Tooltip Categories: Comparisons

An example of an analogy used to explain a scientific idea (with another scientific idea):

"A heap of uncoordinated hypotheses, though better than no hypothesis at all, may be likened to a huge mass of protoplasm without a nervous system."

Mario Bunge

Bunge, M. (2017/1998). Philosophy of Science. Volume 1: From problem to theory. Routledge.

An example of a metaphor used to explain a scientific idea:

"Following the theory that mitochondrial DNA was passed down only from the mother (recently shown to be only approximately correct, as many such dogmas are) and that it mutated at a constant rate (recently shown to be probably incorrect; and certainly requiring ranking of different parts of the mitochondrion as better or worse timekeepers), one could argue for a 'mitochondrial Eve' for various species – producing a clock that throws key evolutionary events much further back in time than would be indicated by paleontological evidence in the form of fossil remains…"

Geoffrey C. Bowker

Bowker, G. C. (2005). Memory Practices in the Sciences. The MIT Press.

An example of a metaphor used by a scientist:

"We might say that the principle of the conservation of energy, having previously swallowed up that of the conservation of heat, now proceeded to swallow that of the conservation of mass – and hold the field alone."

Albert Einstein

Einstein, A. (1946/1994) E = mc². In Ideas and Opinions, New York: The Modern Library.

An historical example of a metaphor used by a scientist:

"[animals inoculated with tuberculosis] gradually weaken, falling into the doldrums"

Jean-Antoine Villemin

Read "A drafted man is like a draft horse because…A case of analogy in scientific discovery"

An historical example of a metaphor used by a scientist:

"Pavlov…called the digestive system a 'chemical factory'."

Ivan Pavlov quoted by Slava Gerovitch

Gerovitch, S. (2002). From Newspeak to Cyberspeak. A history of Soviet cybernetics. MIT Press.

An example of a metaphor used to explain a scientific idea:

"Raw data is both an oxymoron and a bad idea; to the contrary, data should be cooked with care."

Geoffrey C. Bowker

Bowker, G. C. (2005). Memory Practices in the Sciences. The MIT Press.

An example of a metaphor used to explain a scientific idea:

"The raw datum may well contain any information, but the refined datum must convey only relevant and universally useful information; this is achieved both by pruning the raw datum …we are interested in systematising data with the aim of disclosing patterns in them, and this cannot be done unless the 'noise' is eliminated by the pruning process…"

Mario Bunge

Bunge, M. (2017/1998). Philosophy of Science. Volume 2: From explanation to justification (Revised ed.). Routledge.

An example of a metaphor use in scientific explanation:

"But may we not hope, that philosophy, if cultivated with care, and encouraged by the attention of the public, may carry its researches still farther, and discover, at least in some degree, the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations?"

David Hume

Hume, D. (2007). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (P. Millican, Ed.). Oxford University Press. (1748)

An example of a metaphor used by a naturalist:

"Yet between these corresponding groups of islands [either side of the Wallace line in the Malay Archipelago], constructed as it were after the same pattern, subjected to the same climate, and bathed by the same oceans, there exists the greatest possible contrast when we compare their animal productions."

Alfred Russel Wallace

Wallace, A. R. (1869). Malay Archipelago