We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence of relations among things, now that things have emerged from the scene.
A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so.
— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)
The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor can reverse the process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so.