Ever since Plato’s famous attack on artists and poets in Book 10 of The Republic, lovers of literature have felt pressed to defend poetry, and indeed from ancient times down to the present, literature and art have had to fight various battles against philosophy, religion, and science. After providing a brief overview of this conflict and then arguing that between poetry and science there are some noteworthy similarities---that is, that some of the basic mental structures with which the scientist studies (...) the “text‘ of nature (facts, laws, theories) find their counterparts in ways an informed reader studies the poetic text, I develop what I see as the most important differences between poetry, on the one hand, and science, philosophy, and theology, on the other. These differences lie chiefly in two areas: (1) in the stance that each takes toward language itself and (2) in the stance each takes toward that ancient polarity between the one and the many. The aim of my argument is neither to privilege poetry over the other modes of knowing the world nor to grant, particularly to science in its reductive “objectivity,‘ a higher epistemological status than that accorded to poetry and the arts. Instead, I wish to argue that science, by pushing the boundaries of knowledge about the material world, shows the poet, as well as the theologian, some of the more important work to be done and that poetry, with its emphasis on the particular over the abstract and on the ambiguities and paradoxes of language as inherently metaphorical, serves science and religion by providing a caution against the naive acceptance of language as literal and the consequent enthrallment to the power of absolutes and totalizing abstractions. (shrink)

Military metaphors are pervasive in biomedicine, including HIV research. Rooted in the mind set that regards pathogens as enemies to be defeated, terms such as “shock and kill” have become widely accepted idioms within HIV cure research. Such language and symbolism must be critically examined as they may be especially problematic when used to express scientific ideas within emerging health-related fields. In this article, philosophical analysis and an interdisciplinary literature review utilizing key texts from sociology, anthropology, history, and Chinese and (...) African studies were conducted to investigate the current proliferation of military metaphors. We found the use of these metaphors to be ironic, unfortunate, and unnecessary. To overcome military metaphors we propose to give them less aggressive meanings, and/or replace them with more peaceful metaphors. Building on previous authors' work, we argue for the increased use of “journey” metaphors as meaningful, cross-culturally app... (shrink)

It has been suggested that biological theories differ from physical theories because the subject matter of biology differs from the subject matter of physics especially in the fact that living bodies are more complex than nonliving bodies. It is shown that the interactional complexity of living bodies can only be expressed by invoking biological theories. The claim that living bodies are complex is, therefore, ultimately a claim about the nature of scientific theories rather than a claim about the nature of (...) the subject matter of biology resting upon a presystematic judgement. (shrink)

The language used to talk about computers is uniquely colorful and sometimes extraordinarily difficult. This paper examines ‘computer discourse’ and points out its highly metaphorical nature. While the use of metaphor is unavoidable, it often leads, especially in informal settings, to the mannered use of words we call jargon. Metaphor becomes jargon when it is used too literally in a self-conscious manner. Experts often use their metaphors as though they were literally true. Technical details fall away and the metaphor is (...) taken for the reality it represents. The less expert sometimes mimic the language they hear, in a self-conscious manner, without truly understanding it. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a formal theory of metaphors called Constrained Semantic Transference [CST]. We start from the assumptions that metaphors are characterized by the description of one domain, called the target domain, in terms of another domain, called the source domain; and that a metaphor works by transferring a set of structural relationships from the source domain to the target domain coherently.Starting from these assumptions, we formally define the concept of T-MAPs which are partial coherent mappings from the (...) source domain to the target domain. We also define two operators, called Augmentation and Positing Structure that extend a given T-MAP by adding new structure to the target domain. (shrink)

N. R. Hanson's discussion of experience is criticized. Experience, though necessary for knowing, is insufficient as a basis for understanding in either science or religion. Experience alone can be misleading. We may begin with experience, but we cannot claim to understand until experience has been mediated by theory. The article is excerpted from Metaphoric Process: The Creation of Scientific and Religious Understanding (Gerhart and Russell 1984), Chapter 2.