Metaphors: Is there a Bridge over Troubled Waters?

Abstract

It would seem to be a simple and unexciting fact that metaphors, analogies, and models, are taken from one area of human thought and practice to another. They very term “analogy” denotes this process. And yet, at least with respect to science, this fact has attracted the attention of numerous authors in more than 6,000 books and articles throughout the last decades.¹ And the attention is by no means limited to the use of metaphors in science, i.e., between disciplines, but can also be found when they are transferred from science to the social and political arena and vice versa. Hence, although this transfer of concepts and ideas apparently is a customary feature of both scientific and nonscientific discourses, there must be something about this feature which elicits irritation. What are the reasons for this irritation? What accounts for the often passionate debates about the pros and cons of the use of metaphors?