Interesting article. I think (to take it perhaps too seriously) the butterfly used in designs of cushions, earrings, etc. is more a cultural icon than it is an attempt at accurate biological description — it's something analogous to ♡ vs. a realistic depiction of an actual heart.
For whatever reason, we've come to think of butterflies as looking the way they do in insect collections, and I don't think even knowledge of what the dead and alive specimens look like would make me want to draw it any other way. A 'dead' one just looks more butterflyish!
I also have a feeling that it has something to do with the (more cultural than biological) distinction between moths and butterflies. For some reason, the latter are considered examples of exquisite beauty and the former usually an ugly (even fear-inducing) nuisance. Drawing butterflies in the classic 'butterfly' shape is a way to make this difference clearer — even if it's entirely inaccurate.
That should be the right take, if it had no other connotations.
For instance heart becoming ♡ is fine I think because we otherwise don't deal with raw hearts and they're only part of whole.
It would be another issue if used the equivalent of the zombie emoji for "human" or a steak image for "cow"
I guess it comes down to how much we care about butterflies, how often we see them, and how much we don't want them dead. I can see why people looking more at butterflies in their daily lives could be bothered, and also how that's probably a lost cause as 10x more people massively never leave cities.
"I guess it comes down to how much we care about butterflies, how often we see them, and how much we don't want them dead."
For me it comes down to how much we care about reality, vs. catering to our fantasy conception of what reality is.
Fantasy in general is awesome - if you are aware that is is fantasy. But too many people mixed both concepts and this is bothering me, not particular butterflies.
I think nobody thinks, a real heart looks like ♡. But people do think, butterflies look in real life, like when they are dead. It is a quite trivial thing here, but the same happens with much more important things as well.
It’s not fantasy, it’s an abstract idea represented by that visual symbol. The ♡ symbol, for example, pictorially represents a naive understanding of a heart, but the connotation of love— itself not accurate— is the real message. We don’t say someone had a “♡ attack” merely because we’re don’t think the symbol is accurate enough, it doesn’t jibe with the real meaning of that symbol. We also don’t assume MacBook Pros are fruit storage containers. Those symbols are *everywhere * in our lives.
Check out triadic semiotics.
But the ♡ and the apple in Apple are clearly abstracted. Those butterflies in the article look real. That makes the difference to me, because it brings a wrong conception of reality.
"triadic semiotics"
But I learned a new concept, so thanks for that.
I agree with your point, and think it's also a complicated approach. The best way to put it could be that people having more knowledge of the world is better.
For context, some people probably don't really have an image of how a heart is shaped. There was half of a joke about city kids who thought cows were purple because of the chocolate brand [0], and they probably never saw a cow in actual life nor really registered the colors in the books. And IMHO the best solution would be for them to see cows, and the pigs, and so many more animals everywhere.
I kinda see the butterfly in the same way. The common icon being dead isn't great, but if we look at it as a symptom of a greater issue (I think we agree on this point) getting people to care more about butterflies in general would also solve the icon problem -- I'd actually want to see butterflies in the middle of cities. There would need so many things to change, but it would be for the better. Otherwise it becomes an endless battle as new icons are created everyday.
[0] https://chocolatemarketaudit.wordpress.com/2018/10/26/the-st...
PS; this also reminds me of the wheelchair icon and the fight to have it rolling instead of static. And I was moved by the pitch for this idea, while also thinking "there's so few people in contact with wheelchair people in everyday life, will that message ever get a wide enough audience ?"
I think a better analogy is Vetruvian Man [1]. In fact, I think it's a pretty good analogy because it shows a human splayed out in almost exactly the same unnatural way that canonical dead butterflies are. Personally, I don't find either one particularly disturbing. Each serves a purpose IMHO.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man
I don't think this is a great analogy. The popular "heart" is rather abstract and does not directly depict anything biological. The popular "butterfly" is very concrete and precisely depicts something biological, namely a dead butterfly.
Taking the article, again, perhaps too seriously: Just because a symbol has gained cultural currency doesn't mean we need to accept it as is. We can change. We can fight our immediate symbol associations. Personally I think we should.
My understanding is it depicts the leaves of the plant Silphium, which in the ancient world was used as birth control.
Ha, I forgot about that. Perhaps I overreached. IIRC that's rather speculative, though, still a bit abstract, and certainly not close to what we use it to represent today, so I don't think it helps the original analogy.
Just gotta think lower down
Interesting take. The “over round crescent moon” has also come to be a symbol for the moon that isn’t representative of how the moon actually looks.
The crescent moon is often depicted with the dark part transparent too, e.g. with stars in that space.
Every depiction which does that is secretly set in the future and those are moon-bases :grin: