Abstract
The literature on the cognitive role of metaphors discussed in this chapter shows how scientific theories often develop, not in spite of metaphors, but thanks to them. This literature, although made up of heterogeneous lines of research, formulates a number of ideas that guide the present analysis. One is that metaphors reorganize our ideas about the world, help re-describe it and orient the search for causal links that explain phenomena.
For these reasons, many of our philosophical beliefs depend on how we conceptualize the world out there through metaphors. Complex and unknown events are first analyzed by transferring characteristics of known domains to them, on the basis of analogies.
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Notes
- 1.
Black’s original example was “Man is a wolf”.
- 2.
Many metaphors have been used in economic thought in the course of time (Mirowski, 1989; Henderson, 1994; Hodgson, 1999: 60–83), and some scholars have tried to interpret this use in light of what has been suggested by Black , Hesse and Boyd. McCloskey (1998), in contrast with the “methodology of positive economics”, has identified some traits of the rhetoric of economics. One thesis she puts forward is that analogy pervades economics, even when economists do not have explicit analogical intentions. Expressing ideas in terms of supply and demand curves, games theory and the invisible hand means unconsciously resorting to metaphors. Klamer and Leonard argued that “economics is metaphorical”. Following Boyd, they maintained that, in addition to pedagogical and heuristic metaphors, there are “constitutive metaphors”, that is, metaphors that “determine what makes sense and what does not; they will determine, among other things, the effectiveness of pedagogical and heuristic metaphors ” (Klamer & Leonard, 1994: 40). Lewis (1999) also adopted the critical realisms approach encapsulated in Boyd’s perspective, and maintained that metaphors play a “fundamental role” in the development of models. By contrast, Lagueux (1999: 5) remarks that “almost all metaphors used in economics are dead metaphors which no longer work as metaphors”.
- 3.
According to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969: 403), “Any analogy […] turns into metaphor quite spontaneously”. Cohen (1993: 35–36) remarks that the lack of a clear distinction between metaphor and analogy dates back to classical Greece, and etymologically the meaning of metaphor entails the use of analogy. Klamer and Leonard (1994: 35) maintain , “Analogy is an expanded metaphor; more precisely, analogy is sustained and systematically elaborated metaphor”.
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Fiori, S. (2021). Metaphors as Conceptual Tools. In: Machines, Bodies and Invisible Hands. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85206-1_2
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