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A Review of Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought AI Magazine Volume 16 Number 3 (1995) (© AAAI) Book Review heads in a row and turns out right is A Review of merely lucky, not insightful. What, then, would prove that someone was Mental Leaps: a deep analogy maker? Surely, not just one analogy, no matter how suc- Analogy in Creative Thought cessful. It would take a series of fruit- yielding analogies to reveal that someone had the gift of being able to look at diverse situations and see Douglas Hofstadter through to their gists. Having a reliable ability to see to the gist of a situation—now there, I would say, is the gist of analogy-mak- ■ Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative 1954. To be sure, Ball saw the appeal ing skill. When we say, “Iraq’s kvetch- Thought, Keith Holyoak and Paul of the Korea, Munich, and domino- ing about Iran’s threatening troop chain analogies, but in each, he also Thagard, MIT Press, Cambridge, maneuvers is surely the pot calling saw serious weaknesses; more impor- Massachusetts, 1994, 320 pp., ISBN the kettle black,” we are seeing a situ- tant, he felt he saw deeper similari- 0-262-08233-0. ation on an abstract level, homing in ties to the situation the French had on a phrase that highlights this faced, which led him to his gloomy ne would hardly expect a essence. When Maria inadvertently but accurate predictions of what book on analogy and creativi- swims an extra seventeenth lap in her would happen to American troops if Oty to devote seven pages to first attempt to do a full mile, and Joe they went in. the Vietnam War, but there it is—one says, “Hey, kiddo, did you know you I found this discussion enlighten- of the most informative histories of swam a guinea?”, he is conveying ing, but it left me wondering, Was the period that I have ever read. Of what he’s just witnessed by alluding Ball really so great an analogist? course, the book’s authors, psycholo- to the rather la-di-da British mone- Holyoak and Thagard tell us, “Ball gist Keith Holyoak and philosopher tary unit worth 21 shillings (one had worked as a lawyer for the Paul Thagard, have good reason for French government during its period pound plus one extra shilling). this discussion: to focus on the of grief in Vietnam, and he never for- These examples involve putting “analogy war” that went on for years got that historical source” (p. 161). one’s finger on a familiar proverb or in the upper echelons of the U.S. So wasn’t this experience in some even the proverbial mot juste, but government. sense the last war that Ball had been usually there is no mot juste or per- Politicians think by analogy all the fect proverb encapsulating a complex time, and the fates of nations hang situation; in such cases, we are often on their idiosyncratic analogical in- reminded of some experience in our stincts, wise or not. Military leaders, I firmly believe that gist ex- past. Our storehouse of experiences too, are guided by precedents, and traction, the ability to see to includes virtual, as well as real, ones. Holyoak and Thagard ironically note the core of the matter, is the For example, you hear a cynical re- that generals often prepare for the mark about TV to the effect that no war that they last fought. However, key to analogy making— in- show ever has to be any good, merely they also point out that one can se- deed, to all intelligence. Un- better than its mediocre competi- lect one’s precedents in a deeper fortunately, Holyoak and tors—and seemingly up from manner than that. In fact, they de- Thagard do not seem to agree. nowhere bubbles the punch line of a vote three pages to George Ball, un- joke in which Albert Einstein is hur- dersecretary of state in the Johnson riedly putting on his tennis shoes to administration, “who history must escape a bear, and his hiking com- through? Was he not simply using now credit as the greatest American panion Niels Bohr says, “Dear Albert, his own last war as his precedent, political analogist of his time” (p. you can’t outrun the bear!” to which 163), praising him for seeing further just as Dean Rusk and others used Einstein replies, “Ja, ja, Bohr, but all into the Vietnam situation than any- the Korean War as theirs? what I need to outrun is you.” one else in a high-level position. If my analogy between George Ball I firmly believe that gist extraction, Ball, instead of likening the situa- and the Johnny-one-note military the ability to see to the core of the tion in Vietnam in the early 1960s to minds is reasonable, then Ball might matter, is the key to analogy mak- that in Korea 10 years earlier, or to not deserve the label “great analo- ing—indeed, to all intelligence. Un- the British capitulation to Hitler in gist”; having predicted the debacle fortunately, Holyoak and Thagard do Munich, or to the first domino in a for the United States shows merely not seem to agree. At least, they do chain, picked out a different ana- that he happened to have had the not focus any attention on this logue: the situation facing the French good luck to pick the closer analog, “sense for essence,” and it is here before their defeat in Indochina in just as someone who predicts five that they make their greatest mis- Copyright © 1995, American Association for Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved. 0738-4602-1995 / $2.00 FALL 1995 75 Book Review take, one that permeates their view of me awake was this: “In this analogy bright sun, blue sky, and on and on? analogy and, therefore, seriously there is…only a modest degree of What to the workplace, the boss, the mars their book. They indicate no ap- similarity between the corresponding job interview, the outfit worn, the preciation for either the essential role first-order relations, such as hunger for nervousness, the sweat, the wait for a or the enormous subtlety of this and desire. The major similarities in- decision, the crushing blow? Of sense for essence. They do not seem volve higher-order relations, most course, these seem to be minor as- to realize the hugeness of the gulf be- notably cause” (p. 31). pects that are not part of the essence tween a full situation as a human per- Of course, being human, I agreed of either event. However, this is ex- ceives it—having no sharp bound- that the sour-grapes–sour-job analogy actly the point! When Holyoak and aries, woven intricately into the was strong. The question was why. I Thagard said there was a one-to-one fabric of one’s knowledge and life ex- was stunned that Holyoak and Tha- correspondence between these situa- periences—and a handful of predicate gard were downplaying the role of tions, they were blurring the notion calculus formulas. For example, they such vivid, gripping, complex themes of story with that of story’s gist. The constantly refer to “the objects,” “the as hunger, desire, frustration, disap- one-to-one correspondence is, of attributes,” “the relations,” and “the pointment, denial, and self-fooling in course, only at the level of the story’s higher-level predicates” in situations, favor of a single abstraction so flat gist. Getting from the story to the as if real situations (for example, Wa- and ordinary that it could serve as story’s gist, something that occurs tergate, a romantic breakup, the abor- the core of any event of any sort. swiftly yet almost invisibly in a hu- tion debate, the O. J. Simpson trial, Such an overstress on causality—a man mind, is as central a mystery of John Searle’s Chinese room scenario) ubiquitous ingredient of events and, cognitive science as any that exists. came given with absolute, unambigu- therefore, an essentially useless tool However, Holyoak and Thagard talk ous separations into objects, at- for classifying them—would allow about both levels in the same breath, tributes, and so on—as if distilling virtually any pair of events to map pointing to one but meaning the oth- Hamlet or World War II into two onto each other. I was reminded of a er, without even seeming to realize dozen lines of predicate calculus no- time a few years ago when, in a the finesse they are carrying tation were a mechanical task not demonstration of Falkenhainer, For- out—and I, on my first reading, had meriting discussion in a book on bus, and Gentner’s analogy-making happily gone along with them. Once analogy. And troublingly, the authors program SME (a rival to Holyoak and I realized that this conflation of gist glide back and forth so smoothly be- Thagard’s ACME, discussed later), I was with full situation had slipped right tween references to real-world situa- flabbergasted to realize that the chief by me, a long-time skeptic of the tions and references to their tiny, reason SME perceived an analogy be- whole idea, I knew it could happen hand-sculpted, frozen caricatures tween two particular situations was to anyone—even the book’s authors. that, I suspect, many readers will be that both had been encoded (by peo- Indeed, when I then saw such completely unaware of the blur they ple) into predicate-logic trees, each of conflation reoccur over and over are witnessing. whose top-level node was the Lisp again throughout their book, I real- I myself realized the subtlety of atom and! Although the two situa- ized that they might be the least like- this effect in their prose when I read tions indeed were analogous, their ly of all to see the illusion.
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