the concept of warmth as related to relationship. At least in certain circumstances, a good relationship is actually related to a direct elevation of body temperature: we have all experienced the rush associated with courtship, and the coldness we feel when indifference sinks in. Therefore, there is a bridge between the experience of warmth traceable to direct heat transfer from inanimate objects and that resulting from personal interaction. However, can we model that? What we would propose here, in XML, would be:

We have defined a formula that is independent of the context in expressing our body’s reaction to external events with an actual, or perceived, elevation of temperature. However, we can readily identify different causes, depending on the situation, that we can now formalize. In both formulations below, we are just using the power of our formal language to describe cause and effect. In the case of fire:

In the case of relationship:

Now let us consider the hypothetical situation of two persons separated by two languages, say one speaking English and the other one French, neither of whom speaks the other’s language. In front of a fire, it is easy for one of the protagonists to point to a fire and make a sign expressing comfort. Going one-step further, the two can point again to the fire and say, “warm” in English, and “chaud” in French. They can thereafter agree on a name for the situation. This way, a direct physical experience has been translated into a symbolic expression, and that yields to, in English:

The difference between the concrete, readily shared experience of the fire, and the abstract, subjective experience of a relationship, is the lack, or frailty, of direct observation of the latter. I may feel a warm relationship with you, but that may leave you cold. Unlike the situation with the fire, we cannot point directly to the artifact at hand. We need an intermediate representation. How am I then to express my sentiment? Coming back to our protagonists, an obvious way is for one to make a sign relating the two persons, and saying “warm.” While in the presence of fire, that would mostly be understood as “We are both warm.” In the absence of any particular source of heat, that might be understood as “Let’s find a fire to get warm.”

Alternatively, and we have now passed the threshold of metaphoric understanding, it might be understood as “Our relationship is giving me a comfort similar to the fire.” Clearly, that requires a formidable advance in cognitive capabilities. Fortunately, we have just seen in excruciating detail

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