Abstract

Studies on metaphor and models have been receiving wider attention and getting a deeper understanding of the role these resources play in scientific theories. From Mary Hesse and Max Black´s seminal works in 1960’s a wellspring of metaphor and models accounts has raised in the fields of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language, Pragmatics, Cognitive Sciences and Science Teaching. History of science has played an important role in showing the ubiquity of metaphorical process in science. This paper aims to clarify how metaphor play that major role in the context of discovery by being one of the most reliable thought tools for scientists in “knitting” the plausible and unobservable into the previous accepted world of the theory and by generating trustworthy access to theoretical entities and fertile explanatory hypotheses. We tent to show how this was possible through a philosophical demystification of its power and function and how to a certain extent, metaphors are synthetic models and models are systematic metaphors.