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In-Depth Information
awareness of various frameworks of explanation, including disciplinary, concep-
tual, instrumental, etc. Paneth explicitly noted two frameworks— na¨ve realism and
transcendental idealism—as the ones operative in the case of chemical element.
I generalize Paneth
s point in my (admittedly metaphorical) re-description of
metaphor as that which enables and directs deliberate transitions between explan-
atory frames as needs arise in practical contexts of research, teaching, or engineer-
ing. Na
¨
ve realism and transcendental idealism are only two possibilities among
many (Mahootian
2013
). I claim that while such transitions are apparent in the
history of any empirically grounded discipline, chemistry contains some of the
clearest illustrations.
'
9.3 Metaphor in the History of Chemistry
With the growing general interest in metaphor there has been corresponding
increase in the literature on metaphor in the philosophy of science. An excellent
survey of the topic, by Daniela Bailer-Jones, appears in the
Blackwell Guide to the
Philosophy of Science
. The closing line of her chapter provides a segue for
discussing the history of chemistry, as it highlights the inextricable links between
model, metaphor, practice and ordinary language. She notes that
beyond the commonalties of scientific models and metaphor already highlighted, there is
one other: scientific models appear to be, contrary to past research traditions, as central in
scientific practice for describing and communicating aspects of the empirical world as
metaphors are in ordinary language. (Bailer-Jones
2002
, 127)
Bailer-Jones speculates analogically about this pair of pairs:
model: scientific practice : : metaphor : ordinary language
The analogy is not simple, as there are multiple interrelations between the four
terms. Her main intent seems to be to illuminate the role of models in scientific
practice as being similar to that of metaphor in ordinary language. However,
because of the ambiguous role of ordinary language in scientific practice, and
especially because of the function of metaphor in modeling (and of models in
metaphoring), the analogy can readily be made to work in several directions at
once, making the nexus of relations among the four more metaphorical than a
straightforward (e.g. scientific) analogy should allow. Aristotle proposed that
within metaphor the familiar term illuminates the unfamiliar, but one may as well
assert that familiar and unfamiliar illuminate one another, occasionally trading
places with sometimes surprising results.
12
Such surprises often occur when
12
Analytic philosopher, Max Black (
1962
) applied rhetoric theoretician I.A. Richards
interaction
'
theory of metaphor in this manner. Kuang-Ming Wu
s(
2001
) cross-cultural hermeneutic approach
to metaphor affirms this point with examples from several contexts and languages.
'
