Aspects of Metaphor in Physics (Linguistische Arbeiten)

✍ Scribed by Hanna Pulaczewska

• Publisher: Max Niemeyer Verlag
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 312
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

For decades there has been awareness of the fact that the natural sciences and the language they use are not metaphor-free domains. This study draws together statements on this phenomenon made in a discourse context hitherto dominated by theoreticians and philosophers of science and points up new perspectives of an interdisciplinary nature discussed here primarily from the viewpoint of cognitive semantics. How do metaphors enter into a discourse with physics? To what extent are the methods used and the issues addressed in physics influenced by metaphors? How do the ubiquitous metaphors of everyday language help us to impose a structure on physics knowledge and express abstract ideas in concrete images? These and other related issues are discussed with reference to copious examples.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
Part One: The notion of metaphor and its relation to the discourse of physics
2. Approaches to metaphor: past and present
2.1. A short history of metaphor
2.2. Metaphor, an enemy of science: the early modern view
2.3. Metaphor, a friend of science: contemporary physicists on scientific language
2.4. Current paradigms in research on metaphor in science
3. Identifying metaphor in physical science: sorts, functions, and related concepts
3.1. Metaphor and related concepts
3.2. A working definition of metaphor
3.3. Sorts and functions of metaphor in physical discourse
Part Two: Metaphors in physics
4. Underlying metaphors of everyday thought in meta-theory and the concept formation of physics
4.1. Hypostasis
4.2. Spatial metaphor
4.3. Animism and anthropomorphism
5. World theories in meta-theory and the concept formation
5.1. The notions “world theory” and “world model”
5.2. World machine
5.3. The world as a text
6. Stipulative reference extension
6.1. Stipulation of meaning: Huygens’ notion of sound wave
6.2. Invisible light and Roentgen’s “invisible rays”
7. Assimilative metaphor
7.1. “Fluid” electricity
7.2. The concept of wave
7.3. Life stories of metaphor: from metaphorical to literal and literal to metaphorical
8. Theory-constitutive and educational metaphors
8.1. Constitutive metaphor: waves of probability
8.2. Educational metaphor: curvature of space
8.3. From explanation to rhetoric
9. Metaphor and style: “figures of speech” in the language of physics
9.1. The position of “figures of speech” in the discourse of physics
9.2. The arrow of time
9.3. Heat death
9.4. Maxwell’s demon
10. Transfer of denotations in the terminology of physics
10.1. Metaphors in general language and in the terminology of physics: the general language basis for the transfer of denotations
10.2. Types of transfer of denotations
10.3. The terminology of physics and related disciplines
10.4. Fantasy-metaphor: the case of particle physics
10.5. “Mechanical work”: underlying metaphor, world theory, scientific analogy
10.6. Catachresis and satellite metaphors
10.7. Mathematical analogy
11. Thoughts and conclusions
References