microbes need quality sleep

An example of anthropomorphism and extended metaphor in public science disocurse:

"Microbes, like us, need a good night's sleep. And if you give them that time to sleep, then they have a cleaning team that comes out at night, they have a shift change, so scavengers come tidying up your gut lining and make your gut this perfectly-oiled machine that our ancestors had but we've lost."

Prof. Tim Spector

Tim Spector (Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London) was speaking on an episode of BBC's' Just One Thing – with Michael Mosley'

Read about anthropomorphism

Read examples of anthropomorphism in science

Many examples of anthropomorphism are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.

Read about metaphor in science

Read about examples of science metaphors

Many examples of science metaphors are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.

Author: Keith

Former school and college science teacher, teacher educator, research supervisor, and research methods lecturer. Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.