An example of a simle used to explain science:
"The B cell is a cell that eventually becomes a plasma cell which secretes antibodies. Antibodies, they are like harpoons or missiles which the cell sends out to kill a pathogen…
Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee
Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee (medical oncologist at Columbia University) was spealking on an episode ('Building the Body, Opening the Heart') of BBC Radio 4's 'Start the week' programme/podcast.
Read: Cells are buzzing cities that are balloons with harpoons
An example of metaphor and anthropomorphism used to explain science:
"[the cells of the innate immune system] are usually the first responder cells. In humans they would be macrophages, and neutrophils and monocytes among them. These cells usually rush to the site of an injury, or an infection, and they try to kill the pathogen, or seal up the pathogen…"
Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee
Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee (medical oncologist at Columbia University) was spealking on an episode ('Building the Body, Opening the Heart') of BBC Radio 4's 'Start the week' programme/podcast.
Read: Cells are buzzing cities that are balloons with harpoons
An example of an analogy used to explain science:
"[a cell is the] smallest unit of life…and these units were built, as it were, part upon part like you would build a Lego kit"
Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee
Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee (medical oncologist at Columbia University) was spealking on an episode ('Building the Body, Opening the Heart') of BBC Radio 4's 'Start the week' programme/podcast.
Read: Cells are buzzing cities that are balloons with harpoons
Read about analogy in science
Read examples of scientific analogies
Many examples of science analogies are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.
An example of simile and metaphor used in science communication:
"I spent much of my life staring down microscopes at these funny, sort of mundane, unremarkable, gloopy balloons…they're actually really these incredible cities buzzing with activity".
Dr Adam Rutherford
Dr Adam Rutherford was presenting an episode ('Building the Body, Opening the Heart') of BBC Radio 4's 'Start the week' programme/podcast.
There is a simile as cells are only 'sort of ' balloons, but they are said to be 'actually really ' cities – but they are not: so, that is a (category error or) metaphor.
An example of a simile used in the work iof a scientist:
"I took a good clear piece of Cork, and with a Pen-knife sharpen'd as keen as a Razor, I cut a piece of it off, and…cut off from the former smooth surface an exceeding thin piece of it, and…I could exceeding plainly perceive it to be all perforated and porous, much like a Honey-comb, but that the pores of it were not regular; yet it was not unlike a Honey-comb in these particulars
…these pores, or cells, were not very deep, but consisted of a great many little Boxes…
Robert Hooke
Hooke, R. (1665). Micrographia.
Read: Cells are buzzing cities that are balloons with harpoons
This is an example of an extended simile used to explain science in the media:
"So, if we look at the structure of nuts, under the microscope, we would see something like boxes. So imagine if you have thousands of shoeboxes put together, and within each box you have fat inside. So in order to access the fat in those shoeboxes, we would have to go in and break all the shoeboxes. When we chew the nuts we break the boxes, we release the fat, but in the process not all boxes are being broken. Hence, there is still about 20% of fat left in the boxes that are not accessible by the body."
Dr Sze-Yen Tan
Dr Sze-Yen Tan (Senior Lecturer, Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Australia) was talking to Dr Michael Mosely on an episode ('Nibble Some Nuts') of the BBC radio show and podcast 'Just One Thing – with Michael Mosley'.
This programme is aimed at a non-specialist audience (the programme offers suggestions for healthy living) and it was not explained what the boxes represented.
"Triacylglycerols (TAG) are the predominant lipids in nuts and are stored within oleosomes (i.e. oil bodies) surrounded by a layer of phospholipids embedded with proteins and encased within the plant cell wall."
Li, Shelp & Wright, 2023
Presumably, Dr Tan was referring to the plant cells as being like shoeboxes rather than the specific fat contaiing organelles as he suggests that under a microsope one would observe "thousands of shoeboxes put together".
Work cited:
Li, C. H., Shelp, G. V., & Wright, A. J. (2023). Influence of nut structure and processing on lipid bioaccessibility and absorption. Current Opinion in Food Science, 49, 100966. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cofs.2022.100966
A metaphor used to explain science:
"The correct chemical name for aspartame is L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester. The 'methyl ester' part of the name means that this substance is a close chemical relative of the dipeptide L-asprtyl-L-phenylalanine."
Royston M. Roberts (1989) Serendipity. Accidental discoveries in science
An example of a metaphor used to explain science:
"Take, for example, the structure of an eye, or of the skeleton of an animal,–what complexity and what artifice! In the one, a pellucid muscle; a lens formed with elliptical surfaces; a circular aperture capable of enlargement or contraction without loss of form. In the other, a framework of the most curious carpentry; in which occurs not a single straight line, nor any known geometrical curve, yet all evidently systematic, and constructed by rules which defy our research."
Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792 – 1871)
John F. W. Herschel (1830) Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy
An example of science being explained by a metaphor
"Our nuclear charge is located on the surface, since the number of protons and the number of neutrons in the nucleus are such that protons and neutrons should be in the outer layer of the nucleus, and only neutrons inside, that is, a shell forms on the surface of the nucleus. In addition, protons must be repelled, and also attracted by an electronic fur coat."
Henadzi Filipenka (retired from Kazan Research Radio Technology Institute)
Henadzi, F. (2019). Nature of Chemical Elements. Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice*, 3(1), 1-5.
Read more about this in 'Move over Mendeleev, here comes the new Mendel'
[* Note: the 'Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice' is not related to or associated with the RSC journal Chemistry Education Research and Practice – read about predatory journals]
An example of a metaphor:
"…according to psychoanalysis certain infantile experiences originate aggressiveness but, if the case is found of timorous behaviour when aggressive behaviour ought to occur, the finding is not counted as a counterexample: the ad hoc hypothesis is introduced that the subject has formed a reaction against his natural bent. In this way unfavourable evidences cannot occur and the innocent is persuaded by a gang of accomplices that are never caught because they supply each other with alibis."
Mario Bunge
Bunge, M. (2017/1998). Philosophy of Science. Volume 1: From problem to theory (Revised ed.). Routledge. (1967)
An example of explaining science with metaphor and an idiom (getting into a rut). Here, Dr Carhart-Harris uses an extended metaphor:
"In mental illness we often go down a track, you know, implicitly or unconsciously, deepen the rut in that track, we get stuck, and what psychedelics do is free up the system, and what the system is your mind, and so that stuckness and the depth of that stuckness can be sort of opened up, there can be a freeing action, but with that freedom comes a requirement to be supported when the mind opens up that way, because perhaps there's been defensive quality to digging those ruts as deep as they've been…"
Dr Robin Carhart-Harris
Dr Robin Carhart-Harris (Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at the University of California) was speaking on an episode ('Psychedelics and Mental Health: Rose Cartwright meets Robin Carhart-Harris') of the BBC radio programme/podcast 'One to One'.
An example of analogy being used in scientific discovery.
"…nuclear fission – a term Frisch coined by analogy to cell division in biology…"
Royston M. Roberts (1989) Serendipity. Accidental discoveries in science
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