Metaphor in science

Abstract

If I had been preparing the main paper on the role of metaphor in science, my point of departure would have been precisely the works chosen by Boyd: Max Black's well-known paper on metaphor (Black, 1962b), together with recent essays by Kripke and Putnam on the causal theory of reference (Kripke, 1972; Putnam, 1975a, 1975b). My reasons for those choices would, furthermore, have been very nearly the same as his, for we share numerous concerns and convictions. But, as I moved away from the starting point that body of literature provides, I would quite early have turned in a direction different from Boyd's, following a path that would have brought me quickly to a central metaphorlike process in science, one which he passes by. That path I shall have to sketch, if sense is to be made of my reactions to Boyd's proposals, and my remarks will therefore take the form of an excessively condensed epitome of parts of a position of my own, comments on Boyd's paper emerging along the way. That format seems all the more essential inasmuch as detailed analysis of individual points presented by Boyd is not likely to make sense to an audience largely ignorant of the causal theory of reference. Boyd begins by accepting Black's “interaction” view of metaphor. However metaphor functions, it neither presupposes nor supplies a list of the respects in which the subjects juxtaposed by metaphor are similar.