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6 - Why Does It Matter That Many Biology Concepts Are Metaphors?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2020

By
Kostas Kampourakis
Edited by
Kostas Kampourakis  and
Tobias Uller
Kostas Kampourakis
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Tobias Uller
Affiliation:
Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

What does scientific knowledge consist of? At the most basic level it is structured by concepts. Scientific concepts have important representational and heuristic roles in the acquisition and justification of scientific knowledge because they both represent natural entities, properties, and processes and also make their investigation possible (Arabatzis 2019; see also Nersessian 2008; MacLeod 2012). This is why concepts and their meanings have long been the focus of philosophical studies (see for instance the concepts analyzed in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu; or those biology concepts in edited collections such as Keller & Lloyd 1992; Hull & Ruse 1998; Hall & Olson 2003; Hull & Ruse 2007). This chapter deals with a central feature of scientific concepts: their metaphorical nature.

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Philosophy of Science for Biologists , pp. 102 - 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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