Metaphors in Science

Metaphors we live by: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press., 1980.
A Review

All of us speak in metaphors whether we realize it or not. In fact we live by metaphors, which have the ability to not only make our thoughts more vivid and interesting but also structure our perceptions and understanding. Metaphors set up the expectations that determine what life will be for us in the future.

The power of language and metaphor to shape perception, thought an action. The politically correct debate has to do with the metaphorical properties and connotations that arise with some of these terms: secretary, janitor, etc for those who control metaphor control thought and action.

Metaphors bridge spatial gaps, e.g. Love is a red rose. There is a Burkean sense of identification that says the attributes (physical, symbolic, aesthetic) that belong to a red rose are being transferred over to the sense of love. Other examples include time as a commodity, argument as war.

Rhetoric is the advocacy of realities


Metaphor and Theory Change, Richard Boyd
Metaphors are essential to meaning making in science as in every discipline. Boyd takes a linguistic structuralist approach that metaphor is apriori to the meanings that we attach to metaphor....something embedded in thinking and in nature....a phenomenon that is not a social construct but constitutive Metaphors lead out to empirical reality; the joints of the world, the causal principles in the world. Metaphors are essential as they provide epistemic access to the world.

Richard Boyd wants to apply Black's interaction view of metaphor to what he calls `theory-constitutive metaphors' within the realm of science. Black argues that when we use metaphors what we are really doing is applying a sort of filter that describes the process of theory construction in scientific practice.

357: the role of metaphor there exist an important class of metaphors that play a role in the articulation of theories by mature sciences...a catachresis . Metaphors lead science out to reality. They show scientists where the joints of the world are.
Think about technology: blue tooth, chip, facebook,

And their concomitant sets of associated commonplaces, we are able to disambiguate terms which may definitionaly have appeared co-extensive or co-occurring. Thus, metaphors aren't simply exterior to the `real' work of science; they aren't what get us on the road to science. Rather than simply setting us on the right path metaphor as heuristic they help us cut that path when our other, more definitional, tools are of no use due to their theory constitutive aspect.

Boyd notes that, "the use of theory-constitutive metaphors encourages the discovery of new features of the primary and secondary subjects, and new understanding of theoretically relevant respects of similarity, or analogy, between them" (489). Metaphors in scientific contexts do not lose their potency, becoming tired and trite. Rather, their value goes up the more they are used in science. "Theory constitutive metaphors...become, when they are successful, the property of the entire scientific community , and variations on them are explored by other scientific authors without their interactive quality being lost" (Boyd 487). So, Boyd argues, rather than simply providing a sort of one-time insight that becomes obvious after use scientific metaphors provide us with heuristics.

A metaphors as theory constitutive is a heuristic metaphor...
Boyd talks about what he thinks metaphors can do in relation to linguistic theory and reference fixing that they are nominal--agreed upon conceptually without a direct relationship to the object being depicted. Standard notion of science that definitions are nominal...Also, that you can affix a word to an object and have a basic conception of..reality, ostention. But Boyd is an empiricist, a logical positivist who says metaphor leads to reference fixing. Pg 366 reference are "fixing ostentially rather than by verbal definitions..." Metaphor makes definitions explicit due to linguistic usage caused by yet an undiscovered structure i.e. we name things before we know where they are; we use placeholders till we find the content...so metaphors leads to undiscovered causal patterns.
Boyd is an empiricist who believes in objectivity; hence metaphors too can lead to paradigms as they can be epistemic, constitute theory

Metaphors in Science, Thomas Kuhn

Kuhn disagrees with the fundamental notion (p.418) that language is fixed outside the paradigm. For Kuhn, you are always inside the paradigm; the metaphor is another paradigmatic view. about ontology, about the world's real joint...there is no historical evidence that metaphors lead outside the paradigm. The joints of the world are unknowable, he says. Boyd thinks science is located in the language.

Rhetorical Figures in Science, Jeanne Fahnestock

Rhetoric is science is invisible, then visible...ploche is random repetition, which is formulated and disguised and hard to pick up on in scientific writing. Creating an argumentative virtue. Ploche manifests itself in the works of Darwin, etc. Pg 162 Ploche enforces the stability of the reference--where the argumentative power lies. These figures can be visualized in scientific language (p166) which demonstrate consistency.

Differentiation between ploche and polyptoton, (168) derivational changes the way a word is derived from one form to another, depending on a consistent core meaning. Polyptoton serves in nomenclature as in chemistry, biology, etc, preparing the way for acceptable lines of research

Syle and the notion of presence; style gives concepts and ideas presence. This calls for repetition of terms, parallel structure; to disassociate, you create different terminologies. Antithesis brings in opposition in the content, if that should be your purpose. aesthetics makes reality visibile? Style can invoke the unseen
Rhetorical figures epitomize argument? style contains the argument repetition epitomizes the argument...
Parellisms communicate equality; I came, I saw, I conquered...all the acts are carry the same weight, to say nothing of the rhythm. We vaue Platonic ideals but teach Isocratic concepts where language is consquential.

Asyndeton can communicate hysteria...people use figures serendipitously when they are upset.
Alliteration