The Myth of Metaphor

Colin Murray Turbayne (7 February 1916 – 16 May 2006) was an Australian philosopher, who spent most of his academic career at the University of Rochester, where he first had a position in 1957 and became professor emeritus in 1981. His doctorate was from the University of Pennsylvania. During World War II he had worked for Australian Intelligence, in the Pacific War theatre.


He was an authority on George Berkeley and was the first commentator to recognize the central importance of metaphor in the philosophy of Berkeley. He is best known for his book The Myth of Metaphor, published in 1962. In this book, Professor Turbayne argued that metaphor would necessarily occur in any language that could ever claim to embody richness and depth of understanding. In the early 1990s Colin M. Turbayne and his wife established an International Berkeley Essay Prize competition in cooperation with the Philosophy Department at the University of Rochester.