In Gerhart and Russell's view, the metaphorical act is a purely cognitive event, characterized by its epistemological function of discovering new meaning. It does so by forcing together formerly incompatible fields of meaning, and by "distorting" them, paves the way for analogies to be discovered between them. Consequently, the metaphorical act has more traits in common with paradox than with analogy. Each cognitive metaphor needs a number of "materializations" in order to approximately grasp its content. It is made communicable through artistic means, and also through linguistic means, such as natural language, religious metaphor, models in science, formalized language, and scientific formulae. Another consequence is that only a limited number of cognitive events deserve the label "metaphorical". (From review by Dirven; Bernard, 1991)