where this advance lies: in the capability to elaborate on a symbol that can be used in a situation different from the original usage. The build-up of symbolism has been studied in some detail by Terrence Deacon in The Symbolic Species. Whether we express the relationship with the word “warm”, or, as in certain cultures, by rubbing both our indexes against each other, we have introduced an intermediate symbol. Now let us come back to our subject, and formally express the metaphor, a step beyond Deacon’s elaboration. This part of our formal description is a little cumbersome, but it is a necessary step. The directly observable artifact on which the metaphor is based is called source, the abstract construct that the metaphor builds is called target:

Here is the final step, which will in fact, use the metaphoric capabilities of the reader. We can define the rule that allows building a metaphor such as the one above. As this is quite technical, the casual reader may want to avert their eyes for a moment. Suffice it to say that the rule looks at a pattern, specified with the introduction of filler variables such as “A”, “X” and “P”, below, and expresses the pattern change created by the metaphor. As complicated as it looks, the reader needs to be aware that we have considerable simplified the presentation. However, we still hope that the idea goes through. The rule is as follows, where the premise specifies the pattern to be matched, and the conclusion creates the associated metaphor:

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