Cassirer Ernst

Cassirer, Ernst. The Platonic Renaissance in England. Edinburgh Nelson, 1953. 207p. 

Cassirer, Ernst.The individual and the cosmos in Renaissance philosophy. Translated with an introduction by Mario Domandi. Translated by Mario Domandi. Oxford Blackwell, 1963. xv, 199p. 

Cassirer, Ernst (1953) Substance and Function and Einstein s Theory ofRelativity, New York, Dover Pubhcations. Published in French as Substance et fonction. Elements pour une theorie du concept, trans. Pierre Caussat, Paris, Minuit, 1910. 

Whether or not Kuhn is aware of this (and there is no indication of this in his writing), the idea of any attachment of language to the world itself is metaphorical. Ernst Cassirer, on the other hand makes this an explicit claim that lies at the basis of his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. For Cassirer, the very act of speech, the act of attaching thought to a medium that is fundamentally different from thought (i.e., sound) is itself an embodiment of metaphor, as one thing is made to stand for another. Cassirer also notes that radical metaphors don t merely point out similarities and dissimilarities, they institute them. This is one manner in which metaphorical commitment has practical, even material impact. 

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