Essential Formulary” listed drugs, even in public hospitals, are given an orphan status for their insufficient profitability. In terms of publicity, the slogan “a product speaks for itself” corresponds to hospital service quality or clinical performance

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to speak for itself. Also, word of mouth comment on product quality, promotion, and lobbying, is common to both clinical and marketing cognitions. The clinical seminars serve little clinical purpose and are converted into business meetings—a “set-up” of leading suppliers of drugs and medical equipment. Over another MI plane, Kotler et al [2008] also introduce “invasion plans” for the aggressive creation of market share in existing healthcare institutions, and particularly recommend the “market-challenger strategies” (p. 253-254). Their warlike plan of attack includes five options: frontal, flank, encirclement, bypass, and guerilla warfare. I wonder if this sensemaking is conscious, unconscious, or both. Interestingly, looking at history, the metaphor of strategy comes from the military, but its cognitive exploitation has been significantly commercial since World War II. A strategy initially meant to overpower the enemy, now cuts down the business of a market competitor, transforming patient care institutions into battlegrounds, and patients into ill-fated war casualties. In the metaphor of strategy, healthcare institutions drive their capacities with a view primarily to saving their business rather than human lives. The intuitive choices of war and invasion subvert the purpose of human empathy to “material” values. As a result, the soul loses to the body. Indeed, societies are comprised of segments of both the privileged and underprivileged classes, but prioritising better healthcare provision only for the affluent class lacks human empathy. To live by the metaphor of open market economics in healthcare is not “purposeful”. For many all over the world, especially the unregulated health services in the developing countries, where the ideas of Kotler et al [2008] are usually taught and marketed, the emphasis is on categorising the patients not based on the severity of their illness, but on their economic status. The proverbial slogans such as the customer is always right, the customer comes first, and the customer is

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king refer only the affluent patients: to always be right, to come first, and be treated like a king. The metaphor serves as a tool for materialism in the body to live on. Human values lose. The soul is dead! Here, a prodigal-prodigy embodiment paradox may offer a solution to balance off the cognitive contestations. It can allow the wayward prodigal [materialist] indulgence to stay disciplined under a regulatory compliance within the prodigy of human ethics and empathy. The physician as an individual, and a hospital as an institution, could return to the purpose of the Hippocratic Oath within an embodied homecoming. 7.2.1.2. War is marketing! Within a [unique] paradox that I claim exists in metaphor, “marketing” makes an intellectual U-turn—creating a reversal scenario. The cognitive metaphor: MARKETING is WAR reverts to WAR is MARKETING. From the symbolic sequels of World War I and II, “war” has [characteristically] been labelled, over the second half of the 20th century, as “cold”, “proxy”, “conventional” vs. “unconventional”, and with or without “boots on the ground”. Nevertheless, in the 21st century, the marketing metaphor returns to its origin— strategic warfare; creating cognitive norms for product design and production, pricing, promotion, and placement, displayed in images such as the non-state actors, contractors, agents, licensing, franchising, invasive and non-invasive assaults, and outsourced militancy. Interestingly, the notion of a mercenary (as in the paid professional army) links to both mercant and merces in Latin, for “trade” and “price”, respectively. I study a case of the non-state, or outsourced militancy here2. 2

I focus on metaphor and how its cognitive transference helps unfold Implicit Evidence. For an empirical analysis of these concepts, readers may refer to relevant literature, academic and non-academic.

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The planned target market is stereotypically a fabricated image of the enemy—a political-economic-ideological market competitor. In the field of operational research, we ensure that all industrial production systems comply with the ATO (Assemble to Order), MTO (Made to Order), BTO (Built to Order), or other similar models for strategic order fulfillment of the product. Similarly, the order sizes typically follow the EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) protocols. All orders must also adhere to the core principle of the demand and supply markets. Here, if we study the denotation of Order (a military tactic in its Greek origin taktikós, i.e. to “arrange in order”) as the Source Domain of cognitive metaphor, then it corresponds to a demand vs. supply market for production in the Target Domain. In this regard, we may study how the emergence of the non-state militancy tactics appears to have aptly arranged the post-cold war strategic new world in an order, by the former US President George H.W. Bush. An initial placement and assemblage of this order in a September 1990 session of the US Congress set the “demand agenda” of the new unipolar world—the US and NATO-led characterisation of the world’s turf, money, and ego. This event also secured ordering powers for the US to act as global police, judge, and jury. Now, the marketing metaphor appears to have taken off from there, to operationalise, among other agendas, the need to produce non-state militancy inside the classic marketing model of the 4Ps: product, pricing, promotion, and placement. Firstly, initial Research and Development of non-state militancy as a product branding features (such as a generic name in the original source “codes” or purpose) and consumer targeting is customarily fabricated in the intelligence industry. A product image (good or bad) is intellectually “towed” by exclusive “think tanks” and media play ups. The purchase of the product’s raw material keeps to the MNC’s norms of marketing: “think globally, act locally”, allowing production

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outsourcing by local partners, and multi-sourced supplies from aggravated or indoctrinated dissidents, by-products of a regional Divide and Rule, or marginalised and underprivileged subgroups. Also, some raw material is processed prior to fabrication, whereby orphanages serve as a key source where abandoned or abducted children are raised, trained, and mindcontrolled to become die-hard militants and assassins. Occasionally, such sources are tendered in fictional texts and espionage movies, as in the Brotherhood of the Rose [1989]. Even if politically-ethically contentious, there remains an industrial marketing subsidiary source (a trade secret!) in the “mind control projects” that have been in business since the 1950s. These projects [must] add value through sophisticated technologies in the 21st century generation of events, in implicit support of a new world order3. The non-state militancy line of products nowadays comprises brands that are foreign and designers’, Do-It-Yourself (DIY), local demandbased (homemade and homegrown), and even disposable. Second, product pricing (in this case, financing) depends on the maker’s political-economic-ideological stakes, product quality, image branding, fund sourcing, payment methods (such as hidden offshore accounts, outsourcing and aid-forarms), and value additions vis-à-vis logistics and development 3

Some projects on mind invasion including Operation Artichoke and Mkultra are reported in the Conspiracy Encyclopedia [2005] and discussed academically [Scheflin and Opton, 1978; Goliszek, 2003]. Originally, the human subject’s mind control involved the use of drugs and later, microchip technology. Time magazine reports [29th September 1975] the presence of dart gun technology that has been critically examined [Shpiro, 2009]. This weapon is equipped with a telescopic sight for targeted assassination, and could silently fire darts tipped with deadly toxins at a target from a distance of 250 feet. The dart is reportedly the width of a human hair and a quarter of an inch long and even penetrable in clothes. It can be fired from disguised, undetectable umbrellas and walking canes, and can cause the death of the target after some time, from what may appear to be a natural heart attack.

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costs. Especially the market’s demand-supply forces must comply with the product’s unique specifications, such as the trademark [market] penetrability. The price also depends on the financial investment portfolio of the makers as well as the stakeholders, and the terms and conditions of subsidiary and the agents’ franchising or licensing (to kill in this case!). Once the purpose of such a product is served, it rarely holds any goodwill or salvage value. It is mostly dumped. Third, the promotion is customarily a trade secret and carries over a covertly guarded channeling of ideas. As coverups, these ideas are shared only on an official need-to-know basis. Product promotion is also carried out through indirect marketing: covert technological, medical care and charity support, as well as the conventional negotiated-order-theorybacked media support (print and electronic) in “implanted” operators, brand ambassadors, and “agents of influence”; more recently, it is carried out by social media networking, Internet articles, and YouTube viral marketing videos. Some promotion is also possible in crowdsourcing models in tacit support of popular idea marketing, leading on to revolutions and regime changes. Fourth, a placement (or product’s physical distribution) is advised and carried out by licensed consultants, contractors, and negotiators, as well as regional agents, dealers, suppliers, and operators. These distributors provide the logistical and network support, from acquiring a franchise through to pointof-purchase and consumption outlets. A surveillance system and performance-based compensation criteria is also in place for distribution by local brand-mixing. A centralised database management system is dedicated to this purpose. The brands follow global idea “recruitment” and “purchase” in foreign and local markets, respectively—the viable regions that are economically deprived, politically unstable, and ideologically exploitable. There is local hiring and technical training of the

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workforce (i.e. outsourcing) by foreign recruiters or franchise regulators. The point-of-sale (recruit!) purchaser or consumer has no idea of the “who, when, where, what, why, and how?” of the product/service idea, place of production, and source of funding, because of the range of intermediary channels and agents typically disguised or hidden in mixed promotional and placement strategies. Moreover, regarding intergenerational demand orders, the older, underperforming, over-extended, or diluted brands are replaced by those with appealing features. In line with the trade norms of MNCs, some products are deshelved and removed from the serving outlets and their licenses and contracts dismissed. In the event of an extreme prejudice for drifting brands (or products), again, in a manner similar to that of many MNCs which treat the oceans as their junkyards, the producer would even dump its [once] highdemand products in the ocean to sleep with the fish. The brand image and its trademark penetration matters the most. Some brands speak for themselves. Levi Strauss blue jeans, especially the brand registered as 501 has held an iconic [pioneering] status since the 1890s. It mainstreamed in celebrity wear mostly after WWII. This brand would be available in exclusive high streets outlets, especially in the world’s capital cities. The made-in-USA quality would hardly be available on “sale” or at the discount outlets, because the maker employs old hands and human intelligence, signifying exclusivity and patriotism. Over time, one also finds emerging [industrial] powers pouring in lower quality or fake brands infiltrating in the marketplace. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the unconventional orders, covert franchise agency networking for quality control of outsourced stitching, and the homegrown and substandard replicas, have taken over the market. Still, the 501 Original keeps its distinctive presence. It is “fabricated” intelligently and its supply is operationalised mostly from the USA, with no compromise on the quality of

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production. The human skills, as much as, until recently, the state-of-the-art non-invasive technology, matter the most for coming to terms with [a new world] order’s intergenerational demand, quality control, promotion, and distribution. There is hardly any social research evidence accessible on this marketing practice, but metaphor. The industry remains an “open [state] secret” whereby the production units comply with the orders of invisible governance and covert operations. 7.2.2. Metaphors by which we live dangerously! According to George Orwell, “the further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it”. It is obvious that truth, whether revealed as a matter of scholastic, political, or professional-ethical “judgment”, can lead to the marginalisation of its speaker from the mainstream, especially from circles that find their life purpose in turf, money, and ego. Marginalisation is the initial stage—an implicit warning to keep away from truth or truth-seeking. In our intellectual histories, we may notice how the term Conspiracy Theory, as metaphor, carries such intellectual warnings. Marginalisation comes with distancing and alienation, and can lead to hushing up the truth-seekers (or truth-speakers) in key policy decision making, intimidation, and imposing [state funding] sanctions on them. In subsequent events of non-compliance, the truthspeaker can face termination with extreme prejudice. As truth-seeking is tantamount to soul searching, the story of the soul “winning” and the body “losing” that I discussed earlier is retold every now and then. It probably begins with Socrates in antiquity, and through its many eventful historical episodes proceeds to the modern era of Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon. In 21st century Britain, we also come across individuals such as David Kelly and Robin Cook, who stood by their ethical values, self-respect, and global empathy and peace. Among others, the four of them may be called the

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soul searchers or messengers of truth. The [co]incidences of their death explain their multiversally embodied instincts, revealed, initially in marginalisation, and eventually in their death by disembodied convictions of turf, money, and ego, or simply the status quo. The latter wins; one must expect this as the outcome, and not call it a Conspiracy Theory! As human revolutionary thought is mostly shaped by an embodied cognition of emergent metaphor, a prodigal-withinprodigy paradox that I discuss in chapter four explains the risk-of-life-within-moral-courage and a non-compliancewithin-moral-purpose. The four names I bring up here appear to have shared this paradox. In one way or another, perhaps intuitively, they were Lifting the Lid on the Workings of Powers (chapter one) within their shared dreams and ideals of peace and empathy. They defied the hegemonic politics and falsification of evidence and wars against colour and repression [Denzin, 2013]. I discuss this view further. 7.2.2.1. Fatal dreams Martin Luther King Jr. lived by a dream of a world with no blame or privilege to the colour of skin and race. John Lennon (…a dreamer) would embody him, in his lyrical-ideational effort to bring down the world of a political-economic exploitation. They both perish within their dreams: the metaphors they lived by, paradoxically however, in order for their souls to live on in the shared “dreams” of empathy that they left behind for others to take over from. That is how they defined their moral [cult] leadership over their limited times and spaces. Their shared “dream” metaphor brought them together. Martin Luther dies at 39, Lennon at 40; the cause of death in both cases—a dream; the manner of death: targeted assassination—most likely a termination with extreme prejudice; their present status: souls—living in embodied cognition, and living by the metaphor of similar dreams (by

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others) to follow, that is, Aristotle’s mental affections, that are the same for all humanity. 7.2.2.2. Fallen out of “order” In the UK, while Prime Minister Tony Blair had followed up and steadily settled in the 21st century version of [the] new world order, some, like David Kelly and Robin Cook, were initially marginalised, and finally, terminated, both aged 59. In such cases, it is always some state agency that enacts the metaphor, under the pretext of national security or strategic interests—the same old turf, money, and ego. I take up their cases for a study as to how the [co]incidences of their death seem to have fallen out of [the new world] order. David Kelly (1944-2003) was an expert on biological weapons, employed by the UK Ministry of Defense. He had worked earlier as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. In 2002, he had reportedly been associated with the Defense Intelligence Staff to prepare a dossier for the UK government to make a strong case of the presence of WMDs in Iraq—a pretext for its invasion. Reportedly, his part was to proof-read the history of inspections. However, Kelly seemed unconvinced and unwilling to endorse a play up—that is, Iraq’s [alleged] capacity to fire chemical and biological weapons from the battlefield within 45 minutes of an order to use them. Here, I agree with Baker’s [2007] opinion that Kelly was “much too professional, much too neutral”. Kelly’s stance led to a series of controversies, and finally to his death in essentially mysterious circumstances4; especially the Hutton Inquiry’s unusual ruling which required the evidence related to his death (including the post mortem report and photographs), to 4

For details, readers may refer to the Hutton inquiry report [2004] and leading media coverage of contestations developed around a suicide vs. alleged assassination [e.g. Baker, 2007; Churcher, 2008; Lewis 2014].

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remain classified for 70 years. Responding to an email by a [sympathetic] journalist, one or two days before his death, Kelly would remark “many dark actors playing games”. Here, dark actors, and playing games are revealing metaphors that I identify in chapter nine as Implicit Evidence. However, he did not fall into the “chaff” or the “fall guy” images as British MP Andrew Mackinlay would refer to him over a committee hearing. He had rather uncovered the grain from the chaff— the truth that was masked by the untruth. It is only that Kelly did not surrender his professional influence to serve Britain with untrue grounds for Iraq’s invasion. Hence, some dark actors must have played games to check (or checkmate) his “much too professional, much too neutral” position. Robin Cook (1946-2005) was UK foreign secretary from 1997 to 2001. He had been well aware of the UK’s arms-toIraq deal since the late 1980s. He had reacted strongly to this in his famous speech in response to the 1996 Butler Inquiry report which claimed the UK government should have acted responsibly in the first place. Later, these arms appeared to provide the basis for the alleged presence of WMDs in Iraq. This view supports my earlier argument of how [UK] arms “export” marketing returns to a warfare narrative—the WMDs. It is quite likely that since the mid-1990s Cook was under surveillance, especially since becoming the shadow foreign secretary. Later on, in 2003, as the British foreign secretary, Cook also tried to stop the invasion of Iraq, and even resigned in protest from a very important ally position. Like Kelly, he was convinced that the pretexts of invasion of Iraq were fakes. Later, in 2005, Cook’s intellectual-political catharsis led him to unfold a fatal truth about the [centralised] “database”5—the same truth that had redefined and reinforced 5

Robin Cook, (8th July 2005). “The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means”. The Guardian (London: theguardian.com). Archived from the original on 9 October 2007; Accessed on 14.2.2016

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the new world order, symbolising 21st century evidence in digital codes, on both sides of the Atlantic, and even beyond. Apparently, he had not learned his lesson from Kelly’s death. Here, we could say that his death was not the end of his life but a homecoming for his soul! Conceivably, in Matthews’ [2002] words, he had “desired the soul” and had become “his own master”, disproving “the perishable world” to live “through the worlds” (p. 21); a world with no unkind orders to take up. Hence, the voluminous physical body of the data on the inquiries that had frustrated him remains one of the most tarnished pieces of evidence in human history. Cook’s resignation from office seemed unfortunate, but his friends would say he had appeared healthier and happier since leaving office.6 That could be a sense of moral freedom, yet the choice of truth cost him his political career. As soon as the UK invaded Iraq, Cook was on the [proxemic] margin—a backbencher. Some would call his resignation a political misjudgment;7 and questions would also rise in support of marginalising him: “How could they prevent him from repeating his mistake? Could they have had him arrested and charged under the OSA? Did they try to speak to him between 8th July and 6th August 2005, to warn him about “his future conduct”?8 Importantly, questions were also raised about his disquieting death when the “Prescott affair” became public on 26th April 2006, hinting a risk of national security in the use 6

Gaby Hinsliff, Mark Townsend and Martin Bentham [2005], “Robin Cook dies after collapse on mountain”, The Guardian (7.8.2005): http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/august/07/uk.labour. Accessed on 14.2.2016 7 The Telegraph [2005] “Robin Cook” (8.8.2005): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1495724/Robin-Cook.html. Accessed on 14.2.2016 8 Shaphan [2006], Robin Cook, the Database and Secrets (12.5.2006): http://shaphan.typepad.com/blog/2006/05/robin_cook_the_html. Accessed on 14.2.2016

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of undercover agents to serve as diary secretaries for senior Labour Party politicians since the mid-1990s9. Reportedly, Gaynor Regan was Cook’s diary secretary in 1994 at the time Cook became the Shadow Foreign Secretary; in 1998, she became Cook’s second wife, and in 2005, his only reported company at the time of his mysterious death.10 Further, the appearance of Cook’s “the database” column the day after the 7th July 2005 London incident may not be another [co]incidence. His critics felt that Robin might not stop “singing”, and because he was a predictably severe critic, there were speculations about what secret he would reveal next.11 There are views that he had planned to write a book or a column, and one wonders if that was about [the truth of] the 7th July London incident with accounts similar to his 8th July column. In this regard, the four weeks between 8th July (the day his column appeared) and 6th August (the day he died) appear to have served as a metaphorical transference in Cook’s status—from marginalisation to termination. [Co]incidently again, Cook’s prodigy was equally special: “his tribal loyalty saw him return to the fold”,12 back to his party, and his campaign for Tony Blair’s re-election in May 2005, showed his sense of optimism. But, was it too late then? Here, a return could be owing to “emotional intelligence” and empathy he had reportedly been developing over the years;13 restoring a retribution—to speak up his homecoming truth about the 7th July London incident that occurred a few weeks later? Perhaps his optimism had miscarried! 9

Shaphan [2006], “Lingering questions about Robin Cook's death”, (15.5.2006) http://shaphan.typepad.com/blog/2006/05/questions_about.html. Accessed on 14 Feb, 2016 10 Ibid. no. 9 above 11 Ibid. no. 8 above 12 Ibid. no. 6 above 13 Ibid. no. 6 above

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In terms of the cognitive-methodology-metaphor and the scope of Implicit Evidence, the cases of Kelly and Cook produce an intuitive [longitudinal] evidence of peace and human empathy, embodied in the truth-seekers before them. The most illustrious among them is the British inventor Michael Faraday (1791-1867) who had refused to become an advisor to the British government based on their production of chemical weapons in the Crimean War (1853-56). The refusal made Faraday a much greater human than a great scientist. 7.2.2.3. What did [not] happen that day!? In chapter five, I discuss how the Foucault pendulum movement creates precessions in thought trials. Following up on the earlier section, I now discuss, by way of a case study, some events of the day Robin Cook died, with reference to what I call evidential precessions embodying the physicalcognitive time-space of his death at Ben Stack. His life, when viewed alongside the events surrounding his death, produces an image field, identifying some a priori and posteriori positions creating these precessions. If we see one position as SUDDEN DEATH by heart attack or accident (the Source Domain), and the other position as a typical make-it-looklike-an-accident-styled TARGETED ASSASSINATION (the Target Domain), then the time-space image field appears to reveal a series of inconsistencies or [evidential] precessions.14 14

A weblog source (Footnote 9) in support of this discussion admits the following: “I apologize now for having cast any suspicion where it was not due. But until such time my conscience tells me to raise these questions, even at the risk of being wrong...” In a similar way, I do not try to establish the deaths of Robin Cook and David Kelly as cases of assassination. One can “establish” that only with the help of forensic evidence, which is neither a subject of my interest nor the theme of this book. With a reference to earlier chapters, what I try to establish is that the hard evidence is certainly out there—hidden, covered, or wiped away! Our

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These include the place15 and the cause of death, access to a mobile phone, weather conditions, the post mortem, the media coverage, the role of the emergency services, and mysterious presence of [anonymous] walker(s) nearby who reportedly came up to help. I discuss these inconsistencies below: No clear cause of death! The officially reported cause of death was a “hypertensive heart disease”16. Some early press reports indicated that Cook had fallen down after a heart attack and had broken his neck. The official post mortem would not mention any injuries to head or neck from an eight foot fall down the ridge. Upon the declaration of death, the local police issued a statement: “as this would appear to be a medical matter, there is no further police involvement”;17 paradoxically, the case was closed before it was even opened.18 This leads to some speculations: why was no injury reported if Cook’s body fell down a rocky ridge as a dead-weight? Did the heart attack cause him to collapse, or was it only death by heart attack, which did not actually lead him to fall down? What caused a fatal heart attack? A targeted assassination by incapacity to access that creates the scope for Implicit Evidence that I claim here. To appreciate the scope of presence of absence, the readers may refer, among other arguments, to Derrida’s [1976] Under Erasure. 15 It is also [co]incidental that the owner of Ben Stack in the Reay Forest estate is reported as a senior UK MOD official and described (Footnote 9) as the ultimate insider and a most likely state policy supporter of Iraq’s invasion, who may be expected to play a role in safeguarding state secrets. This official is reportedly the owner of exclusive real estate in London, including one rented to the US Embassy around that time, creating the possibility of a reenacted “special [working] relationship” between the [UK] owner and his US counterparts. The background of this relationship is discussed in chapter three. 16 Ibid. no. 9 above 17 Ibid. no. 9 above 18 Ibid. no. 9 above

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firing dart gun poison from a distance could also lead to a heart attack within a short time! No mobile phone! Did Cook or his wife have a mobile phone at the time of his death? Cook is reported to have telephoned and spoken to a newspaper journalist a short time prior to his death.19 What happened to that phone later? Did the investigating authorities find a mobile phone among his belongings and retrieve its data after they had closed down the case: that both Cook and his wife did not carry their mobile phones with them?20 On the other hand, in the memorial services held for Cook, a key speaker would inform the mourners that Cook’s son Christopher had received a text message from his father about an hour prior to the reported death.21 Was it a “foul” weather? There is some metaphorical hint in Cook’s text message to his son Christopher: “am at top of Ben Stack, view of Arkle and Foinaven can’t be seen for mist—weather foul. Wish you were here.”22 The two peaks he refers to are also the names of two racing horses. As his son was a racing journalist, such codes create a precession. Foul is an uncommon word to describe weather and it can connote a sense of foul play (that means unwanted, wicked, merciless, and even murder)! Cook had good command of the English language and I think he knew well how to use his skills to make a point. A choice of the word foul could have been purposeful for creating a hint. [Co]incidently, within embodied empirical [evidential] support, his choice 19

Ibid. no. 9 above Ibid. no. 9 above 21 Mark Sadden [2005], “Friends (and foes) bid farewell to Robin Cook”, The Independent, 13.8.2005; (www.independent.co.uk) 22 Ibid. no. 9 above 20

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of foul was in conflict with the media reports of the weather on the mountain that day. Even his airlift rescue team had reported the weather conditions to be clear at that time. Some newspapers also reported the weather around the time of Cook’s death to be “clear”, “near-perfect”, and “a really bright day and not very windy”.23 Who were the unidentified helpers? There have been reports that Ben Stack would rarely have many walkers. A walker(s) and/or hunter(s) was reported to have been there when Cook’s wife shouted for help, who reportedly provided CPR for some time and helped make an emergency call from his phone.24 There is no consensus on their exact number. Their identity and witness support is equally unaccounted for by the police, the media, and the rescue team. Why were the mysterious walker(s), whose phone numbers could be traced, not investigated or publically acknowledged for their presence over a highprofile incidence of death? On a different plane, pursuing the traditional theory of metaphor, Robin (a diminutive of Robert, Cook’s first name) would sing naturally in his speeches and columns. He seemed to have been preyed upon by predating hawks on both sides of the Atlantic. Events leading to his death were well cooked up! He did what he could to inform others in his surroundings of the looming threats from ground predators. 7.2.3. [Re]searching a purposeful life What brings purpose to our lives: an emergent experiential sense, i.e. the way life comes to us, a deeper intuitive sense, 23 24

Ibid. no. 9 above (addenda) Ibid. no. 9 above

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or both? What determines a purposeful life and engages us to live or unlive it? What is the influence of turf, money, and ego in our life journeys? When and how do we find a purpose to be true and worth living or dying for? Did Martin Luther, Lennon, or Kelly and Cook cognitively embody a purposeful life-within-death: why do we continue to celebrate them after their death? It is in this paradoxical milieu that I emphasise how metaphor and embodied cognition could recognise life as a purposeful journey, and perhaps, answer these questions. In embodied cognition all human experience sustains the prodigal-prodigy paradox by living it. We also choose to “live by” our life purpose, or “live up to” our ideals and visions, or “live out” our ideals and beliefs, even dangerously, or “live up” extravagant lifestyles. Among many such [life practices], I point to some. First, we may live up to our own visions and expectations, and even learn how to secure these within a purposeful life. One example is Microsoft’s Bill Gates who appears to have lived up to his self-expectations. He did fall to the typical teenager prodigality potholes, such as minor traffic violations, but the prodigy markedly within an entrepreneurial homecoming led him to a rewarding life, in a material sense. Particularly, there was a soulful homecoming (that is little attended to, regrettably!) in 2007, when he gave away almost all of his wealth. Apparently, he did not even lose it; in 2014, he was again among the richest people in the world. His assets had doubled. Why did Gates give away his billions of selfearned fortune to charity? Did he make this decision out of an empirical “business” sense, an intuitive empathy, or both: balancing the prodigal-prodigy paradox within turf, money, and ego? Second, many celebrities choose life to live it up in material fame and possession, and excessive consumption. These may not always be the true indicators of living well, happily, and safely! The high rate of suicide or drugoverdose-related deaths of celebrities in the movie and music

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industries is a likely outcome of missing the point of balancing the prodigal and the prodigy. They lose too much of personal life and privacy in their material success, and then attempt a “return” only at the idea of giving up on their lives. Third, in a fulfilling lifetime of 92 years, we find Rosa Parks to almost outlive her life’s purpose. She lived her beliefs, and kept reflecting her image as an inspiring role model. If life is a purposeful journey makes sense only within embodied cognition, then the relativist material world must be recognised sooner rather than later. Today’s obsession with the selfie (a self-portrait taken on a mobile phone) is an implicit indicator of a lifestyle—the way we keep refreshing a selfish sense of the here and now, in posing, every now and then, for a disembodied self-image. Here, in the materialist sense, we [pre]tend to neglect the role of the implicit soul that regulates our social attitudes, relationships, and lifestyles, to embody not only our own selves but people, events, society, the world, the ecosystem, and the universe. Finally, in terms of social research, it is likely that what we study as “generic” issues, such as turf, money, and ego [Abdullah, 2000a] prove to be “disparate” and misleading. In support of Denzin [2013], only embodied cognition of social research can tolerate “…a world where no one counts data and data no longer count….where utopian dreams are paramount” (p. 355). However, in terms of evidence in social research that we live by, is there a relationship of evidence with the purpose of one’s life and death? Can we recognise our LIFE and DEATH, respectively, as the Source and Target Domains of an embodied purposeful journey metaphor?

CHAPTER EIGHT CARTESIAN ANXIETY: “IN SEARCH OF A GROUND”!

Here we have the two extremes, the either-or of the Cartesian Anxiety. There is the enchanting land of truth where everything is clear and ultimately grounded but beyond that small island there is the wide and stormy ocean of darkness and confusion, the native home of illusion. This feeling of anxiety arises from the craving for an absolute ground. When this craving cannot be satisfied, the only other possibility seems to be nihilism and anarchy. The search for a ground can take many forms…an outer ground in the world or an inner ground in the mind. By treating mind and the world as opposed subjective and objective poles, the Cartesian Anxiety oscillates endlessly between the two in search of a ground. ...we have not learned to let go of the forms of thinking, behavior, and experience that lead us to desire a ground. [Verala et al, 1992 p. 141, italics added]

8.1. A psychosomatic syndrome: Some indicators Human intellectual history is a cognitive paradox. It may appear complex, but actually, it is not. The view that: “…there is only one way the world is” [Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 118], makes it simple; what makes it too complex is Derrida’s notion of context—the entire realist-history-of-theworld. Hence, to make sense of the one world, we diverge around the contexts of our [unique] spaces and times, and paradoxically, converge through the relationships we develop with all people, objects, institutions, and events, we come across. Hence, the knowledge we claim as [the] truths of our

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sensemaking is only a contextual image or “metaphor” of the relationships to [a] world out there. That explains our spacetime “here and now”, which we typically call relativism. More specifically, that also explains Cartesian dualism: we and our world out there! Here, what comes first: do we, or our world, characterise a cognitive paradox? In another way, our relationships to the same one world can be viewed as embodied, rather than dualist: when we identify our world, the one out there and the one within us, intuitively, as one. Lakoff and Johnson [1999] revisit Western thinking, from pre-Socratic antiquity to Noam Chomsky, and conclude how, throughout realist history in its entirety, perhaps inadvertently, human intellect remained dualistic and largely “uninformed by the cognitive science” (p. 7). In this regard, they assert how associating Aristotle with the classical here and now is basically flawed: For them knowledge that worked was knowledge of Being. Aristotle, for example, saw an identity between ideas in the mind and the essence of things in the world. That identity answered the problem of knowledge…no split between ontology (what there is) and epistemology (what you could know), because the mind was in direct touch with the world. [p. 94, italics added]

Therefore, through the progress of all our epistemological and ontological struggles which aim to find out “what there is” and “what we could know”, respectively, unless we have been sensitised to the norms of embodied cognition, all our research findings and discoveries would end up as relativistic. Our [knowledge] positions on our relationships to the world, across all times and spaces would remain individual views! Relativism is only the way we all relate to the world, in our own way. Nothing more! No knowledge! No gains! Seeking the truth is a different position. It is a paradox within and outside of relativism. Truth[s] can defy paradoxes

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only when we have embodied the world around and within us into a single cognitive domain. As there is only one way the [embodied] world is, there is no time-space relativism here. While seeking the truth as a keen intellectual purpose and an essential methodological norm of social research, we need to recognise that dualistic norms wind up only in relativism; in producing phenomenological facts and realist realities, not truth[s]. Perhaps as a philosophical conspiracy, dualism meant to create an agnostic sense of the one world, evolving over the course of history to be diagnosed as Cartesian anxiety [Bernstein, 1983]. In the name of knowledge, this anxiety led to produce “more than two millennia of a priori philosophical speculation” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 3]. As a diagnosis of this anxiety, we note that dualism is still bent upon pulling the rug from under its own feet of rational sensemaking. I identify six representative historiographic indicators of how Cartesian anxiety has turned into a psychosomatic disorder—a syndrome, which disembodies the body and soul of evidence rendering them as two entities, rather than one. The polemic implications on social research practice are obvious. Since antiquity, into which we may begin briefly probing, the sole purpose of human intellect has been a search for the truth[s] within a judicious sense of being and how we identify our “inner” and the “outer” worlds as essentially one to which humans belonged. Aristotle, among others in antiquity, did not see any split [intellectual] identity. However, over the course of time, especially towards the Enlightenment, the human philosophical argument of being would divide into “for” and “against” and “either-or” of primarily one body and soul of human knowledge, and one methodological domain of evidence. The hallmark of this era is Cartesian dualism: “with Descartes, philosophy opened a gap between the mind and the world” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 94]. An identity-metaphorical-split in reasoning that

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signifies Cartesian norms (from René Descartes), seems to be the first historiographic indicator of the Cartesian syndrome. At this point, the dualist epistemological-ontological norms altered the course of our intellectual history, from discovering truth[s] of being to inventing, and reinventing the method for creating “truth”, defeating one method after the other, this time, in the name of science but ending up in relativism. A choice of “the Enlightenment” was an intuitive reaction to several preceding centuries of the Dark Ages: “…men of genius …surrounded by darkness and gloom” [Marsh, 2003, p. 457; italics added]. As a metaphor, anxiety extended to different periodic arrays such as the early, middle and the late, “ages”, with a different shade of the same darkness and gloom. The anxiety also recognised the detrimental influence of a “golden age” of modern science vis-à-vis all non-science traditions as its counter influence and rivals, creating restless spaces between the two extreme ends of an oscillating human intellect. For Immanuel Kant, these oscillations had held an anxiety over two extremes of human reasoning, the “pure” and the “practical”; to speak for the soul and the body of [one] evidence; part embodied, and part disembodied. Kant made up for this bipolar confusion in his third critique—the “free will”, to choose between “beliefs” and “proofs”. This bipolar sense of extreme uncertainty of all light vs. all dark, marking an intellectual gloom over divided leanings, serves as the second historiographic indicator of the Cartesian syndrome. Subsequently, political-ideological partisanships assigned the leftist, the rightist, and centrist spaces to intellectual times, squeezing in, among others, the Skeptics, the Romantics, Renaissance humanists, and Kant’s free will. This time-space partisanship continues. The visible glitters of technology and the scientific method would outdo the truth[s] in the inner and invisible worlds. Initially, a conviction in science, and then the machine and the invasive-hegemonic norms of the two,

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reinforced the mechanistic tendencies. The cultural-imperial and colonial mentalities created access to further indigenousexploitative and intellectual spaces in pretexts such as the “white man’s burden” and the “open market” mechanisms of a capitalist-material world to serve, first, human development, and later, globalisation. The colonial control in the doctrine of “divide and rule” created hidden divisions in social systems and mindsets, qualifying ethnicity, faith, language, education, healthcare, and even the way we all thought—ideology— conservative, liberal, and progressive, among others. Such a burdened-inbuilt-prejudiced mindset appears to be the third historiographic indicator of the Cartesian syndrome. Further, we find the colonial master’s relationship to his or her “subject” to be overstretched in its stereotyping of subjective or subjectivity as “indigenous” and local or native versions of evidence as empirically weak and equally unreliable. Such norms controlled the times and spaces of social research: cultural shock, folk wisdom, going native, and lost in translation, continue to be undesirable [evidential] tendencies, even in the ethno-methodologies. A mystical sense of the world is lost to the dogmatic science. The Industrial Revolution, helped along by Taylorism and Fordism, created the legacy of a mechanistic rationality. Even when the two world wars were over in the battlefields, the warring norms of the strategic, tactical, and operational designs made good money in the corporate world, and left a spiritual-emotional sense of serenity too far behind. Here, one also comes across an era of scientific-management arrogance that continues attempting (productively, but pathetically, in many cases) to turn almost everything into a statistical value. This sickening tendency that builds on the time-and-motion and a factorystyled prototyping of human skills created an intuitive repulsion: initially, in “human relations”, and more recently in

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“emotional intelligence”. I note this sense of fixation as the fourth historiographic indicator of the Cartesian syndrome. On the basis of the abovementioned repulsed reactions, a search for the soul ran into even more -isms—an impulsive type of intellectual aggregation along segregating options to one’s sensemaking of the world; but in actuality qualifying hidden divisions in the human cognition, through the same old “divide and rule”. Here, for a single way the world is, philosophy is confused. The mainstream social research ideals in scientific-to-modern models of the inductive, inquisitive, flexible, and reflective reasoning shaped a series of denials, reversals, and defiant methodological norms. This confusion led to a loss of a sense of direction. First, the methodological purpose was detained in keeping rightist or leftist orientations. Second, the purpose went round and round in circles (the hermeneutic, the Cartesian, the Vienna…), perspectival turns, angles, and loci (triangulation, axial codes, focus groups, and grounded theory), and even the [divisive] free will, with little sense of the need for an intuitive epicentre—the “inner self”. This directional loss created hypersensitivity to structures, provoking research norms to go against and beyond scientific method itself, or even abandoning it. Confusion surrounding a sense of direction with which to locate and discover evidence seems to be the fifth historiographic indicator of the Cartesian syndrome. We find yet another sign of anxiety in recent intellectual catharsis which allows human reasoning to loosen up: from tidy structures to retributive deconstruction; modernity to post-modernity; colonial to post- and neocolonial; and sexism vs. feminism on to womanism, among others. Inside the post-, neo-, and de- prefixes, one can also identify continued intellectual waves and moments of restlessness. A cathartic anxiety is more evident in returning to the indigenous and marginalised, and their emancipation and empowerment, and

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to their views as recovered and regained paradigms of [lost] evidence. Yet, some anxiety continues in terms of human incapacity to reason “within” both the inner and the outer worlds—the body and the soul. This incapacity had met intellectual losses rather than gains in the past, mostly since the Enlightenment, viewed as Descartes’s Error [Damasio, 1994] and Why Freud was Wrong [Webster, 1995]. Despondently, even in this era, the colour of humanity continues to reflect the gloomy norms of the Dark Ages. I call this advanced state of restlessness the sixth historiographic indicator of the Cartesian syndrome. At this point, let us pause, and think. What is the prognosis of the philosophical-methodological [research] norms that are disembodied? Is it not that a cathartic craving is desperate and within touching-distance of an intellectual homecoming? The craving is a torment, but not fatal. Nevertheless, the signs of split identity and bipolarity, fixation, loss, and restlessness, are developing into a syndrome: do these signify an alarming point of no return? For the epistemologically “blurred” or “fractured” future scenario in social research [Denzin and Lincoln, 2005], the present state of an anxiety is no longer psychological. It may have turned into a chronic disease. For the history of indicators, the disease is a psychopathology: an ailment of both the body and the soul of research evidence—a psychosomatic syndrome. Treatment demands inputs that are post-paradigmatic and postdisciplinary. From some perspectives of cognitive science, Cartesian anxiety is “best put as a dilemma” in human intellectual history [Verala et al, 1991, p. 40]. It has also been explained as the “Cartesian ego” (ibid. p. 143), which indeed is revealed in the stubbornness of the here and now and either-or norms of scientific logic. Possibly, this ego has held most rational thinking back in the body by not making deeper sense of the soul in embodied cognition. As a result, over the history of

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epistemological and ontological struggles between the body and soul, across our intellectual times and spaces: “Cartesian anxiety oscillates endlessly between the two in search of a ground” (ibid. p. 141). These oscillations follow the Foucault pendulum motion that I discuss in chapter five. The cognitive space is bound but emergent, and the time is free, allowing Cartesian intellect to search for a ground, eternally, between the two ends of reasoning—a priori and posteriori. Regarding our “search of a ground”, the embodied mind philosophy serves social research in at least two ways. One, through a revisit of the history, the research focus must review the mainstream challenges and make up for the “lost ground”. Two, an investigation of the Cartesian patient must include the drug history, especially any [dualistic] effect of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, or Sigmund Freud on the patient’s psyche. Here, it is quite likely that the three of them had prescribed some disparate [memetic] variables for their “evidence” of the one world (in analogies and symbols) that we wrongly recognise as generic. We may then be able to treat the syndrome within a renewed epistemic prodigy of embodiment in cognitive metaphor—a homecoming of the patient. Thereon, it is likely that a stumbling philosophy gets back on its feet, in a world that is essentially one. Several studies [e.g. Bernstein, 1983; Webster, 1995; Damasio, 1994] claim that the stumbles characterise two and a half millennia of a documented intellectual history. Conceivably, a lot more! 8.2. “Craving for an absolute ground” The explanations for which cognitive scientists chose, unconsciously or consciously, a ground to imply philosophy’s eternal craving for truths is of some interest here. I briefly examine Verala et al [1992, p. 141] for their [cognitive] consistency in the choice of the term “ground” which I emphasise in opening this chapter:

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- “…the enchanting land of truth where everything is clear and ultimately grounded”; - “…the craving for an absolute ground”; - “The search for a ground”; - “…an outer ground”; - “…an inner ground”; - “…in search of a ground”; and - “…to desire a ground”. The ground metaphor directs all philosophical craving to the “enchanting land of truth”—both in “an inner” and “an outer” sense of cognitive spaces, and in “ultimate” and “absolute” sense of cognitive times. The “inner” ground implies the invisible soul, the inner world of the soul, implicit evidence, and immaterialism. The “outer” ground points to the body, the physical evidence in phenomenological facts, and materialism. This metaphor supports foregrounding in the field of stylistics [Leech, 2008], the cognitive science notions of the “grounded cognitions” [argued in Gibbs, 2006; Barsalou, 2008], and the notion of “grounded theory” in qualitative research [Glaser and Strauss, 1967]. It is equally thought-provoking that human intellectual searches build upon a sense of loss—something “lost”, which needs to be researched, discovered, or regained. Desire for a ground also implies an instinctive sense of the “lost grounds” to induce cravings through the entire course of philosophicalmethodological history, and a state of anxiety that I discuss earlier. This loss is borne out in methodological compromises that we customarily make in terms of qualitative details and quantitative proxies—through the “thick” and the “thin” versions of our findings. A sense of loss is also evident in choices for paradigmatic policy reforms and the alternative shifts within these [Kuhn, 1962]; and even in a wider range of paradigms that we contest, lose, and regain [Morgan, 2007]. In The Prodigal Paradigm Returns, Massey [2001] notes how

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“sometime around 1967, US sociology lost its way and spent the next two decades wandering in the wilderness” (p. 41). In a wider intellectual-historic purview, all losses may intuitively be traced to John Milton’s narrative of the Paradise Lost—a poetic account of the [prodigal] loss of the “absolute ground”. Here, I wonder if the metaphors of an absolute and ultimate ground not only serve as embodied cognition [Verala et al, 1992] but also as a lost human identity—in [re]turning to what is humane, humanity, humanness, humanitarian, and humankind, to inspire a long-awaited homecoming of [human] philosophy’s restless soul. On the other hand, Milton’s “Paradise Regained” attends to a prodigious catharsis that is poetic-philosophical. It is not methodological, presumably because a search for the ground is seen in the forward direction whilst philosophical reasoning in embodiment suggests going back to the basics. Cartesian anxiety also explains a homecoming catharsis in metaphors that cognitively recondition to a return or a regaining. In embodiment, the past and the future incur and concur. In terms of the claims I make in chapter five, they may both even coexist [Johnson, 1987; Miall, 1997]. As embodiment is grounded cognition [Barsalou, 2008, p. 619], the view that all abstract concepts must be grounded metaphorically, creates a scope for explaining philosophy’s two and a half millennia anxiety for a return [only] to [re]gain the lost inner ground, within embodied cognition. The history of philosophy also shows that the craving for an absolute ground is sensitive to intuitive interpretations, i.e. an embodied cognition of the world in the metaphor. Within a prodigal-prodigy paradox, which I present in chapter four, I see the craving to have embodied across the methodological anxieties of all our times and spaces. In chapter five, I give details of a struggle in thought trials following the pendulum movement (both classical and Foucault) from a priori Source

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Domain to posteriori Target Domain of the metaphor within a prodigal-prodigy paradox. The craving can rationalise a span from a single moment to a lifetime. In the case of the [philosophy’s] prodigal son, a homecoming is unlikely in the classical pendulum movement—a “to and fro” motion—here and now and either-or of dualism—a fixation. A homecoming is likely in the Foucault movement that allows the prodigy to discover truth[s] within intuitive [momentary] precessions, taking a mere moment, by forming meaning on the basis of a random hint across a single precession. It can also take a lifetime, in finding the same meaning across emergent thought trials creating a life-long precession. In the Arabic language, the concept of time is construed as Saa’ah, which means a moment, an hour, and a lifetime. It translates in English as a moment in time, an hour’s time, and a lifetime, respectively. Hence, philosophy’s anxiety-to-homecoming time-span in embodied cognition may have found its purpose—taking its time—over two millennia. In this context, we need to recognise the intuitive choice of the metaphor of moments in social research that I discuss in chapter one: “the present. …a politically charged space” visà-vis the need to fix “the fractured future” [Denzin, 2005, p. 20]. Here, the present [moment in time] describing a charged space, may make more sense as embodied cognition of the past, in justifying a methodological return to the past. To treat a methodological fracture, we need to revisit the past that is lost, and regain it in the future—paradoxically embodying the [lost] moment of genesis of the either-or and here and now of all knowledge, where and when we lost the soul of evidence. I try to explain this view with reference to Prof. Phillip Kotler, 85, an internationally-celebrated academic writer in the field of marketing management. I refer to him in chapter six for his marketing concepts described as the metaphor of war. Kotler is a leader of marketing thought. He has written

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around 55 books and 155 papers in the fields of economics and marketing, such as Marketing: How to Create, Win and Dominate Markets [1999]. His latest book is on economic justice and problems of capitalism—Confronting Capitalism: Real Solutions for a Troubled Economic System [2015]. I wonder if his intellectual shift (from the metaphor of war, to reconciliation) is a homecoming of the “prodigal son” of marketing—an anxiety-induced prodigy creating a seasoned [autobiographical] insight into a material world. He and his colleagues recently launched an interesting web-profile called FIXCapitalism.com, coincidently towing value schemata of the same “troubled economic system”. Could we call it a state of anxiety that continues oscillating across one form of materialism to another—fixing capitalism with[in] capitalism, and living off momentary precessions? 8.3. Do blind men blink? Philosophical catharsis is all intuitive; an instinctive reflexivity. It rationalises [only] in embodied cognition. Even if catharsis were consciously possible, it would be too little: “conscious thought is a tip of the enormous iceberg of the cognitive unconscious” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 13]. Therefore, shaping up consciousness outside of the cognitive unconscious cannot separate an empirical sense of the visible tip of the iceberg from the enormous hidden glacier that invisibly sustains and makes that sensemaking possible. A conscious reflexivity of the world stands out for its physical presence [only] because of embodied support from the hidden—the deep-seated cognitive unconscious. I try to explain this point with the help of the “ground” metaphor. We produce a metaphorical sense in the absolute ground in comparison to its opposite—the relative ground. Within such cognitive relativism we can term an experience “relative” by relating the absolute sense to the cognitive unconscious

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(intuitive), vis-à-vis the conscious (empirical); but we cannot separate the two! We cannot even assign separable truths to these, such as distinguishing a relative truth-value from an absolute truth-value. This appears to be for two reasons: the unconscious cognitions are only metaphorical, and therefore, serve only as paradoxical truths, and any cognitive capacities that appear to separate the conscious from the unconscious, are not accessible to [dualist] cognitive science because the two cognitions are embodied. Whether common, provisory, or absolute, all truth-values are relative to emergent cognitive [e]valuations of one’s momentary experiences, such as the smile on a mother’s face at seeing her baby in a deep sleep, or one’s appreciation of a seamless motion of the celestial bodies. As the events are embodied cognitions, their truthvalues must fall within intuitive cognitive unconscious and empirical conscious, and are thus inseparable. In this regard, cognitive relativism may be viewed as a philosophical position that counts all viewpoints as equal and valid; all truth positions as relative to an individual time-space interpretation, and all claims to knowledge and morality as relative to times and spaces of cultures, societies, or historical contexts. I reject this view as a cognitive impossibility. This view is the same as consciously making sense of a visible truth of the tip of the iceberg, but not being able to create an unconscious sense of the invisible enormity and strength of the deeply embedded iceberg sustaining the tip. Hence, when we talk about relativism, relativist, or relative, then questions are raised about: relative to what, in relation to what, or relative to what value or which position. There must be a core or epicentre which engages all relativist “spaces” such as angular positions and viewpoints as well as relativist “times” through which we live—the past, the present, or the future. As I claimed earlier, such a loss of direction for the epicentre is likely to create anxiety.

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In support of this argument, I refer to the classic story of five blind men and the elephant that has been told in several relativist versions of culture, faith and intellect. Though loss of sight (whether congenital or acquired), had made the men blind physically, they could still, arguably, feel through their soul. A conscious sensemaking of the elephant is only physical and limited, but the unconscious is not. The cognitive unconscious is unaffected by physical blindness, except when we “turn a blind eye” to the world inside of us! Through an intuitive sense, even the blind men could interpret what an elephant was like. Interestingly, we have two conceptual planes of blindness here, and not one. On the first, recognising the elephant’s trunk as a snake was a conscious interpretation derived from one blind man’s image of a snake. This suggests that their blindness was acquired, and their sensemaking was experiential-interactionist, hence relativist. On the second plane, blindness is the empirical loss of sight and not an intuitive loss of insight. The meanings that the blind men would assign to any experience of what they intuitively felt can be supported by embodied cognition. As the story does not tell us the causes of the men’s blindness that can also be congenital, not acquired, we cannot tell whether in forming a sense of the elephant as they did, they had followed an intuitive or the experiential-interactionist sense—the a priori or posteriori. Assuming their blindness was congenital, their sensemaking should only be intuitive; the a priori. Further, irrespective of intuitive or experientialinteractionist truth-values in their sensory interpretations, the elephant did exist out there as a [here and now] truth in the realist or phenomenological consciousness, supported by truth that was cognitively unconscious. This lays a claim for what is “embodied realism” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999], and not interpretative relativism. As these men were blind they would easily get away with all interpretational bias that people with

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intact vision usually produce and live by, as argued in The Elephant in the Living Room hypothesis [Denzin, 2009]. Similarly, for intelligent design theses, irrespective of the way[s] we interpret the design; the design continues to exist as an embodied reality. In this particular case, we are not even blind, blinded, or blindfolded. To realise the intelligent design, we make use of both the empirical and the intuitive senses. All we need is the cognitive unconscious to sustain the conscious, letting it both oscillate across embodied positions, and create intuitive-experiential precessions! For the anxiety in our philosophical history that I discuss above, it appears that a majority of dualist thinkers, scientists, and social reformers view intelligent design as if they suffered from blindness that was “acquired” through their disembodied here and now. Their blindness is not inherent, or congenital. They appear to have lost their sense of [in]sight—and have been blindfolded to the inner world, as evident in the anxiety with which they go through history. 8.4. Embodied births vs. relativist upbringing Embodied cognition in metaphor reopens the [debated] sensemaking of truths. However, it dissolves the debate as to whether embodied truth[s] come from the mind or from the heart: from the body of evidence or from the soul of evidence; the outer ground of consciousness or the inner ground of the unconscious; from an empirical logic or an intuitive sense; from methodological norms that favour a prodigal openness or a prodigious compliance; and whether our findings created meaning that was a priori or posteriori. We frequently relate unconscious thinking to the heart and call it, the heart of the mind, or the mind of the heart. This sense is metaphorical and paradoxical. What is the agent and what is the cause here, the heart or the mind, we do not know; which one of these is the inner and which one the outer ground, we could hardly guess!

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Hence, we can safely say that a sense of the metaphorical or intuitive in the unconscious is sustained only within a prodigal-prodigy paradox, embodying the heart and the mind. In this context, let us study some opposition to embodied cognition, such as the hard and easy problems (or divisions) of the “conscious” [Chalmers, 1996]. This view claims that the mind’s capacities to integrate, discriminate, and report its experiences are the easy problems; whilst “how” and “why” we ever experience these, are the hard problems. I do not see any significance in this view, but the same old anxiety; with the difference that the anxiety now oscillates around Chalmers’ hard and easy positions, similar to the classic “here and now” and the “outer” and “inner” grounds of dualism. Here, recalling the historiographic indicators of the Cartesian syndrome, I find his discourse to be the prodigal state of being that craves a homecoming within prodigious reasoning. I do not question Chalmers’ hard and the easy problems; I only notice how his sensemaking of what is hard and what is easy is still metaphorical, and that the two [such] problems are actually embodied cognition. In this regard, I also reject his metaphorical frames: why would he characterise his hard and easy sense of the conscious as problems? Why must we, in the first place, theorise things as problems, as if rationality was [only] in seeking business-like solutions rather than taking responsibility of explaining things as what there is and what we could know? Furthermore, for their small scope of evidence in social research, such views appear to be soulless, or to be a state of chronic anxiety. Also, as I mention in chapter one, Socrates would call the philosopher a midwife of the soul, hinting at how bringing to life a newer or a truer self means a rebirth of philosophy. In this context, let us study the scope of truth[s] within embodied cognition. I bring up the scenario of a baby’s arrival into this world. Some claims of prenatal, perinatal, and developmental

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psychology indicate the presence of an intrinsic [embodied] sense of being among babies from the earliest experiences of fetal growth and childbirth through to the time they develop a symbolic-verbal interpretation of the world around them. This sense of being appears to follow two modes: an initial, infantile embodied mode, and a later, adult symbolic mode [Daum et al, 2009]. The first mode of preverbal infancy is viewed as a “pure model” of an “uncontaminated” embodied social cognition [Daum et al, 2009]. For instance, a child’s perception of faces is embodied cognition because it is “not quite based on bodily perception…simply is bodily perception; (also) motor coordination…is bodily movement” [Longo, 2009, p. 1208, emphasis original]. In the Mind in the Body, it is contended that an image schema or metaphor presumably creates “a bodily experience…as early as in the infancy stage” [Johnson, 1987, pp. 15-16]. Moreover, Lakoff and Johnson [1999] claim that the theory of conflation explains a child’s early subjective experience of affection in the sense of “warmth” (p. 46) and that it can be traceable to the physical temperature of the mother’s lap or a pediatric incubator. Through a period of differentiation, the same child embodies, in later life, an intuitive cognition of what is warm in a “warm smile” or a “warm reception”; corresponding intuitive adulthood choices in what we call big (a problem or a size) or close (a friend or a contest) to preverbal infant history. As I discuss in chapter two, our views of the adult world are embodied within the influence of our childhood “metaphorical” experiences. The second mode of adult symbolism is actually a [steady] influx of relativism. Other than the genetic influences or a fetal-stage embodied cognition, this mode is nearly parallel to the initial embodied mode. It is the neonatal symbolic interactionism of the world out there—the Baby’s First “milestone” events of the physical-experiential here and now,

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such as the touch in a warm lap, and of the taste of milk or honey. In effect, through every ensuing milestone of growth, relativism would build up, more and more, in the “dos” and the “don’ts”, the rights and the wrongs, and the good and the bad. By the time a child matures in an [early] experientialinteractionist sense, he or she has actually been cultured to the routine here and now, or rather has been contaminated, with regard to multiple views, positions, and differences that shape conscious thought. On this basis, the conscious and the cognitive unconscious are in [continual] contestation, building up [on] the Cartesian anxiety. Mostly in one’s later life, the intuitive sense takes over again, and one starts reflecting on the inner ground, thereby embodying back to newborn cognition: an all-experiential consciousness blends into the intuitive influence, making autobiographical sense of one’s truth[s]. This sense is considered to be most revealing: “…the enchanting land of truth where everything is clear and ultimately grounded” [Verala et al, 1992, p. 141]. Perhaps in a similar context, Clark [1997] refers to this point implicitly, in the title of his book: Being There: Putting Mind, World, and Body Back Together (italics added). This is realisation of the soul—a return to initial modes of preverbal infancy—again to the pure and uncontaminated [Daum et al, 2009]. Thereby, a homecoming of the soul is around the corner. At that point in life, it is usually too late for an old person to reveal inside stories of the world of [material] relationships, and blow a whistle, or share a whisper. Even if that happens, others tend to follow their own sense of the world—their own here and now. Among many others, Burt Reynolds, aged 80, the movie legend and sex-symbol, is a case in point. In his several interviews and memoirs he regrets his lifestyle— especially [carnal] relationships, and recently [2015] admits “being an ***hole…on too many occasions”, calling out to others to stop. The soulless would hardly stop, and listen!

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8.5. Holding on to “the hidden hand” Implicit Evidence sits deep in the cognitive unconscious. Through the course of philosophical history, soulful reasoning would stumble over Cartesian dualism, let down by conscious empiricism. It would sustain itself within its intuitive sense— the cognitive unconscious. In this regard, embodiment philosophy claims that the cognitive unconscious in humans is controlled by “the hidden hand”1 to which cognitive science has no access [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 13]. Conceivably, “the hidden hand” would put philosophy back on its feet following its historic stumbles. The hidden hand gives form to the metaphysics that is built into our ordinary conceptual system. It creates the entities that inhabit the cognitive unconscious…that we use in ordinary unconscious reasoning. It thus shapes how we automatically and unconsciously reflect what we experience. [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 13, italics added]

This symbolism also supports Searle’s [1995] account of the cognitive unconscious as the background, that is, as fair plausibility of a ground hidden at the back—an exclusive existence, as in the backdoor and backstage. I now make some assumptions about the cognitively unconscious influence of the hidden hand on methodological norms of social research and Implicit Evidence. First, in referring to “the hidden hand”, the use of the (a definite article) and not a (an indefinite article), indicates a cognitive-linguistic definiteness and ubiquitous presence—but essentially hidden, both metaphorically and literally. As it is invisible and hidden inside the cognitive unconscious, only an intuitive sense serves as the evidence of its [unconscious] 1

This symbol is also popular in other disciplines, including economic theory, explaining how “the hidden hand” shapes implicit exchanges and interdependencies that are indescribable in an empirical sense.

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presence. As most metaphorical sensemaking is embodied but paradoxical, an implicit presence within physical absence still produces the plausibility of [its] Implicit Evidence. Second, “the hidden hand” shapes abstract reasoning and assigns unconscious values to all truth-seeking social research efforts because “philosophical theories are largely the product of the hidden hand of the cognitive unconscious” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p.14]. Embodied cognition of a truth-value is not possible in the empirical conscious, and even if it were, it is misleading and provisory, because a phenomenological or neural truth-value of evidence is limited. That truth is only the [conscious] tip of the iceberg of the cognitive unconscious. Third, as cognitive science has little access to the “inner” ground of the cognitive unconscious which shapes beliefs and knowledge, the intuitive metaphor in the soul is shaped by the hidden hand. In search of the soul, or the truer self, social researchers could study the scope of Implicit Evidence only in the cognitive unconscious. Importantly, through the course of social research, we can distinguish the cognitive unconscious from the conscious, but we can never separate the two—the body of evidence from its soul, the visible from the invisible, hard problems from the easy, the generic variable from the disparate variable, scientific evidence from the intuitive, or a prodigal sense from the prodigy. As a result, the truth-values that we unconsciously assign to our evidence are [mostly] metaphorical, implicit, embodied, and paradoxical. Indeed, we follow a conscious [generic] sense in our observations, experiments, and experiences, of physical and visible stimuli, but it is not possible to live by the sweeping norms of the true-for-them and true-for-us style of relativism [Feyerabend, 1987]. Even the empirical truths are not isolated, and mostly hold metaphorical values. Further, there are no [conceivable] cognitive scientific means by which to rationalise and shape the multiversal conscious sense along the unconscious but

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“the hidden hand”. Even the scientific and social research purpose(s) of embodying the truth[s] we seek are shaped up in this manner, intuitively. Fourth, for philosophical-methodological sensemaking to lay claim to a non-relativist position, a social researcher’s conscious experience or perceptions must ideally incur-concur within the cognitive unconscious. All [human] thought and practice, again, scientific or lay, is, in theory, relativist, across all times and spaces. Even our belief systems—our absolute truths, hold a non-relativist position [only] in their original transcendental sense (essentially intuitive), which gradually expands [only] to become relative across time and space, and eventually regresses. As I discuss above, embodied cognition begins from fetal-development to early preverbal stages of a child, and would continue on to a final whisper. This view may explain how a body-soul relationship and the consciouswithin-cognitive unconscious sense carry on embodying the human cradle-to-grave time-space experience, and could also trail a purview of [the] geneses of times and spaces by “the hidden hand” before our births and after our deaths—of our [possible] being—pre[-] a priori and post[-] posteriori! Fifth, an ethical and moral sense in social research can be conceptualised only in intuitive and embodied cognition. A separation of rationality from morality is merely a flawed myth [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 536]. Morality is only a paradoxical rationality: for instance, we can never know or decide whether morality is an individual, or an institutional, domain. For an individual, morality is a state of inhibition that develops across his or her outer ground of the conscious and inner ground of the cognitive unconscious, within cognitive times and spaces, telling him or her momentarily, this is moral and that is not. In an institutional sense, what is moral and what is not becomes a policy issue, a cultural value, a social norm, or an ethos of a society, i.e. apparently the “outer.”

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ground. Hence, what is moral in private may not be moral at the workplace, and vice versa. An issue of moral corruption usually opens up across all the levels I suggest here. Unless there is an inbuilt and non-relativist [prescribed] cognitive regulation by “the hidden hand”, all other levels would fail to detect or restore an issue of one’s morality. As the conscious and the cognitive unconscious are embodied, a regulation is bound to occur, and qualify what is moral, in the background. On this basis, an [immoral] activity taking place in a public park or in exclusive privacy shall be immoral, as reflected intuitively through the cognitive unconscious. Here, I refer again to Clinton’s sex scandal that I discussed in chapter five. When the alleged/proven sexual act(s) was/were taking place over a particular “time” and “space”, a backstage contest was in process as well—between intuitive morality (the cognitive unconscious) and existential-phenomenological sensuality (the conscious). The sensemaking [options] would oscillate between the two positions—a visible body: the outer world of prodigal freedom and a prodigious moral compliance of the inner world. The eventual winner—the free will across a weak moment, is viewed as “existential willie” [Noah, 1998]; a [suggestive] physical-carnal here and now existential sense prevailed over political perspicacity and the values of human empathy and social-moral responsibility. Even in animals, we find an innate sense of truth-values, such as motherhood, herd-loyalty, and systematicity. Some animals demonstrate these values even more judiciously than humans, in their own way. A prodigal conscious sense in animal behaviour is usually conveyed in metaphor, such as wild, beastly, and animal-like, which “derogate” and separate the animals in terms of human values. Only the influence of the cognitive unconscious makes a difference. Here, one is led to rationalise all the moral-emotional traits among animals to be intrinsically conditioned by “the hidden hand”.

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Sixth, inside the prodigal-prodigy paradox, “the hidden hand” assigns truth-values to body-soul variables that are folded in intuitively embodied relationships. In this regard, embodied cognition serves as a unique sense of intellectual loss vis-à-vis gain—a prodigal loss within prodigious gain, setting cognitive limits in social science research across the conscious and the unconscious. Like the cosmos within a microcosm, embodiment explains the whole of humanity in a body cell, and that cell to interpret all humanity. In shaping every experience in our life, the prodigal-prodigy paradox helps stretch our sense of optimality to the maximum, but then return. This balancing off corresponds to judicious norms of social research, from research design and fieldwork to data analysis and writing up. The paradox also assigns embodied cognitive limits to all stages. Too much divergent openness is not viable until we have developed the capacity to “return” and make the most of what we converge in our findings. Through the social research process, this paradox avoids the extremes: going native vs. colonial methodologies. A unique divergence-convergence is possible only intuitively, in terms of “how we automatically and unconsciously reflect what we experience” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 13]. This intuitive sense is shaped by “the hidden hand” for our methodological and intellectual survival. Seventh, in (re)searching truths of our times and spaces, we mostly produce a metaphorical sense that is shaped in the cognitive unconscious and revealed through implicit insights. However, in (re)searching, we only discover truths that were hidden and undiscovered. Even in our apparently “scientific” inventions, we actually produce an incremental metaphorical or analogical sense of truth[s] already learned and embodied, as in the physical and chemical laws and formulae, and even in the navigational logic behind the discovery of America! Is it not all our multi-millennia-contextualised realist history of

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knowledge and truth-seeking an embodied process? Is it not the case that knowledge-seeking is a human domain but that knowledge itself is not? As all knowledge is embodied within the cognitive unconscious shaped by “the hidden hand”, none of our discoveries and inventions are actually ours! Some insightful philosophers and scientists would never lay claim to their discoveries or inventions. Michael Faraday, known for a long list of discoveries and inventions, never applied for a patent for them. His electric motor alone would make him the richest man in history, but he was never interested in the material gains. Ernest Rutherford says of him: “When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time” [Rao, 2000, p. 281]. Faraday knew well that all the knowledge attributed to him had been there already. He [only] found out what had existed, and that, it was never his. All he did was learn and know enough to discover it! Isaac Newton also disowns all his scientific discoveries and influences: “O’ Lord, I thank you for letting me know that I know nothing”. He joins the Socratic legacy: I know that I know nothing; pointing to our limited consciousness and timespace-constrained intellect. His paradoxical claim endorses how “the hidden hand” shapes all our truth[s].

CHAPTER NINE POSTDISCIPLINARY TRUTH[S]: “TOO MUCH IS AT STAKE”!

But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief. Her vestal livery is but sick and green. And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. [Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, W., 2.2-5; 2.8-9, italics added]

9.1. Soul [re]searching: Embodied truth-values Experts on figurative language, on metaphor especially, have tried to explain why it is that Romeo describes Juliet as the sun, rather than the moon or a star. A popular view is that the sun symbolises warmth, illumination, sustenance, and energy. The moon is tender and serene, but relies on the sun’s radiance. The prominence of the moon is relative to the sun. I read a methodological point in this: the relativism that the sun has with the moon. The moon shines [only] because it reflects light from the sun. The sun is a symbol of eternity in times and spaces. It serves as a universal regulator of times (as does the moon in relating to the sun!) and spaces, shedding its light everywhere, over everything, encompassing all views and positions which reflect human thought. Significantly, in our search for truths, the sun is an eternal source of visible light and an invisible energy. Even if the sun is physically unapproachable, its light interprets the truths both in the body and soul of evidence that I make claim to in chapter six under crystallisation. The sun[light] also helps

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reflect time-space embodied positions, such as truth relativism with the moon. Therefore, Romeo’s sensemaking of truths about Juliet is not only metaphorical but also embodied. Seeking truths is not only the sole purpose of all our intellectual journeys but an essential instinct for intellectual sustenance. From our research data we extract evidence, and from evidence we seek truths, by assigning some cognitiveschematic values to these; from illusory continuums, such as Plato’s Divided Line, to courtroom-style evidential ironies, typically the ceremonial pledge: “…the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…”, and a popular line from the court-martial thriller movie, A Few Good Men (1992): “you don’t want the truth…you can’t handle the truth!” In this chapter, I explain truths as metaphorical, and all values assigned to these as intuitive, emergent, and embodied cognitions. I also claim that Implicit Evidence characterising the truth-values is essentially postdisciplinary. 9.2. Prodigal-prodigy cognitive norms In chapter three, I discussed Lakoff and Johnson’s [1999] “embodied truths”: neural circuitry, phenomenological truths, and the cognitive unconscious. Even if we were to distinguish these as “the levels” within embodied cognition, we can hardly separate one level from another. As all (re)search is about [instinctive] truths, all truth-values are embodied within the cognitive unconscious. I discussed this view in chapter eight with the tip of the iceberg metaphor. Here, I expand on the introduction to chapter five: Singing the Soul Back Home [Matthews, 2003, p. 21], and point to four images of a social (re)searcher in relation to the scope of [instinctively] embodied truth[s] one lives by: - “…who desires the soul; - “…who plays with the soul;

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- “…who makes love with the soul”; and - “…who attains [a state of] ecstasy in the soul.” Matthews [2003] further adds how [only] by deciding for themselves what they wanted, the soul searchers ultimately become “their own master” (p. 21). This decision corresponds to how these researchers intuitively develop their normative positions, and qualify or adjust to their own intellectualmethodological capacities or incapacities. This decision also influences how a researcher interprets a viable research issue in terms of his or her urge to rationalise truth-values vis-à-vis his or her likely struggles and eventual gains. Simply put, the researcher interprets the research issue in terms of how much they wanted, and how far they could handle the truth. Their unique notions of the truths they seek would create for them an intuitive array of multiversal sensemaking options, which they could qualify as their uniquely emergent truth-values. I have discussed this point in chapter two as methodological vs. intellectual survival. Here, it is important that we do not isolate a search for truths, and an explanation of its values, as exclusively academic, but harness a more comprehensive view of socialpolitical [organisational] inquiries to which we are led, or are expected to rationalise, such as policy research, which induces social-political change, and/or points to analysis of public inquiries in terms of shared human purposes. I shall briefly discuss the significance of this schema. Firstly, it is only within body-soul embodied cognition that we mix-match in picking a metaphorical truth-value. The cognitive-methodological norms for truth[s]-seeking in terms of a desire, play, love, and ecstasy, follow the Source Domain of cognitive metaphor, seeking implicit evidential sustenance from a multiversal time-space-contextualised worldview in the Target Domains. These cognitive limits also correspond to

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truths expressed in terms of realities or facts; what is real or realisable: “someone who is not realistic is someone who is ill-adapted, someone who is out of touch and out of harmony with the world” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 95]. In this regard, the soul searchers, being their own masters, choose from their [cognitive] limits to decide what they find real or factual. This correspondence makes it possible for them to (re)consider a truth-value Source Domain, say: “playing with the soul”, as ill-adapted if “playing” were not to carry enough support in the embodied Target Domain. Secondly, the prodigal-prodigy model sustains complexity and the immeasurability of paradoxical truth-values in social research; whether the complexity is epistemic [Denzin, 2005] or methodological [Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005]. Simply because our research ideas are “framed in terms of embodied conceptual systems, their truth and knowledge depend on embodied understanding” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 555]. Therefore, this paradoxical schema embodies knowledge and viable methodologies across truth-values that have mostly been viewed as three disembodied domains. This paradox also attends to questions such as “partial” vs. “absolutist” truth that Fielding [2010] raises in describing “incommensurability”: …Absolutism surely presents problems for a field as alert to shades of grey in qualitative research. Might commensurability be a ‘more or less’ thing? Might some mixes of method be less wrong than others? So how can the truth of incommensurability be absolute? [p. 123-124]

Here, while the prodigal-prodigy schema allows inbuilt embodiment, researchers can always make implicit sense of disciplined-prodigy (any obvious truth-value!) with a pinch of prodigal-deviant salt—the “more or less thing”. A delicate cognitive-linguistic cue can undo one truth from another! Thirdly, a prodigal-prodigy paradoxical cognition of truthvalues is both a form of rationalizing, and a form of practice:

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a way of liberating us in a manner that is [equally] all-abiding in us. Within embodied research norms, it is not that truth[s] belongs to us, but that we belong to it: our research needs, values, and moral grounds, as well as the limits of our times and spaces. Rather, the [very] paradox helps us to decide if we wanted truth(s) that was (or were) provisory or truth(s) that was (or were) stable. For the soul’s eternal craving for a homecoming to the absolute ground, this schema of truthvalues provides four inbuilt cognitive norms. We decide for ourselves if we desire the soul, and keep only desiring; or upon meeting the desire, we choose to play with the soul— negotiating some norms, say, of a journalist, or an academic. Making love with the soul is intellectually most rewarding, whereby the truth-seeker and the truth belong to each other. In attaining a state of ecstasy, the truth-seeker and the truth become an embodied domain of climactic mutuality. I now discuss this schema further across four normative social research positions or ideals. I point to how truth-values evolve cognitive metaphorical patterns all-within paradoxical embodiment, an argument that I attempt to develop here. 9.2.1. “…who desires the soul”! Desiring the soul assigns narrow or restricted access to truths in social research. Truth-seeking as an academic desire may remain a desire unfulfilled. Desiring truths is a state of researcher’s intellectual adolescence. Desiring relates to most phenomenological truths: the conscious “feelings, reflections, and qualia” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 103]. I find a number of my master’s-level students to follow a naïve desire to seek truth in their dissertations, taking these quite seriously. For their veteran examiners, the level of students’ knowledge is quite low and truth-values in their findings only shallow and immature—mostly boring stuff.

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Desiring is an [intellectual] infatuation. Not all adolescent desires are rational and realistic. The Source Domain of the desire metaphor kindles sexual fantasies that lead to sensualemotional craving. Here, the soul searchers only follow the urges and have insufficient knowledge or skills to go around and about the desire in the Target Domain, i.e. to rationalise their truth vis-à-vis scope, method, access, criteria, intellectual potency, and funding sources. The Target Domain produces a reasoned outcome as to whether or not a researcher can actually meet the desire (as in the case of sex), or settle down with the ideas or ideals behind the intellectual desire. Some values take shape as follows: 1. Presentational truth: This is usually a desire for ideas or ideals of truth demonstrated in evidential displays: a physical-carnal sensuality for evidence [mostly] in narrow and shallow indicators “perceived” as the real [thing]. The truth-values follow visual-technological stimuli that recognise displays of evidence in visualpictographic and voyeuristic attractions. As I discussed in chapter one, the truth-value here are found in a body or a perfect body of evidence validated as hard or soft, weak or strong. The evidence has a physical-visible or graphic profile in terms of features, figures, curves, and measurements. This truth is spoken and exhibited in interviews via trendy media icons and audio-visuals. 2. Provisory truth: This is a desire for ideas or ideals in terms of [intellectual] assumptions and sensitivity for [any] emotional meaning in data, rather than physical displays. In comparison to a physical-carnal attraction, this sense of truth is qualitative-emotive and is shaped by symbolic interactions and ethnomethodology. Most

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truth-values attached to the ideas or ideals correspond to premature or temporary social-emotional attachment, as in typical teenage affections, celebrity fan clubs, and Facebook-styled liking and following. Due to its [shortlived] emotional component, this truth-value is hardly generalisable. Hence, the ideas or ideals of desired truth inquiries differ from one individual case [study] to the next, across varying contextual-cultural settings. A desire for this truth is mostly reflected in our choice of movies, music, and literature, and even in the selection of the page from which we begin reading the newspaper, or stories that pop up over a routine browse on the Internet. Importantly, the truth in a desire is most unstable; it [contextually] shifts from person to person: a tabloid’s flashy headline, its sensual Page 3, a hypedup sporting event, or a crossword solution. 9.2.2. “…who plays with the soul”! Playing builds on desire and induces a proximity to the soul by reducing abstraction in the truths of evidence. Playing as an activity lets social researchers get closer to—within touching distance of—the intellectual vicinity of truths. “Play with” may usually imply a physical activity that is casual, but not always outdoor leisure, or indoor pastime. It hints at inductive playing: an induced sense that leads to conceptual experimentation and competition, and even pretenses in truthvalues. Playing with is an intellectual contestation over truths within touching [paradoxical] distance. Even in the event of a child “playing with” toys we see a contestation going on. Like desiring, playing relates to Lakoff and Johnson’s [1999] phenomenological truth, with an added value that they consider “accessible to conscious”. I see this value as a state of awareness that allows inductive reasoning in the vicinity of truths: “especially our own mental states, our bodies, (and)

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our environment” within which we interact (p. 103). Playing with is an experiential-interactionist truth-value and not an idealist fantasy that we find in the case of “desiring”; yet, playing with may lead to playing with oneself over shallow, or pseudo-, evidence—intellectual masturbation. In this regard, the visual-sensual pictographic displays, like those in Playboy magazine, embody this level of playing with typical pubertal truths in a “desire” that I discussed earlier. The Source Domain of play or playing with corresponds to several Target Domains and creates implicit truth-values. A cognitive-linguistic analysis of all the domains is worthwhile in social research, but not possible. I discuss only a few here. 1. Theatrical and media plays imply a dramatised effect created in a stage or a TV drama. For instance, the Shakespearean truth, all the world is a stage, serves as a Source Domain here. Some evidence in the physical presence of actors is real, but the roles they play are not. [Dramatic] truth-values are assigned to the outcomes of many public inquiries and popularity surveys, such as the awaited, episodic, and rated. Playing also extends to role-play and acting, and over-(re)acting. Playing is also about reenactment: a dramatic role in an event that had occurred earlier. Such norms are ascribed by political spin-offs adorned with body displays, such as an over-reactive coolness usually noticed in the former US president George W. Bush’s public appearances. Also, most of the tabloid media and the paparazzi play their part in the dramatisation and [any] “candid” revelation of truth-values. A playwright is the scriptwriter of a drama working backstage—behind the scenes. A strategic-espionage play has actors, such as the state and the non-state militants and stakeholders, which I discussed in chapter

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seven. A drama is scripted and rehearsed [intelligently] on multiple country desks and bureaus, and produced as an espionage plot, a planted story, an untold story, or an inside story. These plots are played up in the news in support of, or against, a political-military doctrine or an intervention strategy. 2. Playing games goes hand in hand with a political drama or power-play. It extends to the “great games” and “power games” that are scripted [intelligently] and played up and down by the media and spy agencies. Some of these games are swung over by the whistleblowers. The movie sequels The Hunger Games (2013; 2014) covertly hint that the world is divided by itself or can be divided and ruled over; whereby the superior instinct among humans is the instinct for survival. The movie scripts follow the classic political-exploitative norms of Divide and Rule and the Survival of the Fittest doctrines, ironically, serving the predator instinct. Such scripts also typify and reveal into the “great games” played in the international political-economic arenas. Playing one’s moves right, holding one’s cards close to one’s chest, “going in for the kill”, “game changers”, and “end-game” are some norms that are similar to those in warfare and politics. Interestingly, the norms of the great games also apply to “game theory” economics that help optimise the choice of [politically-rationalised] options among truth-values. 3. Playing with words is a display of truth common in the electronic, print, and social media. It is [a] reporting version of one’s evidence in the data. The truth-value of “playing with words” is negotiated or conceded to the political-economic policy or vested personal interests.

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Such valuation is viewed as a part of one’s job, i.e. in institutional spin-offs and selective moral standards, customarily influenced by [corporate] media and the [state] policy regulators. The negotiated truth-values are played up and down [with]in paradoxes such as halftruths, open secrets, true lies, and naked truths, expressed in an array of “takes” and “slants”, whether personal, political, or professional. An implicit value revealed in the exploitative policies of the US state and its greedy corporate sector has also been coined “untellable truths” [Lakoff, 2010]. Naked truths are typically plain but ironic facts without cover-ups. Open secrets are indoctrinated realities that hold their value in partial cover-ups by an individual, the state, or society. True lies are some phenomenological ironies implying that incidents or entities are true, along with some reports “valuing” these as empirically incorrect; surveys or reports on the incidence of deaths or rape victims, for instance, during or after a war. The place of deaths or rapes would be correct, but not the number, and vice versa. Similarly, the production and sale of life-saving drugs or vaccines by a multinational pharmaceutical company to reach out to global healthcare needs, is a half-truth. The other half is an open secret of entering into new markets. Here, a true lie is found in playing up an endemic disease to globalise the consumer market. It is presumed that the US President George W. Bush’s choice of “This crusade…” (“c” in lowercase) in his 16th September 2001 speech, was either meant as ironic, or was a slip of the tongue. Either of the two cases warrants discussion. First, as irony, this phrase may have served as “a device for concealing our true intentions, for avoiding responsibility for what we say”

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[Muecke, 1969, p. 13] for which I argued in chapter five. Even if the British General Edmund Allenby had called for an end to The Crusades on December, 1917, Bush’s tenor seemed to speak for a conscious choice of the uppercase “C”. Some experts on metaphor consider such a slant to be unbecoming of a [world] leader. Second, a Freudian slip would not tally up with Bush’s candid persona. It would also be inconsistent with how Bush, in a way, had really operationalised the “crusade” as the Source Domain of metaphor to follow-up the great game (that has also been studied in academic literature) and the war-strategic “new world” order in the Target Domain that I discussed in chapter seven. Borrowing from Christopher Marlowe’s celebrated reference to Helen of Troy: was this the mystery slip that launched the killing of a million humans, and counting? To study the scope of Implicit Evidence in the postdisciplinary era, this slip serves a case of truthvalue that is embodied, paradoxical, and metaphorical. Among other practices, in retail marketing, some half-truths are evident in slogans such as a “half-price”, a “give-away price”, or a “clearance sale”. How much is the half, a clearance, or a give-away [truth] value in comparison with new arrivals or a ratio of original costs of production, remains implicit! Similar business norms also open up implicit truths of human trafficking and sex tourism-marketing whereby a truth-value of the human body is frequently negotiated in terms of carnal consumption, even in terms of new arrivals and early expiries. Here, a social-emotional-ethical value is also displayed as “Childhood: not for Sale”! 4. Playing around and about is the [sensual] foreplay of truth-values, in terms of how a researcher finds her/his

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way around his/her truths: as [to how] “one thing leads to the other” in [qualitative] research data collection. It may encompass an intellectual flirtation and caressing of the truth-values: the statistical models and financial market indexes that play evidence up and down, around and about, and over a time-space. Usually, foreplay is an a priori sense of one’s approachability to evidence, and to “making love” with it—the truth-value I will discuss next. In terms of some forthcoming intellectualmethodological issues, foreplay creates the scope for accessing data—its levels, sources, and quality, the [regulatory-inhibitory] cultural-social-ethical standards, [intellectual] potency, and funding sources. Some foreplay around and about truth-values may trigger “singing”, when an insider “opens up” the truth, or exposes others in a scam or a cover-up. Some truthactivism in recent years, linked to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, appears in movie-plot-style [parallel] values; as in Diversion (1980), Fatal Attraction (1987), and Dangerous Liaisons (1988). It seems that Assange and Snowden wanted the truth but could not handle it (a movie line that I mentioned earlier). However, this is not “living dangerously by” truths that I discussed in chapter seven. Their positions may imply playing into someone’s hands or getting played for a dope, i.e. a presumed truth-value linked to hidden agendas, whether they are those of an individual, an institution, or a state. Who among these is a dope, or is getting played for one, is [essentially] a half-truth! Singing also plays up a courtship-style sensemaking of truth in evidence, similar to the courtroom norms of a public inquiry. Truth in evidence is pledged by legalmoral interpretational values. Interestingly, a judicial trial corresponds to a clinical research trial, i.e. the

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normative hypotheses of truth-seeking—presuming a priori judgments as [evidentially] “innocent” (or “null”) until proven guilty afterwards. 5. Playing with fire is almost opposite to playing safe or playing smart. Further to half-truths and open secrets, social and organisational [research] analysts have either been aloof, half-hearted, or uneasy about assigning the truth-values to the events of September 2001 and July 2005, taking place in New York and London respectively. Vulnerable to marginalisation, they hold on to their right to remain silent… or to play possum; possibly for the arguments in chapter seven, such truths are assigned to values such as playing with fire, in crossing the boundaries of state secrets. The invisible and presumably “sleeping” agents, being gatekeepers, actually hold the “area watch lists”, ensuring that “trespassing is prohibited”. A truth-value in such evidence is customarily displayed in the range of “state property” for “your eyes only”. There is a “truth [paradox] management” story about the risks of singing, which might be relevant to playing smart, or safe. A little bird was flying south for the winter. As it was cold, the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it. As the warm pile of dung started to thaw the frozen bird inside, the bird started to sing—to the truth of being. A passing cat heard the song and discovered the bird under the dung; quickly it dug the bird out and ate it! Lessons: first, not everyone who drops shit on you is an enemy; second, not everyone who gets you out of shit is a friend; third, when in deep shit you must keep your mouth shut.

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9.2.3. “…who makes love with the soul”! Making love with the soul possibly corresponds to neural circuitry truths [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999] that “guide the perceptual and motor aspects of our bodies…explaining the conscious experience” (p. 103). The truth-values are ascribed to implicit evidential spaces: the social [research] situations, cultural [normative] positions/thresholds, and personalprofessional [ethical] inhibitions, as well as times. That is, for love-making relationships to span from the a priori to the posteriori—from indiscreet values of one-night stands to more sustained values of lifelong marriages [Abdullah, 2000a, pp. 253-290]. I bring up two such values here. 1. Stable truth: This explains to a researcher how to be in love, or to fall in love, with truths a priori to (in advance of) making love, are two different things. Falling in love is mostly intuitive, but love-making is essentially a causal physical-experiential interaction geared towards some [intellectual] gratification. Falling in love with the soul is a pledge to discovering its truths. If one’s love is built on this pledge, love-making is likely to become an intellectual journey, leading to [personal] discoveries and creativity. Stability in a love relationship parallels a sustained intellectual journey: both continue across multiple stop-overs and milestones. One can fall in love with truths across [all] times and spaces that are intuitively evolved and “experientially” stabilised in discoveries such as a natural or scientific law. For instance, stable truths are hidden in physical laws and chemical compositions, and in homeostatic, metabolic, and genetic functions, until their empirical values are needed, as in the case of DNA evidence. [Lovers even have chemistry in their emotional-physical relationships that can be positive, and may help create a

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spark or a bonding]. Importantly, as falling in love is intuitive; there is little consciousness involved in terms of relativism in empirical variables, such as the colour, socio-economic status, or ethnicity, under study. The sun providing heat and light for all that inhabit the Earth is a stable truth. The analgesic, which relieves bodily pain for everyone who takes it, is another such truth. However, the neural-level sensitivities (or individualnature tendencies!) explain relativism as certain hazards or benefits of sunlight which vary across times and spaces, as well as the side-effects or efficacy of an analgesic. As in the case of a surgeon’s knife or a chemist’s drug I referred to in chapter five, all chemical formulae (as in a nuclear device) and physical laws of weaponry (explaining ballistic missiles) are empiricallyvalued stable truths. The choice of employing them is made [only] from a moral-intuitive truth-value. As a paradox, all stable truth-values are embodied in the neural circuitry, phenomenological truth, and cognitive unconscious that I discussed in chapter eight. Love-making establishes the truth-seeking process. It can lead to identifying some truth-values in kinematics, neuroanatomy, and neurochemistry which are roused by conscious efforts to discover and uncover the [realist] nature of truths. The truth-values are open both to quantitative trials and qualitative feelings, and hence fairly measurable and reportable. 2. Common truth: Social scientists and reformers follow their own [love-making] ideals in shared human purposes, social empathy, and a sense of professional achievement. Their truth-values are built on notions such as equality and peace, as well as common-sense maxims, such as “a stitch in time, saves nine”. Through

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making love with common truths, contestations occur between the soul searchers’ inner and the outer worlds: the empirical conscious and the intuitive unconscious. In both stable and common truths, we need to separate the soul searcher’s [cognitive] scope of lovemaking from notions such as “having sex”. Lovemaking can be with either a person or an idea, as in: make love, not war. It is expected to, and mostly does, culminate in sexual activity, but not necessarily. The Clinton sex scandal I discussed in chapters five and eight is about a sexual activity, whereby receiving or giving sex was the question of critical evidence. There is hardly a judgment reported on any love-making prior to the sexual activity. “Having sex” builds up images that are essentially kinematic acts and forms of sex, closer to the playing—even [intellectual] prostitution or masturbation which I discussed earlier. By comparison, love-making is not just a physical-carnal affinity but a physical exchange—an [intellectual] intercourse. It is normally posteriori to [after] playing and a priori [prior] to ecstasy within embodied cognition. Michael Faraday seems to be a great lover of the soul by nature. Alfred Nobel would also realise the value of the soul through his unbeknown whisper, which reverted the truth-value of his discordant invention—namely dynamite, into the [Nobel] Prize towards the end of his short 63-year life. He just managed to create his homecoming ground by a narrow margin of time. As metaphor, love-making with the truth tells of how Socrates—among other classical soul searchers, and in recent history, David Kelley and Robin Cook—appear to be devoted love-makers. They did not play the pimps or voyeurs to scams of truth-

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valuing. Rather, they spoke up for molested and abused truths. They never let their souls down! 9.2.4. “…who attains [a state of] ecstasy in the soul”! Attaining a state of ecstasy expounds the coming of [intellectual] age of truth-seekers. Deeper insights take over all other levels of conscious thought. Ecstasy is held in an intuitive mutuality of the soul searcher and the soul—truthseeker and his/her [absolute] truth. It may correspond to truth in the “cognitive unconscious” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999]. In comparison with other truth-values, a state of ecstasy is attained in a loss of consciousness—the outer grounds within the time-space of a moment or a lifetime of sustained lovemaking. A loss of material and experiential-interactionist outer grounds brings a paradoxical gain in the intuitive inner grounds—within the cognitive unconscious, embodying the world of a physical body and an intuitive soul of evidence.1 Ecstasy is attained though unquestioning faith in [absolute] truth, rather than in intelligent questioning about it. A neural or phenomenological intellect cannot appreciate ecstatic truths in “discoveries” during deep meditative prayer, a mystical 1

A physical-emotional sexual activity, even between two lovers for life or soulmates that may blend in the body and soul, and reach an ecstatic mutuality, is rare. On a [mystical] romantic note, a renowned Urdu poet Parveen Shakir (1952-1994) narrates the body-soul embodiment paradox: “Only in thy arms, I am [holding on to] missing you; within my bodily desires, my ecstatic soul is embodied; thy live in my lifeblood vein, but beyond all imagination; within thy absence, I take solace in thy night’s company”. In an all-physical sense, La petite mort (the little death) is a brief loss or weakening of consciousness as part, or immediate effect, of an elevated sexual experience. Here, embodied ecstasy may help explain both a dervish’s spiritual transcendence and a scientist’s Eureka. Further, an ecstatic revelation of Earth’s physical-emotional activity perhaps makes geological sense in the event of volcanic ruptures that scientist Johannes Kepler calls “the ducts for Earth’s tears”.

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dance, or even in Archimedes running around naked in the streets. In ecstasy, the prodigal sense of loss is a gain within a prodigious homecoming. All the other truth-values become only relative to absolute truth, as ecstatic effects of morality, empathy, and impartiality—as impressions of the soul. The source of [all] ecstatic evidence is implicit—unapproachable and invisible across cognitive and time-space limitations. Ecstatic truths are indeed unprovable in an empirical sense, but pledged within one’s metaphysics, carrying transcendental values symbolised in inscriptions and revelations. Thou shalt not kill is a truth that cannot be valued empirically. In the case of philosophers, poets, and reformers, those amongst them who are soul-searchers spend their whole lives trying to actualise this value. It is likely that both Socrates and Newton had “fallen in love” only with this truth that I discussed in chapter two and chapter seven. Ecstatic truths do not demand any empirical criteria for research validity, scientific protocols, or institutional-ethical regulation and funding. This value only follows cognitive unconscious criteria that both induces, and regulates, a sense of ethics and responsibility in research. In embodying all other truth-values, ecstasy helps as an intuitive sensor or indicator which points to a shallower or relativistic sense of truths in our worldviews and our disembodied being. For instance, making love with the soul without an a priori recognition of this level, may end in shallow truths— intellectual molestation or prostitution. Similarly, seeking ecstatic truths in posteriori, outer, and empirical grounds, can only create a hallucinogenic effect. A euphoric ecstasy in the use of narcotic drugs (e.g. the brand Ecstasy!) leads to illusive feelings of empathy and warmth for others, while distorting one’s sense of time and space. As ecstatic truths correspond to one’s deep convictions, a realisation of these may not wait for empirical autobiographic

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disclosures. One test of ecstatic truth claims (to pursue or to reveal) is marked by instances of truth-seekers’ “termination” against the regulatory criteria of a status quo in “turf, money, and ego”. In this regard, for embodied cognition of what is “love-making” and what is “ecstasy”, we would never be able to know whether Martin Luther King Jr, John Lennon, David Kelley, and Robin Cook had desired, or were playing around with their truths, enjoyed love-making or attained ecstasy. As all the levels are paradoxically embodied, only “the hidden hand” shaping the cognitive unconscious could know! Ecstatic truths have frequently been conspired against in intellectual history. Himself a victim of a Critias “criteria” of falsely established ethical regulations, Socrates would believe that “it is not living that matters, but living rightly” and that “death is a migration of the soul from this place to another [and] if there is no consciousness but only a dreamless sleep, death must be a marvelous gain.”2 This sense may not be the Socratic irony but a realisation of ecstatic truth—in death. Ecstasy can perhaps explain the [fictional] intuitive sense of Romeo’s calling Juliet “the sun”, asking her to “cast off” the sickening [relativist] shadow of a truth usually desired from the moon. He had asked her to expose the relativist [evidential] norms in order for him to see her through to the soul, in the break of light through the yonder window that opened into [both] the inner and the outer grounds of truth. Romeo had embodied love beyond Juliet’s sensual beauty, and sought eternity in love. Both to Romeo and Juliet, it was intuitively clear that ecstasy was not in a physical la petite mort, but death that will produce for them, in the Socratic sense, a marvelous gain—in bringing them together. Death would elevate ordinary love-making to everlasting ecstasy.

2

The word inteqaal in Urdu and Arabic means human death, but more broadly, it implies transference of residence, physical assets or images.

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9.3. Why “the stakes are too high”? In the schema of truth-values, from desiring to attaining ecstasy, something strikes me as thought-provoking. The material values correspond inversely with the ethical-intuitive values. A truth-value in desiring is more physical-empirical, and tends to recede as we move to ecstatic truths, and vice versa. The implications of ethical-intuitive valuing of truth[s] are certainly a challenge for Western thought [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999]: the reason that “the philosophical stakes are too high” (ibid. p. 108). These values put at risk the social research norms that are built upon [scientific] materialism. As we start assigning ecstatic values to our intuitions, the norms of truths vis-à-vis what is knowledge and what is moral, are bound to be interpreted in the cognitive unconscious. In terms of social [research] responsibility, Denzin [2013] also notes that how as a result of the falsification of evidence, “too much is at stake” (p. 355). The two literati in the fields of cognitive linguistics and qualitative research are noticeably convinced of the epistemological and ontological risks of an embodied cognition of mainstream evidence. In aligning the two aforementioned fields together in this book, geared towards a cognitive methodology, I regard the choice of the term stake as implicit of some kind of risk or loss. In this regard, if the traditional theory of metaphor is considered as “empirically false” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 108] then the loss is no longer in a [mere] poetic sense. An embodied and cognitive metaphorical valuing of evidence puts at risk all the classical materialistic truths of turf, money, and ego! Embodied cognition potentially takes us [back] to the point at which we possibly lost our identity turf to Charles Darwin, the value we place on money to Karl Marx and Adam Smith lucidities, and the ego mostly to the Freudian mind. Firstly, in terms of turf, which “turf” actually belongs to us, or do we belong to? Which turf explains a truer identity—

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our DNA, the self, gender, surname, profession, ethnicity, ideology, country, nation, world, universe, or beyond (and how far beyond?)? Aren’t our identities and all relationships embodied: our body’s cells embodying the universe and both our expanding inner and outer worlds? Which, among these [identity] relationships, offers us embodied sustenance across all the times and spaces of our being, and [any] pre-existence and post-existence? The “here and now” sense of the turf that we ironically call ours or invade as others’, in the physicalmaterialist Target Domains, is only narrow and shallow. Secondly, embodied cognition of money would lead to the shedding of lifestyles shaped by material truth-values and consumerist attitudes. An intuitive recognition of price, profit, loss, rate, bullion, petroleum, consumption, and fortune, can create some unusual reflection. Price may not be an empirical monetary index but an embodied value of what is precious— such as a relationship. A profit or a loss, and a rate, remain paradoxical values that we follow in [short-lived] bullish and bearish trends. Bullion and petrol shape perceptions of glitter and a rock liquid. [In old French, bouillon means bubble on the surface of boiling liquid]. Consumption has increasingly been perceived as a risky lifestyle. Fortunes bring with them vulnerability. We need only look at the lives and deaths of a few celebrities who gave in to social isolation over glittery [red carpet] smiles: Heath Ledger, Whitney Houston and her daughter Bobbi Kristina, Michael Jackson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Robin Williams, among many others. Thirdly, ego is an offending logic that keeps redefining our colours, our genders, our social-economic-cultural status, and our intellect. It divides us as humans! I expand only on the sense of colour here. A conscious physical sense assigns us, among others, to a “black” or a “white” colour, while cognitive unconscious and embodied insight calls the same “dark” or “fair”. Rosa Parks did not sit firm in her seat for a

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civil rights doctrine, out of a conscious political preemption. She only followed her cognitive unconscious—shaped by “the hidden hand”, telling her to stay strong. On 25th October 2015, Tony Blair apologised over Iraq. He proved himself a [realist] loser—a loser in human history. The apology would not make any difference now; the damage has been done. Except perhaps that Robin Cook stands taller in his grave, with a winning smile on his face. Blair’s body spoke well for him that day; he appeared fatigued, old for his age, 62, and strangely darker. Though frail at the time of her death, Rosa Parks, 92, looked fresher, and even fairer—in her thought, and her complexion. Further, to examine the scope of embodied truth[s], our emotional engagements must work through to the ends and not just the means of finding these [Damasio, 1994]. However, it seems that a philosophical-methodological hint at the stake I notice, serves [only] as the means and not the ends of some critical truths. There is a consensus somewhere: a philosophical [trespassing prohibition] and a methodological [dead-end] consensus on evidential lifestyles—for handling some truths. The examples are the September 2001 and July 2005 events of New York and London, respectively. Many among us would fall prey to a fallacy in desire; some would play up and down and even try making love. A few do indeed actualise the truth without telling it. Are these the truths that Lakoff [2010] calls “untellable”? Should an embodied [re]cognition of such events test the scope of embodied realism and moral philosophy [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999]? Should Denzin [2013] [re]view his argument of the falsification of evidence outside a normative cultural interpretivism [Denzin and Lincoln, 2003]? For his emphatic irony of What Will We Tell the Children? [Denzin, 2003], an answer could be to tell them the untellable truth[s] [a priori] that they will ultimately learn through the [embodied] history

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[posteriori], in any case. The Implicit Evidence in these events, and many besides, does not justify scholarly inputs that are presented as stereotypical or mythical, but effectually methodological. Perhaps there is no issue of a prohibited trespassing or a dead-end here, but of a time-bound road blockage, where the buck of metaphorical insight and responsible social research would stop. We remain silent, or hushed up. Understandably, too much is at stake! 9.4. A blinded sense of common-sense Common-sense is described as a global or commonplace experience that helps one to “function well in the world” [Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 509]. This view needs some expansion in terms of experiential-intuitive reasoning. First, I see common-sense as a human paradox, because we do not know all that functions well in the world, and for some claims I make, whether that functions well in our inner or the outer world, or both. Common-sense is both an a priori cause and a posteriori agent of an embodied “common good” that basically rises out from the conscious and the cognitive unconscious, both. Here again, Rosa Parks would keep her seat against the visual conscious, the displayed transportation rules, yet within a [moral] cognitive unconscious we can say that a common-sense prevailed, as she did a common good to both the worlds—her body and her soul. Her common-sense had evolved inside an embodied [re]cognition of a [here and now] time-space vis-à-vis a symbolic-interactionist and intuitive history of human colour. Secondly, common-sense embodies the heart and the mind. It resolves the eternal conflict of what makes better sense, or what is more logical, as the prodigal-prodigy schema serves both. There is no issue even as to what speaks for the heart and what speaks for the mind. In phrases such as “heartfelt”, “heart-moving”, “heart-burning” and “heartthrob”, we appear

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to embody emotionality in a [physical] heart that has the capacity to feel and move, and which even burns in us, and throbs within us. Over a social work or research interview, we intuitively tell our participants that our bodies follow their causal stimuli in how we react to them: giving an attentive ear, some hasty nods, and at times, tearful eyes. We tell them that we can listen and observe, both from our heart and the mind. We create common-sense which is embodied. A disembodied common-sense is an even greater human paradox. When we take light away from a crystal—even an expensive one, like a diamond, it turns to stone. A bigger diamond means a bigger stone—dull and lifeless, even if it’s the size of a mountain. To keep calling it a diamond constitutes a paradox, because we tend to typify stones as physical, with no emotion: stone-face, stone-hearted, deaf as a stone, and even “cold as a stone” as U2’s Bono lyrically laments. Even an expensive crystal would not have the capacity to listen or to feel. It is only through light that a crystal functions. In the same way, light helps regulate the course of social inquiry through crystallisation. When the [epistemological] source of light is intuitive, the ontology of morality and truths is independent of a conscious sense of the here and now. In the sunlight from the [Shakespearean] yonder window, even a grain of sand becomes a crystal. Sunlight delivers the soul to crystallisation, and serves as a universal and eternal source of [intellectual-methodological] sustenance across all human times and spaces. The sun is our soul provider. Our incapacity to notice this is an even bigger paradox! But here again, there is a lot at stake! Finally, cognitive metaphor and embodiment scholarship has done a long-awaited favour to Eastern spiritual philosophy that is otherwise [mostly] unattended in the Western intellectual tradition. In this book, I let the metaphor to tell its story—to speak for the [evidence in] data. Yet, by

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blindfolding moral good from the truth in the sun, aren’t we letting the rug be pulled from under our own feet? I shall invoke a commonplace parable related to spiritual evolutionist Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273): The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope as though a wild animal were chasing him. Someone following him asks, ‘Where are you going? No one is after you’. Jesus keeps on, saying nothing, across two more fields. ‘Are you the one who says words over a dead person, so that he wakes up’? I am. ‘Did you not make the clay birds fly’? Yes. ‘Who then could possibly cause you to run like this’? Jesus slows his pace. ‘I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind, they are healed. Over a stony mountainside, and it tears its mantle down to the navel. Over non-existence, it comes into existence. But when I speak lovingly for hours, for days, with those who take human warmth and mock it, when I say the Name to them, nothing happens. They remain a rock, or turn to sand, where no plants can grow. Other diseases are ways for mercy to enter, but this non-responding breeds violence and coldness toward Him. I am fleeing from that. As little by little air steals water, so praise is dried up and evaporates with foolish people who refuse to change. Like cold stone you sit on, a cynic steals body heat. He doesn’t feel the sun’.

EPILOGUE

All [social research] evidence and its corresponding truthvalues are basically embodied, paradoxical, metaphorical, and postdisciplinary. Evidence is held a priori in data, and equally, truth-values are held in evidence that we [re]search, and not vice versa. Evidence that is hidden deep in human cognition unfolds only in metaphor, which brings minimalism and viability in comprehending evidential complexity and truth[s] that are embodied and paradoxical. Metaphor conveys a postdisciplinarity in evidence. A social research method is only a cognitively viable metaphor that helps us to embody an evidential context intuitively as much as experientially. Most empirical methodologies, at best, create a disembodied “tip of the iceberg” sense, which leads, through the research process, to a range of methodological compromises, but helps in our intellectual survival. Ethically responsible research is not a utopia: it is possible, but only within embodied and paradoxical [re]cognition of the research evidence and its truth-values. As researchers, and as lay persons, our spatiotemporal context can converge and diverge across a body cell to the celestial universe, comprehending all-realist [a priori] history and all that is forthcoming [posteriori], over a momentary free will, as one embodied cognition. These are some claims I make in this book, and insist upon the essentiality of a cognitive-linguistic reform, both in social research theory and in practice. These claims might be assigned some philosophical position, such as quietism, theosophy, or cratylism, which I indeed revere, but only as norms of prodigal divergence. What I assert is the creation of a methodological value, of learning from, and converging

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within, these positions, to a prodigious compliance—bringing about the sense of a homecoming, in our social and ethical responsibilities. Some issues remain unattended to. Taking these up, I happily join in debates that, I know, are challenging, but worth engaging in. For “Life is a Purposeful Journey”, what are the Target Domains of a life, a purpose, and a journey metaphor? Can metaphor and embodiment philosophy explain [any] pre-existence and post-existence of [the] life purpose and journey; whereby, a bracketed “the” (and not “a”) possibly invokes an embodied realism, corresponding to a “nesting instinct” within the cognitive unconscious? What shapes and dƝstinƗres life’s purpose and journey? Is dualism a misleading [nesting] instinct that takes its shape in turf, money, and ego, to eternally contest an embodied dƝstinƗre of life’s purpose and journey?

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INDEX

analyses by paralysis, 53 bingo, 123-124, 150-51 political, 124 childhood abuse, 40, 122, 124 climatic catastrophe, 40 cognitive-methodologymetaphor, 74, 76, 84, 89100, 102, 130, 176 cognitive clumps, 11 pivots, 11 synergy, 12, 78, 103-104, 108 compromise intellectual, 26-27 logistical, 26 methodological, 26-27 common-sense, 89, 91, 125, 160, 220, 228-229 minimalist, 91 common-sensemaking, 90, 96, 100, 120, 128 Conspiracy Theory, 151-155 Context(s) cognitive, 91 cognitive-social-linguistic, 14 data, 26-27, 37, 40, 42, 57, 74, 79, 99 emergent, 38, 106, 152 evidential, 23

experiential-intuitive, 31 historical, 194 historical-experiential, 146 imaginative, 106 implicit, 13, 20, 26, 28, 30, 32, 38, 46, 49, 62, 97 mainstream, 73 social-cultural-linguistic, 90 social-cultural-political, 147 time-space, 37, 99, 123, 149 viable, 90 Creative Analytical Practices, 64, 71 Crystallisation, 39, 86-87, 131133, 136, 144, 206, 229 dervish dance, 120 deviance, 97 policy, 133 prodigal, 98 embodied realism, 37, 55, 153, 195, 227, 232 sustenance, 142, 226 evidence-based criteria, 69 doctrines, 57 methodological pretexts, 59 philosophy, 58

Metaphorical Imagination

practice, 23, 57 research, 57 Foucault pendulum, 119, 176, 189 Ground(s) absolute, 191, 193, 210 detectable, 7 empirical, 223 ethical, 57 homecoming, 221 inner, 190-191, 196-197, 199, 201-202, 222 lost, 189-190 moral, 71, 210 outer, 190, 196, 201-202, 222, 224 relative, 193 search for a, 189 theoretical-methodological, 19 ultimate, 191 untrue, 173 hermeneutics alethic, 12, 51, 78, 110 philosophical, 104 heuristic probing, 114, 115 research in the social sciences, 3 insightlessness, 24 intersubjectivity, 67 intertextuality, 67 life-cycle biological, 90

249

cognitive-memetic, 90 marginalisation, 170-171, 175, 218 metaphorisation, 15 minimalism, 94, 231 cognitive-economic, 91 cognitive-linguistic, 90 movements oscillatory, 118 precession, 118 spiral, 122 swing, 120, 121 symmetrical, 142 neological evidence, 121 order, 167 a new world, 167, 170, 172, 174, 216 fallen out of, 172 intergenerational demand, 169 negotiated-, 168 politically–negotiated, 57 unconventional, 169 unkind, 174 paradigm paralysis, 59 paralysis by analyses, 53 personal knowledge, 4 postdisciplinarity, 12, 125-128, 132, 151, 155, 231 (also see) postdisciplinary, 23, 70, 125-128, 155, 188, 207, 216, 231 preemptive doctrine, 60 doctoring, 60

250

pseudo-, 213 academic, 41, 48 intellectual, 137, 152-153 reasoning abstract, 201 a priori, 112 deconstructionist, 159 emergent, 102 ethical-intuitive, 24 experiential, 110 heuristic, 114 inductive, 212 intuitive-experiential, 111112, 115, 228 metaphorical, 24, 132 methodological-normative, 116 moral, 73 philosophical, 9, 191 prodigious, 197 qualitative-personal, 103 reflective, 187 soulful, 200 vocabulary-restricted, 94 relativism, 27, 37, 48, 51-53, 66, 79, 92, 123, 183-185, 194, 198-199, 201, 206207, 220 cognitive, 90, 193-194 cognitive-memetic, 84 ecological, 49 ethical, 52 figurative, 82 intellectual, 37, 73 interpretative, 195 methodological, 36-37, 53, 67, 72

Index

perspectival, 49 political-ethical, 36 time-space, 49, 184 Researching and Applying Metaphor, 21 self data, 28 human, 31 inner, 187 newly-born, 9 truer, 9, 197, 201 sex scandal, 42, 121, 126, 154, 203, 221 survival cognitive, 44, 72, 150 intellectual, 36-38, 44-45, 70, 72-73, 79-88, 126, 204, 208, 231 intellectualmethodological, 71 methodological, 36-37, 43, 69, 72, 96 of the fittest, 89, 136, 150, 214 Symbolic Interactionism, 5, 21, 31-32, 41 neonatal, 198 syndrome, 6, 184, 189 Cartesian, 185-188, 197 dependency, 5-7, 111 psychosomatic, 182, 188 The Clinton, 121 thought trials, 111, 116 cognitive, 148 embodied, 128 Foucault, 119-120

Metaphorical Imagination

inductive-deductive, 142 insightful, 150 intuitive, 79 intuitive-experiential, 118, 149 paradoxical, 111-112 robust-within-flexible, 145 speculative, 109 spiraling, 123 Yo-Yo, 121 transference cognitive, 41, 130, 136 cognitive-memetic, 32, 38, 55, 133, 141 cultural, 33, 36, 81, 105 cultural-cognitive, 84 metaphorical, 175 time-space, 150 triangulation, 3, 39, 86, 144, 187 truth(s) absolute, 194, 202, 223 abused, 222 cognitive unconscious, 68 common, 49, 220-221 compromised, 52 critical, 155, 227 dramatic, 213 ecstatic, 222-225 embodied, 196, 206-207 emergent, 208 empirical, 201 experiential-interactionist, 195, 212 fatal, 173 half-, 215-218 give-away, 216 homecoming, 175

251

implicit, 213, 216 inconsistent, 49 inconvenient, 49 indoctrinated, 153 instinctive, 207 material, 226 metaphorical, 208 moral-intuitive, 220 naked, 215 negotiated, 215 neural, 68, 201 neural circuitry, 219 paradoxical, 153, 194, 209 phenomenological, 68, 207, 210, 212 postdisciplinary, 206 presentational, 211 presumed, 217 provisory, 211 pubertal, 213 relative, 194 Shakespearean, 213 shallow, 223 stable, 219-220 untellable, 215 truth-values absolute, 47, 67 dramatic, 213 embodied, 206 emergent, 208 empirical, 153 experiential-interactionist, 195 implicit, 153, 213 insightful, 141 material, 226 metaphorical, 44, 151 metaphorical-paradoxical, 102

Index

252

multiple, 73 negotiated, 215 objective-subjective, 90 paradoxical, 209 stable, 220 variable body-soul, 204 clinical, 58 cognitive, 92 dependent, 111, 147 disparate, 33, 37, 59, 86, 101, 114, 141, 147, 160, 201 emergent, 145 empirical, 73, 220 evidential, 15 generic, 32, 59, 114, 201

hypothesised, 27 independent, 111, 147 intervening, 73 memetic, 189 metaphorical, 16 moderating, 23, 147 research, 33, 79 whistle-blowing, 18 (also see) whistleblowers, 30, 214 worldview deconstructionist, 31 disparate, 32 minimalist, 92 open, 57 time-space-contextualised, 208