Metaphorical Imagination: Towards a Methodology for Implicit Evidence
This book tells the story of an intellectual journey with metaphor. It questions the basis of evidence in social research, especially the 21st century fallacies surrounding it. Metaphor itself serves as the story-teller here.
As the book shows, social research evidence is hidden deep inside metaphor, and is uncovered by the use of the social research method. Through research we make methodological compromises to ensure our intellectual survival. It also highlights that all truth-values are embodied, paradoxical, metaphorical, and postdisciplinary, and that ethically responsible research is possible only within embodied cognition of a research problem. A researcher’s spatiotemporal context converges and diverges across a body cell to the celestial universe, and from all-realist human history to all-forthcoming, over a momentary fee will, as one embodied cognition.
Building upon embodiment philosophy, alethic hermeneutics, critical social theory, and ethical intuitivism, the text revisits the epistemology and ontology of evidence and challenges the dualist norms of social research, points to the failings, and flags up directions for researchers who take evidence seriously. It introduces a cognitive methodology in social research that creates a normative balance for an experiential-intuitive approach to ethically responsible social research. It also claims a unique cognitive schema—the prodigal-within-prodigy paradox, which unifies the traditional theory of metaphor and the post-1980s cognitive theory of metaphor, characterised by mutuality in divergence and convergence of research evidence.
Professor Muhammad Tanweer Abdullah teaches at the University of Peshawar, Pakistan, and at the King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He received BA and MA degrees in Public Administration from the University of Peshawar, an MS in Operational Research and a PhD in Applied Social Science from Lancaster University, UK, and a professional certification in Project Management from the Arthur D. Little School of Management, Cambridge, USA. He has been a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development at Leeds University, UK, and a Visiting Scientist at Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London, UK. His academic interests are metaphorical model building and organizational analysis, and he has authored over 50 research papers.
"This book is the first comprehensive volume on the subject of the problem of understanding the very 'problem' in research. It is a must-read for those in the East who have or are planning to embark on the journey to know the world through research in the West. At the same time, it is a must for Western scholars who are guiding Eastern scholars in their higher studies. The book takes a holistic approach to the very basis of research, the search for truth, the very meaning of the Arabic word Tehqeeq, the search for Haq (truth). It emancipates truth from the monopoly of academics and throws it into the larger human domain, perfectly attainable for journalists and social media activists, while still leaving the burden of responsibility on academics. The academic is a custodian of truth, not the hegemon!"
Dr Altaf Ullah Khan
Head of Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Peshawar
"Metaphorical Imagination can provide a guidance system for navigating life for some while, for others, it remains a mystery beyond comprehension. Throughout the author asserts his own flexible and Cratylian sense of the universe, allowing us to pass beyond fixity into a sense of philosophical homecoming, wherein the world makes sense on many levels, as the evidences of metaphorical imagination become embodied. [...] Muhammad Tanweer Abdullah’s rigorous methodology is seasoned by a playful lightness of touch and humour, inviting us to participate with him in considering all the evidences with a fresh eye."
Caitlín Matthews Author of Singing the Soul Back Home, Celtic Visions and Diary of a Soul Doctor
"The entire structure rests on the cognition that knowledge, understanding, and perception can be generated with the help of non-analytical tools and in a non-logical rational construct. [...] The book is exciting and bold in its attempt to bridge a gap."
Dr Khurram Qadir Formerly Director of the National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad
"There are several strengths to the book: the author’s passionate commitment to ethics and embodied imagination/emotion; his interesting discussion of metaphor and its relation to memory; his striking use of metaphorical oppositions or blends—prodigal-prodigy, triangulation v. crystallisation, jigsaw v. scrabble, etc.; the extreme relevance of the discussion of conspiracy theory and fake news; the politically charged examples of Rosa Parks, David Kelly and Robin Cook; the wide reading in social theory and philosophy; and above all, the bravery in attempting this ambitious project of relating two fields—conceptual metaphor theory and social science methodology—which, to my knowledge, has not been attempted before, at least in this depth."
Andrew Goatly Honorary Professor, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
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