The Senior Common Room had reached a rare moment of agreement.
This was considered by Professor Quillibrace to be suspicious.
"I have noticed something," said Mr Blottisham.
"That is encouraging."
"Thank you."
"It was not intended as a compliment."
Miss Stray smiled.
"What have you noticed?"
"Every time we discuss physics, we end up talking about metaphors."
"Yes."
"Particles."
"Yes."
"Fields."
"Yes."
"Time flowing."
"Yes."
Blottisham looked pleased.
"So perhaps the solution is obvious."
Professor Quillibrace looked wary.
"That is generally when I become concerned."
"We should stop using metaphors."
Silence.
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
"And what would we use instead?"
"Literal language."
"What would that look like?"
Blottisham opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"An excellent demonstration."
"Of what?"
"That the question is more difficult than it first appears."
He walked to the blackboard.
"Let us imagine a physics without metaphors."
He wrote:
NO OBJECTS
"Because 'object' is a metaphor from ordinary experience."
Blottisham nodded.
"Very well."
Professor Quillibrace continued.
NO MOTION
"Because 'motion' assumes things moving through space."
"All right."
NO SPACE
"Because 'space' itself began as a metaphor of an empty container."
Blottisham looked alarmed.
"No space?"
"Correct."
"No objects?"
"Correct."
"No motion?"
"Correct."
"What exactly is left?"
Professor Quillibrace turned.
"An excellent question."
Miss Stray laughed.
"So eliminating metaphors may be rather difficult."
"Indeed."
"Because the concepts we use to eliminate metaphors are themselves conceptual constructions."
Professor Quillibrace nodded.
"Precisely."
Blottisham frowned.
"So mathematics?"
"Perhaps."
"Mathematics has no metaphors."
The room became quiet.
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"Does it not?"
Blottisham looked uncertain.
"Does it?"
Miss Stray picked up the notebook.
"We speak of mathematical spaces."
"Yes."
"Fields."
"Yes."
"Dimensions."
"Yes."
"Groups."
"Yes."
"We even speak of mathematical objects."
Blottisham stared.
"Those are metaphors too?"
"Not necessarily in the same way."
"No?"
"But they are still conceptual tools."
Professor Quillibrace nodded.
"Mathematics does not escape thinking."
"It refines thinking."
"Exactly."
Blottisham looked at the blackboard.
"So there is no view from nowhere."
"That is a very philosophical phrase."
"Is it wrong?"
"No."
"Then?"
"I dislike how often philosophy turns out to be useful."
Miss Stray smiled.
"Perhaps the goal is not to eliminate metaphors."
"No."
"But to know which ones we are using."
"Yes."
"And what they allow us to see."
"Yes."
"And what they prevent us from seeing."
"Precisely."
Professor Quillibrace wrote:
A METAPHOR IS A LENS
"Like a pair of glasses?"
"Yes."
"Glasses help us see."
"Yes."
"But they also frame what we see."
"Exactly."
"So a different metaphor is like a different pair of glasses."
"An excellent analogy."
Blottisham looked pleased.
"I have just used a metaphor."
"You have."
"Was it allowed?"
"Unfortunately."
The room laughed.
Miss Stray looked towards the window.
"I think there is something rather beautiful here."
"What?"
"Physics is often described as a search for the deepest reality."
"Yes."
"But perhaps it is also a search for better ways of seeing."
Professor Quillibrace nodded.
"That is a more modest claim."
"Is it less profound?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because every way of seeing creates possibilities."
Blottisham looked at the blackboard.
"Objects allowed Newtonian mechanics."
"Yes."
"Fields allowed electromagnetism."
"Yes."
"Spacetime allowed relativity."
"Yes."
"Quantum ideas allowed..."
He hesitated.
"...something we still haven't quite finished understanding."
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"An excellent summary."
"So perhaps science progresses by changing metaphors."
"Sometimes."
"Not only by discovering new facts."
"Correct."
The clock ticked.
After a while, Blottisham spoke.
"Can I ask one final question?"
"Naturally."
"If we can never escape metaphors..."
"Yes?"
"...how do we know when we have found a better one?"
Professor Quillibrace considered.
For once, he did not answer immediately.
Finally he said:
"A good metaphor opens more possibilities than it closes."
Miss Stray nodded.
"It lets us ask better questions."
"And a bad one?"
Blottisham asked.
Professor Quillibrace looked around the room.
At the shelves.
The books.
The countless human attempts to understand.
"A bad metaphor persuades us that we have stopped using one."
Nobody spoke.
The fire burned quietly.
The empty teapot sat on the table.
The blackboard contained only one sentence:
HOW ARE WE THINKING?
Blottisham read it aloud.
"That is the question?"
Professor Quillibrace collected his books.
"No."
"No?"
"It is the question beneath the questions."
Miss Stray switched off the light.
And the Senior Common Room was quiet once more.
Not because the questions had been answered.
But because better questions had been found.
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