Abstract
Metaphorscan be useful in several ways: they can help organize ideas and evidence about a phenomenon and suggest new research questions and even new theories. They can also provide a technical language, a set of recognizable terms that facilitate discourse about a complex phenomenon or theory and help explain a theory to others. However, metaphors can be difficult to control. A particularly rich metaphor may have many entailments that are irrelevant or contradictory to the theory they express. Metaphorical terminology can persist long after the underlying metaphors and the theory they express have become obsolete, simply because laypersons, students, and teachers become accustomed to the metaphorical expressions and ignore the entailments. However, the entailments of obsolete metaphorical language can constrain theoretical thought and interfere with understanding new evidence and new theories. This essay provides an illustrative analysis of inter-related examples from evolution, cognition, and communication.
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Notes
- 1.
The story is further complicated by the fact that, if the conditions that render an adaptive behavior successful persist over enough generations, it is likely to become innate – part of the genome.
- 2.
In the past, most actual examples of selective breeding have involved attempts to retain political or economic power within a family through in-breeding, and led to severe health problems for the offspring.
- 3.
“Network” might be serviceable, but it has already been coopted by a style of digital computing.
- 4.
e.g. Feldman (2006). Thus far “sufficiently powerful” continues to be a goal rather than a realization.
- 5.
A communication theory built around phases of matter might become a best-seller in the self-help genre.
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Ritchie, D. (2022). “Decoding Information”: The Abuse of Personification and Machine Metaphors. In: Wuppuluri, S., Grayling, A.C. (eds) Metaphors and Analogies in Sciences and Humanities. Synthese Library, vol 453. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90688-7_12
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