Metaphor and Knowledge: The Challenges of Writing Science

Metaphor and Knowledge offers a history of rhetoric and metaphor in science, delving into questions about how language constitutes knowledge. Weaving together insights from a group of scientists at the Santa Fe Institute as they shape the new interdisciplinary field of complexity science, Ken Baake shows the difficulty of writing science when word meanings are unsettled, and he analyzes the power of metaphor in science. He argues that metaphors function as musical notes, which sound "harmonics" in the process of transferring ideas from one term to another. These harmonics force scientists to confront implications, even paradoxes, of a theory.