Knowl. Org. 40(2013)No.6 C. Marras. Structuring Multidisciplinary Knowledge: Aquatic and Terrestrial Metaphors 392 Structuring Multidisciplinary Knowledge: Aquatic and Terrestrial Metaphors Cristina Marras National Resarch Council, ILIESI, Villa Mirafiori - Via Carlo Fea 2, 00161 Rome (Italy), <cristina.marras@iliesi.cnr.it> Cristina Marras (Ph.D. in Philosophy, Tel Aviv University) is a researcher at the Italian National Research Council and teaches semiotics at the Department of Philosophy at Sapienza University in Rome. She is a specialist on early modern philosophy and, in particular, on Leibniz studies. She also specializes in the study of scientific and philosophical controversies and in digital humanities (Semantic Web, scientific communities on the Web, open peer review, and research assessment). She has wide experience in managing international interdisciplinary research projects and she is author of several contributions in volumes and journals and of the book Metaphora translata voce. Marras, Cristina. Structuring Multidisciplinary Knowledge: Aquatic and Terrestrial Metaphors. Knowledge Organization. 40(6), 392-399. 31 references. ABSTRACT: In my paper, I will discuss which metaphors appear to be an appropriate conceptual model capable of interpreting and cap- turing the implicit theoretical and methodological pluralism of knowledge organization. I will propose the use of “aquatic metaphors” for structuring and representing the “new” scenario of knowledge as “open landscape.” To this end, I will compare the “aquatic” metaphori- cal model to the more traditional “terrestrial” one. I will trace back the use of these two metaphorical domains for knowledge organiza- tion to the XVII century. A diachronical view will allow us to see how the complexity of the different historical scenarios always requires categories more adequate and capable of describing and interpreting (and organizing) a multilayered knowledge. Multiple approaches and tools for transferring and organizing, as well for distributing and sharing knowledge, are therefore needed. The paper aims at showing how, referring to aquatic metaphors as a model for knowledge organization, we can open the possibility of access to “transversal” points of view, and, in addition to the authoritative knowledge, how they facilitate the creation of entirely new types of interconnections that generates a multi-hierarchical and multidisciplinary knowledge structure. Received and accepted 1 September 2013 1.0 Introduction: Knowledge and metaphors They [the Stoics] compare philosophy to a living be- ing, likening logic to bones and sinews, ethics to fleshier parts, and physics to the soul. They make a further comparison to an egg: Logic is the outside, ethics what comes next, and physics the innermost parts; or, to a fertile field: the surrounding wall cor- responds to logic, its fruits to ethics, and its land or trees to physics; or to a city which is well fortified and governed according to reason. (Diogenes Laer- tius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers VII, 1, 40, translated by Long and Sedley 1987, 158) The quotation from Diogenes Laertius is just an example of how knowledge and, in particular, different fields of knowledge (philosophy, ethics, logic, and physics) can be organized in different metaphorical domains (body, food, land, tree, and city) and how deeply these domains are, in fact, embedded in our cultural traditions and conceptual schemas. Metaphors are related to different historical and theoretical approaches and to theories about organizing knowledge, which are related to different views of knowl- edge, cognition, language, and social organization. A metaphor, given its cognitive and creative resonance, is much more than an episodic linguistic phenomenon. Looking at the use of language, we can see that it requires taking into account a set of contexts wherein the use of a metaphor belongs. In a sense, one might say that, however rich, the lexical resources of a language are insufficient for satisfying the totality of its speakers’ expressive needs. The use of semantic means, such as the proliferation of lex- emes or their polysemic use barely increases the language’s ability to satisfy these needs. Metaphors and other figures of speech become, in this respect, indispensable means to advance in this direction without touching the semantic