ABSTRACT
There have been several attempts to develop a psychology that emulates the natural sciences. None proved satisfactory. Sciences develop at least as much by abandoning old metaphors and adopting new ones as by the accumulation of empirical data. Indeed, the significance of a body of data will usually depend upon the system of metaphors with which it is interpreted. Darwin’s famous metaphor of ‘natural selection’ would be a contradiction in terms if taken literally. As a metaphor expressing a powerful model of the process of evolution it not only framed the theory of organic evolution but also determined how the fossil record was to be interpreted. In this chapter we begin the development of such a metaphor for a scientific psychology. Since it expresses the main source of analytical and explanatory models, the working tools of sciences, at the same time we shall be firming up our grasp of the necessary ontology, the catalogue of what we take to exist in the domain of cognition.
