The project studies how Plutarch conceptualizes mind and cognition through metaphor. Its theoretical starting point is Conceptual Metaphor Theory, but the framework is adapted for historical Greek literature: the goal is to reconstruct culturally situated models of cognition, not to fit Plutarch into a modern taxonomy too quickly.
Research aim
Metaphors of cognition
We examine how Plutarch writes about mental life: reason, memory, attention, learning, knowledge, imagination, perception, speech, emotion, error, and other activities involved in thinking.
Historical question
A Greek model of mind
The project asks what Plutarch’s language can reveal about imperial Greek assumptions concerning the nature of cognitive abilities, the relation between mind and body, and the social value of knowledge.
Methodological aim
Close reading at scale
The Observatory connects philological interpretation with structured data, making it possible to move from broad patterns to individual passages and back again.
What are conceptual metaphors?
In Conceptual Metaphor Theory, metaphor is not treated only as a decorative feature of style. It is also a cognitive mechanism: abstract domains are often understood through more concrete and experientially familiar domains. A mental process may be pictured as seeing, walking, grasping, ruling, being diseased, being trained, or being contained.
This matters for the study of cognition because mental phenomena do not have obvious physical boundaries or a single visible structure. Metaphorical language can therefore supply structure: it helps make thinking, knowing, remembering, doubting, and learning speakable, teachable, and socially meaningful.
Folk models of mind
Folk epistemology
Everyday theories of knowing
The project uses Plutarch’s metaphorical language to reconstruct historically situated assumptions about knowledge: who can possess it, how it is acquired, how it is transmitted, and what counts as a failure of understanding.
Cognitive map
Patterns across the corpus
Recurring mappings are treated as traces of broader conceptual organization. When a source domain repeatedly structures memory, learning, attention, or judgement, it may point toward a stable model of how cognition was imagined.
Social world
Mind and institutions
Ideas about mental ability are not neutral. They shape and are shaped by education, moral responsibility, family hierarchy, political authority, social status, and expectations about who can teach or be taught.
Research questions
- Which categories of thinking does Plutarch distinguish, and which domains does he use to conceptualize them?
- Which metaphorical patterns are consistent enough to form idealized cognitive models, and which are rare, local, or experimental?
- Which metaphors look conventional, which appear creative, and how do earlier philosophical traditions shape Plutarch’s language?
- What functions do these metaphors perform: representational, heuristic, rhetorical, pragmatic, aesthetic, or argumentative?
- What can Plutarch’s conceptual systems reveal about body and mind, cognitive agency, education, moral formation, social hierarchy, and the wider historical world?
Why Plutarch?
- Plutarch’s surviving corpus is large and thematically varied, covering the Moralia and the Parallel Lives.
- His works repeatedly discuss ethics, education, politics, religion, self-formation, emotion, knowledge, and judgement.
- His essayistic prose often shows metaphorical reasoning in use, rather than only fixed technical terminology.
- As a Greek intellectual of the early Roman Empire, Plutarch offers a valuable vantage point on ancient models of mind and character.
- His importance for later European culture makes him a key intermediary between ancient Greek thought and later traditions of thinking about mind, conduct, and education.
Why standard CMT is not enough
Circularity
Avoiding ready-made answers
If an analyst begins with a presumed conceptual metaphor and then treats selected passages as confirmation, the method risks finding only what it already expects. The project therefore keeps textual evidence, coding notes, and category decisions inspectable.
Granularity
The level of abstraction matters
A broad label such as MIND IS BODY may hide important differences between mind as an organ, a living organism, a vulnerable body, a governed city, a container, or a crafted object.
Literary density
Many strands can coexist
Plutarch often layers several metaphors in one passage. A single dominant label can flatten the text by discarding secondary but consequential figurative strands.
Historical fit
Modern taxonomies can mislead
Existing metaphor inventories are often built for modern languages and contemporary conceptual categories. Ancient Greek texts require categories that remain sensitive to genre, philosophy, rhetoric, and historical practice.
A guiding example
One passage from De curiositate compares unhealthy states of mind to an unhealthy house or city: dark, cold, badly ventilated, and in need of rearrangement. The imagery activates several overlapping structures at once: architecture, environment, bodily health, moral discipline, and social organization.
This kind of passage explains why the project uses a flexible, two-level annotation model. The model has to preserve broad patterns while still keeping the fine-grained texture of Plutarch’s imagery visible.
Our framework: scenes and subframes
Scenes
Broad mappings
Scenes capture recurring source-target patterns, such as CONTAINER → MIND, DISEASE → BAD_STATE_OF_THE_MIND, or governance imagery used for reason and desire.
Subframes
Scene-internal details
Subframes record the specific elements activated in a passage. In a governance scene, for example, source-side subframes may include ruler, laws, citizens, rebellion, punishment, or obedience.
Deferred hierarchies
Analysis after annotation
The project does not force a rigid hierarchy at the moment of coding. Relations between scenes and subframes can be refined later as patterns become visible across the corpus.
Historical sensitivity
The project does not use Plutarch simply as evidence for timeless cognitive universals. Even if some metaphors draw on shared embodied experience, their concrete meanings are shaped by the institutions, practices, and values of the early Roman imperial world. A metaphor of mind as something governed, trained, crafted, seen, enclosed, diseased, or purified can carry social and cultural assumptions that matter for interpretation.
Data implementation
Corpus & Data
See how the theoretical framework becomes annotation fields, scenes, subframes, lexical units, and reusable records.
Background
Resources
Find short explanations of CMT, ICMs, cognitive history, and folk epistemology.
This overview is informed by the official project description hosted by the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw. Funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, Sonata Bis grant 2021/42/E/HS3/00259.