MCDONALD’S AND PARABOLAS

This is a supplement to my previous blog on the McDonald’s ubiquitous M sign. Depending on how your brain thinks, this sign is simply or complicatedly just two parabolas stuck together side by side. Geometrically parabola is a conic section formed by the intersection of a cone by a plane parallel to its side.

Origin of the word “parabola” is from Greek meaning “placing side by side/ throwing by the side”. It has been attributed to Aristotle to bring the mathematical words hyperbole, ellipse and parabola in rhetoric:”hyperbolic" speech is the kind that goes beyond the facts, "elliptic speech" falls short of them, while a "parable" is a story that fits the facts.

A parable or a parabola is telling an imaginary story which parallels or indicates to a different reality or fact of life. Parables are usually associated with teachings of great religious leaders and thinkers.

But actually the ability to construct a story or narrative and to project them on new contexts (in essence a parable) is one of the earliest tools the human child acquires. We all start telling stories to babies very early. In these stories not only the animals talk but even the inanimate objects like rocks and chairs express their feelings. The child quickly learns to construct its own stories about all the objects around it. In different settings these stories take up different meanings. This ability of human mind to construct parables is at the root of development of thought process and language.

Mark Turner in his book “The literary mind” argues very lucidly that storytelling or making of narratives is not just a special performance by some but is a constant mental activity, essential to human thought and reasoning without which everyday life will not be possible.

If you come to think of it, thinking really is constructing a story from your past experience and applying it to a situation about which you are thinking. Without the parable or parabola human consciousness as we know it, is just not possible.

Next time when you see the double parabolas of McDonald’s, pay a little homage to its contribution to our existence! But remember the parable of the monkey who could not resist eating pebbles that looked like ripe fruits.