Ape-Human Divide as a Chasm

Metaphor: Humans and apes are sometimes represented as separated by a vast chasm — a conceptual gap emphasising our “uniqueness.” Illustrations place us on one cliff, apes on the other, with evolution supposedly bridging the divide in occasional leaps.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor exaggerates discontinuity and misrepresents shared ancestry. It promotes a false sense of human exceptionalism, obscuring the relational overlaps in morphology, behaviour, cognition, and genetics. By portraying the divide as a yawning gulf, the metaphor flattens the complexity of co-existing lineages and the continuity of evolutionary processes.

Relational Ontology Correction: Humans are not isolated on a cliff; we are relationally entwined with other primates. Traits, capacities, and potentials flow across species boundaries through shared ancestry, ecological entanglements, and evolutionary pressures. The “chasm” is a conceptual cut imposed by the metaphor, not an ontological fact.

Parody: If the ape-human divide were a chasm, zoos would need suspension bridges, museum visitors would need climbing ropes, and scientists would deliver evolution lectures via zipline. Bonobos would throw bananas over the gap in protest, and chimpanzees would file lawsuits for defamation. The absurdity exposes the misstep: exaggerating discontinuity hides the relational continuity that actually structures life’s unfolding.

Evolutionary Arms Races

Metaphor: Evolution is often framed as an “arms race,” with species imagined as rival nations locked in perpetual military escalation. Predators sharpen their claws, prey reinforce their armour, parasites invent sneakier invasions, and hosts roll out new defence systems — all mapped onto the imagery of war.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: The metaphor imports human geopolitics into biology, suggesting linear escalation, rivalry, and zero-sum competition. It obscures the fact that evolution is not about armies and weaponry but about relational adaptation and co-constitution. Many so-called “arms races” resolve not in endless escalation but in stabilisation, cooperation, or diversification. By treating evolution as militarised rivalry, the metaphor smuggles in ideas of aggression, dominance, and strategy, while neglecting the quieter realities of coexistence and symbiosis.

Relational Ontology Correction: Evolutionary dynamics are not war games. They are processes of relational actualisation, where species co-shape each other’s possibilities. Predator and prey, parasite and host, plant and pollinator — these are entanglements, not battlefields. Adaptations emerge through alignment and misalignment across systems, not through generals plotting victory on a cosmic war map.

Parody: If evolution were truly an arms race, crabs would be NATO members, orchids would design stealth bombers, and bats would file patents for sonar-guided missiles. Biologists would be summoned to arms-control treaties, and Darwin would be remembered as the first war correspondent of the natural world. The absurdity reveals the misstep: life’s creativity reduced to military escalation, when its richness lies in relational transformation.

DNA as Blueprint of Life

Metaphor: Genes are often described as a “blueprint,” with DNA as the architect’s drawing and organisms as the finished construction project. The genome is cast as a master plan, dictating every detail of biological form and function.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor imports engineering imagery into biology. It suggests determinism, top-down control, and linear causality: as if DNA simply instructs bodies to assemble. In reality, development is relational, dynamic, and context-dependent. Gene expression is modulated by environment, interaction, and chance. By imagining DNA as a blueprint, the metaphor erases plasticity, feedback, and co-constitution — and it turns organisms into passive buildings rather than active participants in their own becoming.

Relational Ontology Correction: DNA does not prescribe life; it participates in relational processes of actualisation. Genes provide potentials, not fixed instructions, which only take form through interaction with cellular environments, ecological pressures, and historical contingencies. Life is not constructed from plans but emerges from alignments of relational systems.

Parody: If DNA were really a blueprint, geneticists would need planning permits, builders would sue embryos for code violations, and natural selection would hire site inspectors in hard hats. The joke lands because the metaphor miscasts dynamic, responsive living systems as inert architectural projects, missing the relational dance at the heart of biology. 

Human Ancestors as Stages of Progress

Metaphor: Popular imagery often depicts human evolution as the famous “march of progress” — a parade of figures, from stooped ape to upright modern human, striding left to right across the page. Each ancestor is cast as a rung on a ladder, a stage on the way to “us.”

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor installs teleology at the heart of evolution: as if all life were destined to culminate in Homo sapiens. It reframes branching, contingent, relational processes as a linear ascent toward superiority. Other hominins are reduced to evolutionary dress rehearsals — failed attempts at becoming us. In doing so, the metaphor erases the diversity of human lineages, ignores overlapping coexistence, and smuggles in cultural narratives of progress, hierarchy, and inevitability.

Relational Ontology Correction: Human evolution is not a march but a meshwork: multiple lineages coexisting, interbreeding, and aligning with diverse ecological contexts. Homo sapiens is not the “goal” but one relational actualisation among many, contingent on shifting constraints. The so-called “stages” were not steps toward us but fully realised beings in their own right, each embodying a relational response to their world.

Parody: If evolution really were a parade, Neanderthals would be sulking at the back with unfinished floats, Denisovans would be off designing costumes in a side tent, and Australopithecines would demand better marching music. The absurdity makes the point: treating evolution as a march of progress mistakes relational diversity for a linear destiny.

Evolutionary Trees

Metaphor: Evolution is often pictured as a branching “tree of life” — neat limbs sprouting from a single trunk, each species occupying its proper twig on a tidy diagram. From Darwin’s original sketch to glossy museum wall charts, the tree metaphor promises clarity: divergence, order, and natural hierarchy.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: The “tree” suggests a tidy, one-way branching process, where species split cleanly and never meet again. But evolutionary history is riddled with reticulation: hybridisation, gene flow, and horizontal transfers blur boundaries everywhere. Evolution is not a stately oak but a tangled thicket — more unruly hedge than tree. By hiding these messier dynamics, the metaphor construes the past as a set of fixed categories with clear separations, obscuring the relational overlaps that define life’s history.

Relational Ontology Correction: Evolution is not a tree but an ongoing relational weave. Species are not discrete branches but dynamic alignments of genetic, ecological, and social potentials, co-constituted through interaction. History does not tidy itself into neat forks; it actualises as overlapping and recombining patterns of possibility. To treat evolution as a tree is to misrecognise a tangled relational field as a set of separable limbs.

Parody: If evolution really were a tree, biologists would be arborists, taxonomists would carry pruning shears, and cladistics would require fertiliser. We’d worry about Dutch elm disease wiping out mammals, or call in the council to remove dangerous “dead branches” from the primate clade. The absurdity points back to the misstep: taking the metaphor literally hides the unruly, relational complexity of life’s unfolding.

Survival of the Fittest

Metaphor: Evolution is often reduced to “survival of the fittest,” as if nature were a never-ending sports tournament where only the strongest competitors advance.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor imports competition, ranking, and moral judgment into evolution. “Fittest” gets misread as “strongest” or “best,” reinforcing social Darwinist ideologies of progress and hierarchy. It obscures the relational truth: fitness is context-specific, emerging from how organisms align with environments and each other. Cooperation, symbiosis, and sheer chance all play crucial roles — but the sports-metaphor edits them out of the script.

Relational Ontology Correction: Evolution is not about winners and losers; it is about actualising potentials in relation to constraints and contexts. An organism’s survival depends on fit, not fitness-as-rank. There is no global scoreboard, only local alignments of possibility.

Parody (woven through): If survival really worked like a tournament, lions would hand out medals to gazelles, bacteria would publish league tables, and Darwin would have been employed as referee for the Great Evolutionary Games. The absurdity points to the misstep: treating nature like a contest erases its relational, non-hierarchical complexity.

Missing Links and Evolutionary Chains

Metaphor: Human evolution is often imagined as a “chain” of being, with successive links connecting ancient apes to modern humans. Gaps in the fossil record are dramatised as “missing links.”

Problem / Misleading Aspect: The chain metaphor smuggles in linearity and inevitability. It suggests that evolution is a straight line of progress, with each species marching dutifully toward us, the supposed endpoint. This erases the messy, relational dynamics of populations: branching, hybridisation, overlapping timelines, and chance actualisations. It also implies that fossils exist to complete our story, rather than being traces of their own contingent lives.

Relational Ontology Correction: Evolution is not a chain but a field of relational possibilities, with populations diverging, converging, and aligning through context-specific potentials. There are no “missing” links, only misconstrued expectations that nature should fit our metaphors of engineering continuity.

Parody (woven through): If evolution really were a chain, palaeontologists would carry spare links in their backpacks to patch the record. Museums would sell extension kits: “Add your own transitional species!” And somewhere in a warehouse, curators would be anxiously polishing the final, golden link that reveals our glorious completion. The humour shows the conceptual misstep: treating evolution as a chain imposes mechanical, linear logic where relational, branching complexity actually reigns.

Refrigerators as Energy Thieves

Metaphor: Refrigerators are sometimes described as “stealing” heat from their interiors and dumping it outside, implying agency and intentionality.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor assigns moral qualities and agency to inanimate systems. It suggests refrigerators act purposefully, obscuring the relational thermodynamic processes that govern energy redistribution. Readers may imagine “cold” as a commodity being hoarded or stolen rather than an emergent effect of aligned potentials.

Relational Ontology Correction: Refrigeration is a relational process: energy is redistributed through interactions between refrigerant, compressor, and environment. There is no thief, no intent, and no ethical dimension.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might picture refrigerators sneaking into kitchens at night, pilfering heat, or being put on trial for “cooling crimes.” The humour reveals the conceptual misstep: the thief metaphor misleads by projecting agency, choice, and morality onto neutral relational processes.

Heat Death of the Universe

Metaphor: Cosmologists often describe the eventual “heat death” as the universe running out of usable energy, implying it will “die” when all energy is evenly distributed.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor anthropomorphises energy flows, suggesting narrative closure, finality, or tragedy. It can mislead learners into thinking the universe has intentions, that “death” is analogous to biological cessation, or that entropy “punishes” systems.

Relational Ontology Correction: Heat death describes a relational flattening of energy potentials, a state where possibilities for work are minimal. There is no cosmic observer, no drama, and no “dying” in a literal or moral sense.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might imagine galaxies drafting wills, cosmologists distributing tissues, or the universe sighing dramatically as stars fade. The humour underscores the conceptual misstep: the death metaphor misleads by projecting narrative and emotional structure onto relational energy dynamics.

Thermodynamic Equilibrium as Balance

Metaphor: Equilibrium is often described as a “balance” or “harmony” in a system, suggesting stability, peace, or perfection.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor projects human notions of calm or moral balance onto physical systems. It implies intention or desirable outcomes, obscuring the dynamic, relational processes that actually define equilibrium. Equilibrium is not serene; it is the state in which relational potentials are maximally accessible and redistributed according to constraints.

Relational Ontology Correction: Equilibrium is a dynamic relational state, not a static or morally “balanced” condition. It emerges from interactions among particles, energy flows, and constraints, without preference or design.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might imagine stars practising yoga, molecules meditating to maintain zen, or entire galaxies attending mindfulness retreats. The humour exposes the conceptual danger: the balance metaphor misleadingly anthropomorphises statistical physics.

The Universe as Heat Engine

Metaphor: The universe is sometimes described as a “giant heat engine,” converting energy and running cycles like a mechanical machine.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor imports teleology and human-designed mechanics into cosmology. It suggests that the universe is “running” with purpose, that there are inputs and outputs, and that energy flows in managed cycles. This obscures the relational, emergent actualisation of energy potentials across matter and spacetime.

Relational Ontology Correction: The universe is not a machine. Energy transformations are relational events, constrained by physical laws and potentials, not driven by mechanical intent or design. There is no engine, boiler, or governor overseeing cosmic operations.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might picture galaxies puffing steam, stars operating pistons, and black holes acting as pressure valves. The humour highlights the conceptual misstep: the heat engine metaphor misleads by imposing human engineering logic onto spontaneous relational alignments.

Entropy as Disorder

Metaphor: Entropy is often described as “disorder,” chaos, or the universe “falling apart.”

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor imports cultural and moral notions of tidiness, obscuring the statistical, relational nature of entropy. It suggests that physical systems are being judged or that they have an inherent tendency toward “messiness,” which is misleading. Entropy is not moral; it does not reward order or punish disorder—it quantifies relational possibilities.

Relational Ontology Correction: Entropy is a measure of potential configurations and their likelihood, not a cosmic assessment of neatness. Systems explore possibilities according to relational constraints, not preferences for order.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might picture physicists tidying the universe with feather dusters, galaxies complaining about messy neighbors, or black holes tossing stars into cosmic recycling bins. The humour makes clear the conceptual danger: the disorder metaphor anthropomorphises statistical mechanics, implying judgment and morality where only relational potentials operate.

Energy as Money

Metaphor: Energy is often described as a “currency” that can be “spent,” “saved,” or “wasted,” suggesting it behaves like money in an economy.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor imports human concepts of value, scarcity, and morality into physical processes. It encourages thinking that energy has intrinsic purpose or ethical significance, rather than being a relational potential actualised through interactions. Readers may imagine the universe managing a ledger, with credits and debts, rather than understanding energy as a property of particle alignments and systemic interactions.

Relational Ontology Correction: Energy is a measure of relational possibilities within a system. It is neither valuable nor spendable outside the context of actualised interactions. There is no “bank” of energy, and no agent deciding how it is allocated.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might picture the Sun issuing loans to Earth, black holes hiding tax havens, and electrons squabbling over who gets the last joule. The humour highlights the conceptual misstep: the money metaphor misleads by suggesting intention, value, and management where only relational potential actualisation occurs.

Heat as a Fluid

Metaphor: Heat is often described as “flowing” like water through pipes, rivers, or into objects, suggesting it is a substance that moves.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor encourages imagining heat as a tangible, directional substance that can be poured, trapped, or transported at will. It obscures the relational statistical mechanics that govern energy distribution, and may mislead learners into thinking that heat has agency, inertia, or “desire” to move. The mental picture of heat as a liquid can distort understanding of how particles actually exchange energy in a relational field.

Relational Ontology Correction: Heat is a manifestation of energy potentials actualised across relational interactions between particles. There is no fluid to pour, no river to dam. Energy redistribution is emergent from probabilistic alignments, not the motion of a substance with independent existence.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might imagine engineers installing pipes to divert heat from a coffee cup, or heat “spilling” across the kitchen floor in miniature rivers. Radiators would need dams and levees, and your stovetop would require flood insurance. The humour makes clear the conceptual danger: the fluid metaphor imposes agency and substance on purely relational energy exchanges.

Virtual Reality as Alternate Life

Metaphor: Virtual reality (VR) is often described as a “parallel world” where one can “exist” independently of the physical environment.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor encourages the assumption that VR creates a self-contained, autonomous reality, disconnected from bodily, social, and environmental contexts. It can mislead users into thinking immersion implies independence, agency, or alternative identity, rather than understanding VR as an extension of relational and embodied potentials.

Relational Ontology Correction: VR is a relational actualisation: sensory, cognitive, and social potentials are aligned through hardware, software, and human interaction. The experience is inseparable from the embodied and social context in which it occurs. There is no independent “world” existing outside relational alignment.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might imagine someone moving into a headset as if entering a separate apartment, holding meetings with digital avatars over breakfast, or arguing with a virtual cat about rent. The humour exposes the conceptual misstep: treating VR as an autonomous alternate life risks misrepresenting relational dependencies that structure all experience.

Algorithms as Decision-Makers

Metaphor: Algorithms are frequently described as “making decisions,” as if they possess judgment, discretion, or agency.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor encourages readers to attribute human-like reasoning to processes that are purely relational and procedural. It can mislead users, designers, and regulators into thinking algorithms have intentions, accountability, or moral understanding, obscuring their true nature as structured relational alignments of inputs, rules, and outputs.

Relational Ontology Correction: Algorithms are emergent relational patterns, optimising outputs according to defined objectives and constraints. No comprehension, deliberation, or intentionality is involved. “Decisions” are the outcomes of relational processes, not cognitive acts.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might imagine an algorithm pausing to weigh pros and cons, debating ethical dilemmas with its fellow routines, or signing a contract before approving a loan. The humour highlights the conceptual misstep: the decision-maker metaphor misleads by projecting agency and judgment onto purely relational, statistical processes.

Clouds as Storage Rooms

Metaphor: Digital storage is often described as “the Cloud,” suggesting a floating repository where data is safely kept above us.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor implies a tangible, centralised, almost magical location, misleading users about the distributed, relational nature of storage systems. It erases the complexity of servers, networks, protocols, and access patterns, and encourages naive assumptions about security, permanence, or accessibility.

Relational Ontology Correction: Cloud storage is a relational alignment of distributed hardware, software, and network potentials. Data exists only in the context of these interactions; there is no floating archive in the sky.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might imagine data drifting on fluffy cumulonimbus, servers in the clouds playing musical chairs, or your photos of cats gently raining down in the wrong order. The humour exposes the conceptual misstep: the cloud metaphor misleads by suggesting an isolated, tangible repository rather than a dynamic relational system.

Artificial Intelligence as Apprentices

Metaphor: AI systems are often described as “apprentices” learning from data, training, or guidance.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor suggests intentional learning, comprehension, and curiosity, implying that AI can absorb lessons like a human student. It obscures the statistical, algorithmic, and relational nature of machine learning: patterns emerge from optimisation over data, not from reasoning or understanding. Misreading AI as an apprentice risks overestimating its agency and ethical responsibility.

Relational Ontology Correction: AI is a relational system of aligned potentials, adjusting parameters to minimise error or maximise performance according to a defined objective function. There is no intention, awareness, or comprehension. “Learning” is the emergent effect of relational constraints, not cognitive growth.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might picture neural networks raising tiny hands in class, asking for hints on backpropagation, or an AI apprentice daydreaming about its future career. The humour highlights the conceptual misstep: the apprentice metaphor misleads by projecting human cognition onto relational, statistical processes.

Data as Blood / Lifeblood

Metaphor: Data is often described as the “blood” or “lifeblood” of modern systems, implying vitality, value, and central importance.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor imports biological connotations of life, health, and morality into neutral informational processes. It can mislead policymakers, managers, and the public into thinking that data carries intrinsic worth, agency, or ethical weight, rather than being relational potentials actualised within a system. It obscures the fact that data only gains significance in context, through interaction with processes, users, and interpretation.

Relational Ontology Correction: Data is a relational phenomenon: its meaning and effect arise from alignments of system states, user actions, and interpretive context. It is not alive, and it does not flow for a purpose beyond the relational constraints of its environment.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might picture spreadsheets pumping themselves through USB veins, hard drives clutching tiny hearts, or servers collapsing in dramatic fainting spells when a packet is lost. The humour exposes the conceptual danger: the blood metaphor anthropomorphises neutral phenomena, suggesting vitality and intention where only relational alignment exists.

The Internet as a Brain

Metaphor: The Internet is frequently described as a “giant neural network” that “learns” and “remembers,” implying a sort of collective intelligence.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor encourages readers to impute consciousness, intent, and understanding to a vast distributed network of servers, protocols, and users. It obscures the relational, emergent dynamics that actually govern network behaviour and can mislead about cause, control, or responsibility. Thinking of the Internet as “knowing” anything risks overestimating its agency and misunderstanding how information flows and patterns emerge.

Relational Ontology Correction: The Internet is a relational structure, an alignment of nodes, connections, and traffic potentials. Patterns of activity emerge from these interactions, not from any global mind. “Learning” is statistical adjustment in local nodes (e.g., servers or machine learning models), not comprehension. There is no collective thought watching over the network.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might imagine the Internet rubbing its metaphorical temples, deliberating about which memes to circulate, or a server pausing for existential reflection before routing an email. The humour makes the conceptual danger clear: the neural-brain metaphor misleads by suggesting intention and cognition where only relational alignment exists.

Computers as Thinking Brains

Metaphor: Computers are often described as “thinking” or “intelligent,” processing information like human minds.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor invites the anthropomorphising of machines, suggesting cognition, understanding, or intent where there is none. Readers may imagine computers reasoning, having insights, or forming intentions — obscuring the relational processes of hardware states, software protocols, and user interactions that actually drive computation. It risks confusing relational alignment of states with conscious thought, which can mislead both users and policymakers about capabilities and responsibility.

Relational Ontology Correction: Computation is the actualisation of relational potentials: electric currents, memory states, and algorithmic transitions. There is no comprehension, volition, or consciousness involved. A program “solving a problem” is not thinking; it is following relationally constrained transformations of data across its architecture.

Parody / Conceptual Highlight: Taken literally, one might picture a laptop pausing to reflect on its existential purpose, or a spreadsheet delivering a heartfelt soliloquy about its cells’ emotional states. The humour underscores the conceptual misstep: the metaphor of thinking machines misleads by projecting human mental processes onto purely relational, mechanical activity.