Meaning, interiority, and poetics within the body

Spirituality & Health magazine shares Thomas Moore's column "Angels and the Brain" from the July-August 2016 issue. Moore laments the mechanistic metaphors we use to describe the human body: "The trouble with our contemporary metaphors is that we talk about ourselves as though we were machines or objects. Our metaphors betray the extent to which our very idea of ourselves has been affected by the influence of modern science, technology, and psychology."

After quoting the artist Edward Burne-Jones, "The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint. Their wings are my protest in favor of the immortality of the soul," Moore concludes, "I’m going to follow Burne-Jones: every time I hear a mechanical metaphor, I’m going to speak the language of angels."