Scientific Metaphors Research Articles

Scientific Metaphor and its Noetic Ambivalence

Scientific Metaphor and its Noetic Ambivalence

Dead reckoning: charting a new (metaphorical) course for accounting

PurposeMetaphor is the foundation upon which all scientific disciplines, from basic to applied, construct the mental models used in theory development and organizing research phenomena. The authors posit that a navigational science metaphor might provide a useful framework, or at least an additional “waypoint,” with which to evaluate extant accounting theory and further discourse in accounting research and practice. This study aims to critically examine the base metaphors of accounting theory and practice through the lens of navigational science.Design/methodology/approachThe supreme dominance of the Positive Accounting Theory paradigm (Watts and Zimmerman, 1986) is critically evaluated using a navigational metaphor as a literary device for cognitive estrangement.FindingsThe authors suggest that accounting, as both a practical and academic field, might benefit from the multifarious approach of navigational science in the computation of longitude, particularly with regards to the use of external (societal) referents, moving toward a more “heteroglossic” model of accounting (vid. Macintosh and Baker, 2002) as a means of “situating” accounting research and practice with regards to said external referents (cf. Bayou et al., 2011).Originality/valueThis work brings together existing streams of literary theory and epistemology in accounting, and views them through the lens of a navigational science metaphor. Cognitive estrangement, a well-established device for reorganizing perplexing problems in any science, is used to reimagine an accounting science as navigational situating.

The Self-ish Gene: Retroactive Tropes in Richard Dawkins’s Evolutionary Logic

ABSTRACT Building on recent developments in Lacanian rhetorical criticism, this essay demonstrates how contemporary evolutionary theory posits genetic determinism without a clear definition of the gene. It makes this case through close readings of Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, the landmark text of neo-Darwinian genetics. It demonstrates how Dawkins uses metaphors to substitute a single determinate agent in place of the genome’s essential complexity. Despite Dawkins’s admission that he could not define the gene, his metaphors give his “self-ish gene” a sense of unity and coherence that allows him to describe all other levels of life (organisms, species, ecosystems) as reducible to it. Dawkins’s use of metaphor leverages a broader reductionist logos, one that operates in discourses far beyond the biological. Methodologically, the essay advances the study of scientific metaphor by focusing on the formal properties of metaphor and the ways they afford logical closure.

Beyond Local Domains: Connective Ontology in (Post-)Cognitive Sociology

Ontology in cognitive science has long been dominated by cognitivism, developing computer science metaphors to position cognition as intrinsic mind-brain information-processing. Contemporary cognitivism hypothesises localised domain-specificity, disaggregating cognition into discrete subtypes, each of which exists in a dedicated brain region. Latterly, peripheral cognitive science scholarships have contested these ideas, cultivating post-cognitivist dispositions with radical ontologies, relocating cognition in active socio-material ecologies. Nonetheless, much cognitive sociology retains cognitivist ontology, treating sociological phenomena as extrinsic constraints that influence the mind-brain’s foundational cognition. I argue that cognitive sociology could fruitfully engage with post-cognitivist science. As an example, I use connective ontology, from the sociology of personal life, to conceptualise cognition as dynamically emergent and vitally animated ecological connective energies. Doing so, I show that post-cognitivism offers routes towards genuine social ontologies of cognition as a sociological matter, moving beyond cognitivism.

Collins’s Heart: Childlike Sympathy and Coincidence in late-Victorian Literature and Science Debates

ABSTRACT: Wilkie Collins’s Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time (1882– 1883) channels the controversy that surrounded debates on vivisection and animal rights at the Victorian fin de siècle . Initial reviewers homed in on Collins’s oversimplified arguments against vivisection, which villainized experimental science and scientists; modern critics emphasize the negative associations casting women of science as absurd practitioners and hysterical patients. This analysis explores how Heart and Science encourages sympathetic dialogue between the arts and science; communicates anxiety in depictions of vivisection and women; and draws meaning and hope from narratives driven by music and children. Through metaphors of acoustic science and plots shaped by border-crossing children, the novel stresses listening as a necessary and healing component in discourses of difference.

Collins’s Heart: Childlike Sympathy and Coincidence in late-Victorian Literature and Science Debates

ABSTRACT: Wilkie Collins’s Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time (1882– 1883) channels the controversy that surrounded debates on vivisection and animal rights at the Victorian fin de siècle . Initial reviewers homed in on Collins’s oversimplified arguments against vivisection, which villainized experimental science and scientists; modern critics emphasize the negative associations casting women of science as absurd practitioners and hysterical patients. This analysis explores how Heart and Science encourages sympathetic dialogue between the arts and science; communicates anxiety in depictions of vivisection and women; and draws meaning and hope from narratives driven by music and children. Through metaphors of acoustic science and plots shaped by border-crossing children, the novel stresses listening as a necessary and healing component in discourses of difference.

Approaches to Metaphor: Cognitive-linguistic and Philosophical Perspectives

Metaphor has been a significant topic of discussion in several academic fields besides being extensively used in daily life. This article explores the interdisciplinary study of metaphor, a complex and connotative concept that has been the primary concern across various disciplines, including linguistics, philosophy, literature, and other humanities. The article presents multiperspective theories and metaphor analysis from the said disciplines to provide a more holistic understanding of metaphor. This includes analyzing metaphors in analytic philosophy and cognitive science, primarily focusing on the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, complemented by analysis of the relevance theory, the blending theory, etc. While there are criticisms of CMT, it remains an influential theory in studying metaphor. The article also discusses the relevance theory, which suggests that using metaphors in speech can help achieve optimal relevancy, and the blending theory, which proposes that metaphors involve mapping elements from one mental space onto another to create a blended mental space that combines elements of both. This paper also addresses continental philosophers' usage or account of metaphor, from Kant to Derrida, in establishing their arguments. The essay then discusses and integrates ideas in metaphor studies from the perspectives of semantics and pragmatics. Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of bridging the gap between abstract conceptualizations and concrete linguistic expressions to gain a holistic understanding of metaphor.

A medical language for climate discourse

Innovative communication theories propose that we understand messages not by decoding their meaning but by inferring what speakers intend to express. However scientifically accurate the messages climate scientists have put forward, the appropriate inferences may not have been drawn by most of their audiences. One of the main reasons may be that scientific metaphors allow for multiple interpretations, yet, because of their expressive power, they impact discourses disproportionately. Climate communication took a path of euphemistic scientific expressions partially due to the noble scientific norms of self-restraint and modesty, but the hidden implications of climate jargon distort the way non-experts think about the heating climate. Consequently, the current climate jargon hinders informed decisions about Earth’s life support systems. Changing the softened expressions of climate language, from the cool of basic research to the heat and compassion of medical contexts, may allow for more productive public and political debates – which may lead to more powerful policy solutions. Speaking and thinking in medical terms could turn the perception of worst case scenarios from hypotheticals or doomism to life-saving interventions. We typically start reducing fever before it gets out of control, let alone crosses a threshold of potential death. Instead of putting on a positivist mascara, a calm and serious discussion of safety measures in medical terms, for example, talking about climatic tipping cascades as metastases, could foster a more honest evaluation of the required legal and regulatory steps to keep our home planet habitable.

TO THE QUESTION ON THE SUBJECT AND CONTENT OF INSTITUTIONAL EPISTEMOLOGY

The paper is devoted to the problem of institutional epistemology as a new interdisciplinary direction in contemporary science. The concept “institutional epistemology” should be connected with the concept “social epistemology”, but it is necessary to remind social epistemology is theory of knowledge of social reality, where in focus of research are society and social interaction. A term “institutional epistemology” is a scientific metaphor, — while, for instance, a term “social epistemology” used in its directed significance. It is not realized parallels between concepts “institutional epistemology” and “institutional ontology”, because they used in different contexts. Institutional epistemology is research of formal and informal aspects of production of social knowledge; a study of a social; epistemologist as a “cognitive manager of knowledge” in contemporary society; research of different ways of constituting social-epistemological knowledge through social institutions elaborating this knowledge

Metaphorical model of semantization of ideas of law

Law as a special kind of ideal being, generates its own system of ideas and meanings, the verbal representation of which involves not only directly nominative linguistic units, but also semantic tropes, namely, metaphor. Metaphor is a little-studied linguistic phenomenon in legal science, whose functioning in the language of law is denied by many researchers. However, metaphor is an integral component of the nature of law, realized in its various sources. Stemmed from the deep structures of language, metaphor allows appealing to a priori ideas of law of metaphysical level, not subject to rational argumentation, which becomes an integral part of the legal system, making the legal text understandable and accessible to the recipient. The relevance of the chosen topic is conditioned by the necessity to study the metaphorical meanings of legal language at the stage of creating law and interpreting legal realities. For this end the author uses the methods of semantic analysis, and, in general, raises interest in metaphor and metaphorical model in modern science, as well as functioning of metaphor in the legal space. The novelty of the idea underlying the paper lies in applying metaphorical models for legal texts interpretation. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to prove that metaphorical mechanisms are not alien to the language of law; metaphorical model is one of the most productive in the process of semantization of ideas of law. In the light of the above, application of linguistic tools, primarily, the methods of semantic analysis, to the study of legal language and the language of law, in particular, is relevant. Modern methodological tools of linguistics are able to supplement the traditional methods of legal argumentation and interpretation, actualizing their form and content. The main methods of the research are the linguistic-legal method, logical-linguistic method, methods of historical, contextual and motivational analysis. Frequency and universality of the mechanism of metaphorical modelling for the language of law, actualize new functions of metaphor.

Objective embodiment of logic: from computational machines to life and intelligence?

The subject of article is a critical analysis of the objectification of logic and, in particular, the idea of its embodiment in the living. The question of the essence and boundaries of the concept of bio-logic is raised and considered. The problem of logics's embodiment raises from its fuzzy ontological status. The novelty of the study lies in that it shows that the solution of the question of bio-logic directly depends on the question of the essence of logics as such, the views on which has gone through strong transformations during its history. Idea of logic's objectivization has became possible due to not only conceptual philosophical constructions, but also the computational revolution, which made practical implementation of logical principles in the functioning of computing machines possible. Concept of logic has subtly expanded and transformed into the idea of orderliness and algorithmicity. It is shown that such an expansive interpretation of the logical is not applicable to biosystems, because they are living totalities, where everything is reciprocal and continuously interconnected. Even such computationally similar systems as the genome and the brain turn out to be autopoietic entities that nonlinearly create themselves without following formal rules. Paradoxically, the intelligence, which was considered the cradle of logic, also turns out to be flexible and adaptive, because it is also rooted in biology. The vital fundament of living intelligence prevents its artificial modelling through logico-computational and algorithmic phenomena. Main conclusion is that question of bio-logic depends on the optics of considering logic as such, and is also associated with bio-ontology, an understanding of the essence of life. Our analysis shows that there are not sufficient grounds to recognize the existence of a special biological logic immanent to living things, which, however, has potential as a philosophical and scientific metaphor.

An Interdisciplinary interpretation of literature through the lens of Quantum Theory

This paper explores the interdisciplinary intersection between Quantum Theory and literary analysis, particularly focusing on William Shakespeare’s "Hamlet." By examining the character of Hamlet through the principles of quantum mechanics, specifically Schrödinger's wave function and the concept of superposition, we aim to demonstrate how scientific metaphors can provide novel insights into literary texts. This approach not only deepens our understanding of characters and narratives but also bridges the gap between the sciences and the humanities, highlighting their interconnectedness and mutual relevance. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of this interdisciplinary methodology, its limitations, and future directions for research. By employing quantum theory and the Schrödinger equation as metaphors, we gain deeper insights into the intricate layers of Hamlet’s character and the overarching themes of the play. This interdisciplinary approach enriches our understanding of Shakespeare’s work, highlighting the profound connections between the uncertainties and probabilities in quantum mechanics and the existential dilemmas faced by Hamlet. This perspective not only offers a unique lens for literary analysis but also demonstrates the potential for cross-disciplinary interpretations to enhance our appreciation of classic literature.

METAPHORICAL WAY OF FORMING APPLIED GEOMETRY TERMS IN THE MODERN KAZAKH LANGUAGE

The present article is devoted to the presentation of the results of the study of one of the possible ways of appearance of terms in the field of applied geometry, namely metaphorization in the terminology of the Kazakh language. Despite the fact that there are enough works on metaphor, but there are no works on the study of metaphorical nomination in the terminology of applied geometry in the Kazakh language. This determines the novelty of this work. The purpose of this research is to study productive metaphorical models used in the formation of terms of applied geometry in the Kazakh language. For this purpose, the essence of metaphor and metaphorical transfer is considered, the ways of formation of terms of applied geometry by metaphorization are analyzed. The analysis of the sphere- the source of metaphorical transfer and the definition of the functions of geometric metaphor is carried out. The study presents the types of metaphor formation, as well as a detailed analysis of their models. The definitions of the studied terms of applied geometry are considered in the article, and the lexical meanings of the source words and their semantic components involved in the transfer of meaning are highlighted. The most common types of metaphors are identified. It has been revealed that anthropomorphic metaphorization is one of the most effective ways of forming terms of applied geometry in Kazakh terminology.

Hot Wind, Cold Sun: Kuhn, Vygotsky, Halliday and Metaphors in Science and Science Education.

How and why do crises happen in the history of science? What can they tell us about how crises happen in child psychological development and child behavior? And-as a bonus question-can crises in child development tell us anything about crises in science history? We compare and contrast two superficially similar answers. Then we look at three models for the formation of general, abstract concepts in children developed in integrative psychological and behavioral science by the Soviet pioneer L.S. Vygotsky. Using later, but similarly integrative, linguistic work by M.A.K. Halliday on generality, abstraction and metaphor in child language, we consider a real test case. An outstanding anomaly in solar physics is that the solar wind is actually far hotter than the surface of the sun itself, and a recent paper argues that the energy comes from the damping of waves in the plasma. We analyze the language of a ten-year-old Chinese boy trying to make sense of this phenomenon, and we find that lexicogrammatical metaphors play a very important role in posing the problem to the child, but a process of limiting and deflating metaphors is key to his understanding. This process of limitation and deflation, which corresponds to a crisis, shows us that the analogy between concept development in children in science and the same process in children is no mere metaphor.

Further Chaos and Dysfunction in the Brickyard and the Systems That Support It

In 1963, Bernard Forscher wrote and published a commentary manuscript that detailed concern over the status of the pursuit of science. The manuscript was written based on a cynical metaphor of science viewed as building construction. This manuscript describes the impact that Forscher made on the education of the author during his early training, followed by a continuation of Forscher’s metaphor from 1963 to current time. As will be revealed, concerns over the ‘health’ status of science have increased since 1963. There is clear evidence that the chaos and dysfunction have escalated within the brickyard (institutions where science is pursued) and spread to the multiple layers of systems that support it.

Water Safety and Water Governance: A Scientometric Review

Water safety and water governance are critical concerns, as water is a vital and finite resource that is essential for ecological processes, human survival, and economic and social development, requiring collaborative and coordinated work of all related actors. The subject literature is scattered and fragmented, making it difficult to identify the key contributions and understand the current state of research; however, these considerations are an increasing preoccupation. To address this issue, a scientometric analysis was conducted in this work to identify the main contributions in the field. The methodology of the research was divided into two sections: the first section presents a scientometric mapping, including an analysis of scientific production by country, journal, and author. The second section identified the main theoretical contributions through the use of the Tree of Science metaphor. The main subfields identified include social governance structures and capacities, drinking water management, and socio-hydrogeology and collaborative governance. This research provides valuable insights for decision makers to develop and promote effective strategies to improve water safety and participatory efforts.

Conceptional Transfer and Early Russian Modernity (Reflection on: Laboratory of Concepts: Translation and Languages of Politics in Russia in the 18th Century. Ed. by S.V. Pol’skoy and V.S. Rzheutskiy. Moscow: NLO publ., 2022)

The authors of the book investigate the practices of translation in the context of socio-cultural transformations in the early years of the Russian Empire. Europe and Russia in the Age of Enlightenment were radically different semiotic systems, so the interpreters of western philosophy and political literature sparked a sort of “cultural revolution” in terms of the transfer of ideas and concepts, the genesis of a new public language. Early Russian interpreters introduced the world of western thought and the languages of politics and social thinking to the elites and to the emerging civil society. And as such the corpus of Russian interpretations is a more eloquent reflection of intellectual evolution than the original writings of Russian thinkers of that time. And given the fact that in those times translations would always involve the inception of new lexical and semantic elements, the “laboratory of concepts” scientific metaphor used in the book to denote the intellectual origination of Russian modernity is absolutely justified.

Metaphors in psychoanalytic theory – Do we need them?

The author questions Wallerstein’s conviction that psychoanalytic concepts are “scientific metaphors.” If one were to adopt his view, psychoanalysis would fall into line with Lakoff and Johnson′s thesis that the conceptual system of our thoughts and actions is basically metaphorically structured. The author rejects both their views by demonstrating how the system inherent in our conceptual structure works, and disproving Lakoff and Johnson’s thesis as an assertion. In his view, if psychoanalytic concepts are understood as metaphors without defining their target domains, they lose their cognitive function and allow general metaphors to be understood in a whole variety of ways. The author suspects that this metaphorization of psychoanalytic concepts serves to suggest that psychoanalysis has a unified theory which would guarantee the community’s scientific unity, despite the theoretical and therapeutic pluralism that currently prevails.

International Collaboration in Latin American Psychology Through the Analysis of Co-authorship Networks

More than half of a century has passed since a paradigmatic change in the scientific endeavour took place: from science that advanced through the discursive interchange of geographically dispersed research findings and reflections, to highly interconnected and collaborative efforts that transcend borders (Wagner & Leydesdorff, 2005, Research Policy, 34:1608–1618). These new “invisible colleges” have been recognized since the end of the twentieth century as the network structures that emerge from co-authorships in scientific publications. These network structures that also inspire further production of knowledge, diffusion of concepts, methodologies and theories, circulation of scientific metaphors, and, above all, knowledge transfer, transformation, and appropriation. The expected impact of scientific collaboration on the consolidation of national capabilities for producing and absorbing scientific knowledge has resulted in the implementation of diverse instruments that aim at encouraging collaboration, particularly among peers from different countries. Psychology has also seen this increased international collaboration, and to evaluate its impact, we used bibliometric techniques on Latin American articles published between 2016 and 2020 in journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) under the subject categories related to psychology, to explore the characteristics and conditions of scientific collaboration in this corpus.

Mapping, evolution, and application trends in co-citation analysis: a scientometric approach

This study aims to explore the mapping, evolution, and application trends of co-citation analysis. To accomplish this goal, a comprehensive search was conducted using Scopus and Web of Science, resulting in 1298 relevant studies. Further analysis was conducted on scientific production, country, author, journal, and network data. The Tree of Science algorithm was applied to demonstrate the development of co-citation analysis. The results make three significant contributions to scientometric research: Firstly, a scientific mapping is presented highlighting the scientific output, main journals, and key researchers; secondly, the advancements of co-citation analysis are presented through the Tree of Science metaphor; lastly, the study identifies the three main subtopics within co-citation analysis through citation analysis. These findings will assist researchers and librarians in recognizing the crucial contributions and applications of co-citation analysis.