ABSTRACT
Metaphor is widely considered an essential tool for explaining and understanding. Just as we often use analogies in our daily lives when trying to explain and understand what we observe, hear and feel, scientists have been using metaphors for a long time to elaborate theories and to write for and speak to the public. The metaphors that scientists use for the purpose of theoretical elaboration are often the same as those used to explain scientific concepts to non-specialists (Massimiano 1998). From Newton’s metaphor of the universe as a machine (Glebkin 2013) and Dawkins’ evolution as the progression of a selfish gene (Journet 2010) to the more recent human genome as the book of life (Nerlich et al. 2002), metaphors have been central to scientific thought and science communication. Indeed, as Pauwels (2013: 524) points out in a recent Nature paper: ‘Faced with explaining the messy complexity and uncertainty of science to the public, it is understandable that scientists reach for metaphors’.
