Though Drake Bennet’s piece feels a little shallow — like he’s pointing to this really interesting thing and rather than explain it is merely puzzling at it beside you — he does a good job gathering a number of recent studies demonstrating the link between metaphorical and real concepts. You’ve probably heard at least one of these studies — people holding warm things think the people around them are nicer, people using a heavier clipboard think more seriously about the survey they’re filling out — but the idea that these results are not one-off flukes but the foundation of abstraction is eye-opening.

It’s also worth noting the sidebar to that article, which addresses the inverse possibility: that we subconsciously physicalize the metaphors we know.