A metaphor is a figure of speech where one thing is said to be another, implying some similarity. (This contrasts with a simile where the comparisons is made explicit.)
An extended metaphor goes beyond a single reference to a comparison, but uses several related references. An extended metaphor may function as an implicit analogy, but where the mapping between target ideas and the analogous comparison is not made explicit but left for the reader/listener to appreciate.
In this example, astronomy is compared to an animal with several modes of locomotion – reflecting how the science proceeds at different rates and sometimes with false steps [sic].
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.
PTNC is a teacher's email list for school teachers who teach physics. PTNC (Physics Teaching Notes and Comments) was originally run by the Institute of Physics on its servers as a service for physics teachers. When the IoP decided "as a charity with limited resources, we have to focus those resources on where we can have the biggest impact for the most teachers" (posted on PTNC, November 2023), and this meant no longer supporting the list, PTNC moved to groups.io, with sponsorship from PhysicsOnline.
The group is open to new members who teach physics or otherwise support physics education. The homepage is https://groups.io/g/PTNC.
A common teaching tactic to support learning by seeking opportunities for frequently revisiting key ideas to reinforce prior learning, so to encourage consolidation in long-term memory.
"There are clearly going to be myriad opportunities to reinforce key concepts we have taught where they are relevant to the material being presented:
'Can anyone remind the class what a compound is?'
'Can anyone remember how we can use the periodic table to suggest whether this unfamiliar element is likely to be a metal?'
'So, if this compound has a carbon-carbon double bond, how might we describe the hybridisation of the atomic orbitals that we imagine are involved in forming the bonds around these carbon centres?'
'Who can tell me what we call the class of compounds with this functional group?'
I could clearly give a great many more examples, and the principle applies just as much at different educational levels."
A lesson is usually a sequence of distinct episodes. Within an episode the teacher may make a large number of specific moves (making a statement, asking a question, handing out a worksheet, drawing a diagram…). The lesson plan will set out the intended sequence of lesson episodes, but some teaching moves will be decided upon spontaneously in situ in response to the reactions of the learners.
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.
A 'dead metaphor' is a term that has become so frequently used that is has become understood to literally – rather than figuratively – refer. This is one way language changes over time.
For example, in astronomy references to the 'life cycles', 'births' and 'deaths' of inanimate stars are now used as if technical terms and not just figures of speech.
The naturalistic fallacy is to identify what is with the good – or to confuse how things are with how things should be. That is to read axiological values from ontology. This may be associated with phrases such as 'the natural order' and 'that's nature's way'.
So, for example, someone born into a society with slavery or extreme unequal distribution of wealth and power might assume this was the 'natural' social order. In nature, it is very common in many species for only a minority of individuals to live to maturity; and for any individual who is deformed or badly injured and so cannot respond sufficiently to critical challenges (weather, predators, hunger) to be allowed to quickly die. This does not mean that this is how ethical agents (such as humans) should organise society.
The Scholastics, or Schoolmen, were those Medieval philosophers considered to endlessly reinterpret and comment on Aristotle* but without seeking to test any ideas empirically. Scholasticism was a rigorous analytical approach applied to bring harmony to different texts (especially to align classical texts from Greek philosophy with Christian beliefs, i.e. dogma). The approach dominated European learning for several centuries, but with the enlightenment and the development (rediscovery?*) of empirical approaches to science became seen as too 'dogmatic'.
(* Ironically, Aristotle himself had been a field scientist rather than just an 'armchair' philosopher.)
The notion of a vegetable soul, in effect a level of complex organisation sufficient for life, was due to Aristotle: who suggested all living things had such a soul. Animals also had a second soul that animated them, enabling responses to sensation and locomotion. And humans were said to have a third, rational, soul, and so were more than just animals.
The vegetable soul, being in effect a reflection of a complex system, broke down at the death of the organism. The notion of souls as supernatural and/or immortal was not part of Aristotle's original concept.
Phlogiston was the name given to a conjectured substance that was once considered a component of many materials. Combustion, burning, was seen as (rather than combination with oxygen) the release of this phlogiston. Quite extensive schemes of chemical changes were developed based on phlogiston theory. The idea was gradually dropped as Lavoisier's 'new' chemistry became to be adopted.
The luminiferous ether was a substance conjectured to fill space, which acted as the medium through which radiation such as light passed. As light was considered a kind of wave motion it was assumed to need some kind of medium that it could cause to oscillate. As light travelled through space from the distant stars, space had to be filled with ether. Although now rejected, the idea was once taken very seriously by scientists.
The term drew on the ancient belief that the heavens were constructed from a quintessence, that is, a fifth element other than the four then considered to be the components of all materials on Earth (air, earth, fire and water), and known as ether or æther (aether).
The ether was assumed to be a very subtle fluid (as it did not impede the planets in their orbits) and the same name was also given to a volatile chemical compound (so there is a genuine substance called ether, although the luminiferous ether is no longer accepted).
The heuristic method of teaching was introduced in some English schools in the nineteenth century, and was a form of inquiry or discovery learning. It was especially associated with the chemist and educational reformer, Henry Armstrong,
"Heuristic methods of teaching are methods which involve our placing students as far as possible in the attitude of the discoverer – methods which involve their finding out, instead of being merely told about things."
Armstrong, H. E. (1898) in H. E. Armstrong and the teaching of science 1880-1930 (Ed.: W H Brock, 1973), Cambridge University Press
The heuristic method was introduced as an alternative to algorithmic use of standard practical activities to demonstrate known outcomes. Although the focus was on student practical activity, the use of enquiry was intended primarily to teach scientific method rather than concepts, and Armstrong was well aware that learners could not rediscover extensive subject matter in this way.
