Microcosm, Macrocosm and the Nuaulu house: Concerning the reductionist fallacy as applied to metaphorical levels

Houses are not only good for living in, but also (to paraphrase and punish a well-worn Lvi-Straussian clich) for thinking in. Because so many of our social interactions take place in houses, they constitute culturally significant space of the highest order; but more than this, they have been seen to produce a folk model of wider cosmological implications. Not only is the house as a whole treated as a microcosm, but parts of the house are employed figuratively in proverbs, as metaphors and euphemisms. [...]the mitanunwe ai ukuna (lit. 'the hole in the wood of the door') is the gouged recess in the threshold into which carved flanges on a door fit to form a hinge; however, it is used coyly to refer to the vulva. [...]I have the evidence of what people have told me in response to prompts which at times may well have had the virtual certainty of eliciting particular responses, but which in plural and taken in conjunction with quite unsolicitd commentaries and interjections, growing scepticism and ability to formulate techniques of questioning which did not ensure particular answers, provides a formidable and reliable foundation. [...]spheres are more difficult for the human mind to deal with, without concrete experience of these ideal geometrie forms. [...]the village and wider geographical space works from a basic horizontal two-dimensional plane: we construct space in terms of concentric rings.