Expanding Science Through Metaphor

Expanding Science Through Metaphor PDF Author: Tracey Alexander Cho
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Parapsychology
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description

Expanding Science Through Metaphor

Expanding Science Through Metaphor PDF Author: Tracey Alexander Cho
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Parapsychology
Languages : en
Pages : 62

Get Book Here

Book Description


How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science

How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science PDF Author: Anke Beger
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902726144X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Metaphors are essential to scientists themselves and strongly influence science communication. Through careful analyses of metaphors actually used in science texts, recordings, and videos, this book explores the essential functions of conceptual metaphor in the conduct of science, teaching of science, and how scientific ideas are promoted and popularized. With an accessible introduction to theory and method this book prepares scientists, science teachers, and science writers to take advantage of recent shifts in metaphor theories and methods. Metaphor specialists will find theoretical issues explored in studies of bacteriology, cell reproduction, marine biology, physics, brain function and social psychology. We see the degree of conscious or intentional use of metaphor in shaping our conceptual systems and constraining inferences. Metaphor sources include social structure, embodied experience, abstract or mathematical formulations. The results are sometimes innovative hypotheses and robust conclusions; other times pedagogically useful, if inaccurate, stepping stones or, at worst, misleading fictions. As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.

Metaphor and Analogy in Science Education

Metaphor and Analogy in Science Education PDF Author: Peter J. Aubusson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402038305
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Years ago a primary teacher told me about a great series of lessons she had just had. The class had visited rock pools on the seashore, and when she asked them about their observations they talked about: it was like a factory, it was like a church, it was like a garden, it was like our kitchen at breakfast time, etc. Each student’s analogy could be elaborated, and these analogies provided her with strongly engaged students and a great platform from which to develop their learning about biological diversity and interdependence. In everyday life we learn so many things by comparing and contrasting. The use of analogies and metaphors is important in science itself and their use in teaching science seems a natural extension, but textbooks with their own sparse logic, do not help teachers or students. David Ausubel in the 1960s had advocated the use of ‘advance organisers’ to introduce the teaching of conceptual material in the sciences, and some of these had an analogical character. However, research on the value of this idea was cumbersome and indecisive, and it ceased after just a few studies. In the 1980s research into children’s conceptions of scientific phenomena and concepts really burgeoned, and it was soon followed by an exploration of a new set of pedagogical strategies that recognised a student in a science class is much more than a tabula rasa.

Motives for Metaphor in Scientific and Technical Communication

Motives for Metaphor in Scientific and Technical Communication PDF Author: Timothy Giles
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351842889
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Examination of the work of scientific icons-Newton, Descartes, and others-reveals the metaphors and analogies that directed their research and explain their discoveries. Today, scientists tend to balk at the idea of their writing as rhetorical, much less metaphorical. How did this schism over metaphor occur in the scientific community? To establish that scientists should use metaphors to explain science to the public and need to be conscious of how metaphor can be useful to their research, this book examines the controversy over cloning and the lack of a metaphor to explain it to a public fearful of science's power.The disjunction between metaphor and science is traced to the dispensation of the Solar System Analogy in favor of a mathematical model. Arguing that mathematics is metaphorical, the author supports the idea of all language as metaphorical-unlike many rhetoricians and philosophers of science who have proclaimed all language as metaphorical but have allowed a distinction between a metaphorical use of language and a literal use.For technical communication pedagogy, the implications of this study suggest foregrounding metaphor in textbooks and in the classroom. Though many technical communication textbooks recommend metaphor as a rhetorical strategy, some advise avoiding it, and those that recommend it usually do so in a paragraph or two, with little direction for students on how to recognize metaphors or to how use them. This book provides the impetus for a change in the pedagogical approach to metaphor as a rhetorical tool with epistemological significance.

The Third Lens

The Third Lens PDF Author: Andrew S. Reynolds
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022656343X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Does science aim at providing an account of the world that is literally true or objectively true? Understanding the difference requires paying close attention to metaphor and its role in science. In The Third Lens, Andrew S. Reynolds argues that metaphors, like microscopes and other instruments, are a vital tool in the construction of scientific knowledge and explanations of how the world works. More than just rhetorical devices for conveying difficult ideas, metaphors provide the conceptual means with which scientists interpret and intervene in the world. Reynolds here investigates the role of metaphors in the creation of scientific concepts, theories, and explanations, using cell theory as his primary case study. He explores the history of key metaphors that have informed the field and the experimental, philosophical, and social circumstances under which they have emerged, risen in popularity, and in some cases faded from view. How we think of cells—as chambers, organisms, or even machines—makes a difference to scientific practice. Consequently, an accurate picture of how scientific knowledge is made requires us to understand how the metaphors scientists use—and the social values that often surreptitiously accompany them—influence our understanding of the world, and, ultimately, of ourselves. The influence of metaphor isn’t limited to how we think about cells or proteins: in some cases they can even lead to real material change in the very nature of the thing in question, as scientists use technology to alter the reality to fit the metaphor. Drawing out the implications of science’s reliance upon metaphor, The Third Lens will be of interest to anyone working in the areas of history and philosophy of science, science studies, cell and molecular biology, science education and communication, and metaphor in general.

The Construction of Scientific Knowledge through Metaphor

The Construction of Scientific Knowledge through Metaphor PDF Author: Tomasz Fojt
Publisher: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika
ISBN: 8323123187
Category : Cognition
Languages : en
Pages : 6

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Book Description
That metaphor is used in science is hardly a contentious issue. Extensive literature on the topic testifies to the widespread employment of metaphor in scientific texts. According to the received view, however, metaphor is a periphrastic 'as-if' device which has no bearing on the deliberative content of scientific theories. Metaphorical reasoning is taken to be epiphenomenal, a corollary to which is that metaphorical meaning is, in principle, reducible to equivalent literal meaning (for discussion, see section 5.2.1). Consequently, metaphors are considered ancillary in science and tend to be ascribed a marginal role as heuristic or exegetical tools to be used for pedagogical purposes. Contrary to this restrictive view on the function of metaphor in science, this study seeks to present the role of metaphor as both more significant and versatile. The aim of the study is to establish the mechanism of conceptual metaphor as operative in the constitution of scientific theories. Implicit in the thesis is the claim that metaphors are not merely linguistic expressions, but they are (primarily) a matter of reasoning. Thus, a prerequisite to an investigation of the role of metaphor in scientific theory articulation is demonstrating that metaphor operates at the level of conceptualisation. Only then can it be legitimately posited as a conceptual instrument of abstract reason. To this end, a framework of cognition is introduced in section IV in which metaphor is characterised naturally as a protective cognitive device whereby the cognitive agent establishes meaningful relationships between concepts and segments of external reality.

Metaphor and Analogy in the Sciences

Metaphor and Analogy in the Sciences PDF Author: F. Hallyn
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792365600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This collection of papers contains historical case studies, systematic contributions of a general nature, and applications to specific sciences. The bibliographies of the contributions contain references to all central items from the traditions that are relevant today. While providing access to contemporary views on the issue, the papers illustrate the wide variety of functions of metaphors and analogies, as well as the many connections between the study of some of these functions and other subjects and disciplines.

Metaphors and Analogies in Sciences and Humanities

Metaphors and Analogies in Sciences and Humanities PDF Author: Shyam Wuppuluri
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030906884
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
In this highly-interdisciplinary volume, we systematically study the role of metaphors and analogies in (mis)shaping our understanding of the world. Metaphors and Analogies occupy a prominent place in scientific discourses, as they do in literature, humanities and at the very level of our thinking itself. But when misused they can lead us astray, blinding our understanding inexorably. How can metaphors aid us in our understanding of the world? What role do they play in our scientific discourses and in humanities? How do they help us understand and skillfully deal with our complex socio-political scenarios? Where is the dividing line between their use and abuse? Join us as we explore some of these questions in this volume.

Knowledge Representation and Metaphor

Knowledge Representation and Metaphor PDF Author: E. Cornell Way
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401579415
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information, and data processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychol ogy through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and computer science. While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental, and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. The problems posed by metaphor and analogy are among the most challenging that confront the field of knowledge representation. In this study, Eileen Way has drawn upon the combined resources of philosophy, psychology, and computer science in developing a systematic and illuminating theoretical framework for understanding metaphors and analogies. While her work provides solutions to difficult problems of knowledge representation, it goes much further by investigating some of the most important philosophical assumptions that prevail within artificial intelligence today. By exposing the limitations inherent in the assumption that languages are both literal and truth-functional, she has advanced our grasp of the nature of language itself. J.R.F.

Metaphor and Knowledge

Metaphor and Knowledge PDF Author: Ken Baake
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486745
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Metaphor and Knowledge offers a sweeping history of rhetoric and metaphor in science, delving into questions about how language constitutes knowledge. Weaving together insights from a group of scientists at the Santa Fe Institute as they shape the new interdisciplinary field of complexity science, Ken Baake shows the difficulty of writing science when word meanings are unsettled, and he analyzes the power of metaphor in science.