Метафорите в науката: животът на релефната метафора в еволюционната биология
Metaphors in Science: the Presence of the Relief Metaphor in Evolutionary Biology

Summary/Abstract: According to the dominant view about the role of metaphors in scientific knowledge, a scientific metaphor is to be treated as a set of analogies on which models are based. Thus if a metaphor suggests misleading analogies it should be considered „wrong“. However, this approach which builds on the analyses of Max Black, Mary Hesse, Richard Boyd, and Tomas Kuhn, cannot account for some resilient metaphors which seem to persist in scientific theories despite the fact that the primary model which they underlie has been falsified. By a case study of one such example in evolutionary biology, the case of the landscape metaphor, I will try to defend the view that the primary function of scientific metaphors is not to serve as a source of analogies but rather to provide a conceptual framework which facilitates the unification, and thus supply common explanation, of complex and heterogeneous phenomena.

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