Who is Afraid of Metaphors?

Abstract

Her claim is that the use of metaphors is constitutive for scientific theorizing. She intends to answer the question of how to make use of metaphors in science without being afraid of inaccuracy of unwarranted reductionism. "My ultimate conclusion will be that there is really no reason to be afraid of metaphors." (p. 13) Max Black (1962): a metaphor functions like a pair of glasses through which the metaphoric object is observed i.e. reorganised, they establish a privileged perspective on an object or constitute "the" object and by doing so, disappear as metaphors (p. 14f.) metaphors can stimulate new ideas, questions and theories by changing the viewpoint - "The role of metaphors, as of basic ideas in general, consists in creating conditions for the emergence of something which Rheinberger calls a not anticipatable event ("unvorwegnehmbares Ereignis")." (p. 21) --> that also influences the field the metaphor is introduced in: "the metaphorically intoruced concepts or methods interact with the concepts or methods aready being part of the discipline in question. In other words, semantic accouts stress the points that metaphors and disciplinary tools reorganize each other." (p. 22) --> scientific use of metaphors is characterised by 2 forms or stages: transfer and transformation "To begin with, the transfer of a metaphor leas to a reorganization of the phenomena and thus to a nevel way of problematizing their study. In this form or at this stage, metaphors occur as heuristics." (p. 22) - illustrating unfamiliar connections through familiar ones Transformation: "A transformation of a metaphor would thus aim at a full-fledged investigation of the imported concept." (p. 23) --> would not only say: "this looks like that" but try to elaborate further similiarities and thus evoke also new questions --> metaphor then not only illustrates an observation but also reorganises the questions and materials "At the stage of transformation(...) a scientist or a school of thought looks for ways to make use of a metaphr and to control the kind of influence it has by assigning ti it a circumscribed rle in the importing discipline." (p. 24) -- during this process the metaphor can also fail thereby also the "exporting" discipline is influenced