Models and metaphors: complexity theory and through-life management in the built environment

Complexity thinking may have both modelling and metaphorical applications in the through-life management of the built environment. These two distinct approaches are examined and compared. In the first instance, some of the sources of complexity in the design, construction and maintenance of the built environment are identified. The metaphorical use of complexity in management thinking and its application in the built environment are briefly examined. This is followed by an exploration of modelling techniques relevant to built environment concerns. Non-linear and complex mathematical techniques such as fuzzy logic, cellular automata and attractors, may be applicable to their analysis. Existing software tools are identified and examples of successful built environment applications of complexity modelling are given. Some issues that arise include the definition of phenomena in a mathematically usable way, the functionality of available software and the possibility of going beyond representational modelling. Further questions arising from the application of complexity thinking are discussed, including the possibilities for confusion that arise from the use of metaphor. The metaphor of a 'commentary machine' is suggested as a possible way forward and it is suggested that an appropriate linguistic analysis can in certain situations reduce perceived complexity

The Tyranny of a Metaphor

Debates on the practical relevance of ideal theory revolve around Sen's metaphor of navigating a mountainous landscape. In *The Tyranny of the Ideal*, Gerald Gaus presents the most thorough articulation of this metaphor to date. His detailed exploration yields new insight on central issues in existing debates, as well as a fruitful medium for exploring important limitations on our ability to map the space of social possibilities. Yet Gaus's heavy reliance on the navigation metaphor obscures questions about the reasoning by which ideal theories are justified. As a result, Gaus fails to notice the ways in which his theory of the Open Society resembles the ideal theories he aims to dismiss. Ironically, Gaus winds up neglecting the ways in which the Open Society might tyrannize our efforts to realize greater justice. (This article is part of a symposium on Gaus's *The Tyranny of the Ideal*.

ISML: an interface specification meta-language

In this paper we present an abstract metaphor model situated within a model-based user interface framework. The inclusion of metaphors in graphical user interfaces is a well established, but mostly craft-based strategy to design. A substantial body of notations and tools can be found within the model-based user interface design literature, however an explicit treatment of metaphor and its mappings to other design views has yet to be addressed. We introduce the Interface Specification Meta-Language (ISML) framework and demonstrate its use in comparing the semantic and syntactic features of an interactive system. Challenges facing this research are outlined and further work proposed

Recasting the home-work relationship: a case of mutual adjustment?

Advances in communication and information technologies, changing managerial strategies and changing cultural expectations about the location of (paid) work, have meant that paid work is increasingly conducted from home. Home then becomes the place where the discourse of industrial production meets with the discourse of household production. We analyse the relationship between these two traditionally separate discourses, which, through the disintegration of the time/space compression, increasingly come to bear on each other. We report on the experiences of home-workers and their families coping with the co-presence of the sometimes conflicting and sometimes competing demands and values embedded in such discourses. In doing so, we contribute to current understandings of the complexities inherent in emergent forms of organization, as the relationship between work and home is recast. Theoretically and methodologically, this empirical study is located within a discursive framework, and we emphasize the usefulness of such approaches to studying organizational realities

Travels with the Flying Dutchman: marketing managers, marketing planning and the metaphors of practice

A review of the literature on strategic marketing planning reveals that the manner in which it is carried out in practice does not appear to reflect the way in which it is written about in texts. It is also clear that the exploration of marketing processes in organisations is seriously neglected from a phenomenological perspective. In order to explore this area, and the lived reality of planning from marketing managers perspectives, a research methodology was adopted using the phenomenological interview. A key research question focused investigation on determining what successful marketing decision making expertise actually consists of, if it is not about the explicit skills and knowledge embedded in the rational technical model of planning. The subsequent phenomenological analysis of the interviews demonstrated that the complexity of marketing planning and individual action cannot be collapsed into a textual model. What managers drew on was a qualitative, locally constructed knowledge base. Marketing decision making and action was found to be based within a locally enacted hermeneutical circle of talk, relationships, tacit knowledge and emergent issues, where the plans they wrote acted as cues to action rather than as prescriptive guides. Based on these findings, a revised theoretical framework is proposed for understanding marketing planning. This framework draws on the socially constructed metaphors used by the marketing managers in this study to explain their practical activity. It is argued that this theoretical approach offers up ideas for action to other marketers, rather than prescriptions. It also indicates that much marketing activity is successful yet diverse, both in form and style

Transcendental Aspects, Ontological Commitments and Naturalistic Elements in Nietzsche's Thought

Nietzsche's views on knowledge have been interpreted in at least three incompatible ways - as transcendental, naturalistic or proto-deconstructionist. While the first two share a commitment to the possibility of objective truth, the third reading denies this by highlighting Nietzsche's claims about the necessarily falsifying character of human knowledge (his so-called error theory). This paper examines the ways in which his work can be construed as seeking ways of overcoming the strict opposition between naturalism and transcendental philosophy whilst fully taking into account the error theory (interpreted non-literally, as a hyperbolic warning against uncritical forms of realism). In doing so, it clarifies the nature of Nietzsche's ontological commitments, both in the early and the later work, and shows that his relation to transcendental idealism is more subtle than is allowed by naturalistic interpreters while conversely accounting for the impossibility of conceiving the conditions of the possibility of knowledge as genuinely a priori

Metaphors in the Wealth of Nations

This paper reconstructs the ways in which metaphors are used in the text of “The Wealth of Nations”. Its claims are: a) metaphor statements are basically similar to those in the “Theory of the Moral Sentiments”; b) the metaphors’ ‘primary subjects’ refer to mechanics, hydraulics, blood circulation, agriculture, medicine; c) metaphors may be lumped together into a couple of families, the family of mechanical analogies, and that of iatro-political analogies. Further claims are: a basic physico-moral analogy is the framework for Smith’s psychological theory as well as for his overall social theory and for his theory of market mechanisms; a iatro-mechanical analogy is as pervasive as the physico-moral analogy and provides the framework for his overall evolutionary theory of society; the invisible-hand simile relies on the physico-moral analogy, and elaborates on the role of vis attractiva and vis a tergo in mechanics

State Personhood, Reality or Fiction? The Divergent Views of C. Escudé (1994) and A. Wendt (2004)

This paper counterpoises Carlos Escudé's 1994, 1995 and 1997 treatment of anthropomorphic metaphors of the state, with Alexander Wendt's 2004 treatment of the same subject. It stresses the need for a historical memory in IR scholarship, suggesting that the lack of an epistemological equivalent to the concept of ‘discovery’ in the harder sciences may open the way for less-than-scholarly attitudes towards precedents, making the accumulation of knowledge less likely. It discusses whether or not state personhood is actually a fiction. Finally, it explores the consequences, for IR theory in general and peripheral realist theory in particular, of state personhood being indeed a harmful fiction. The author argues that if anthropomorphisms of the state lead to fallacy, then Hedley Bull’s domestic analogy is likewise fallacious. And if this is the case, the hierarchy of the structure of the interstate system is exposed, together with Waltz’s error in postulating an anarchy.