Fluffy metaphors of an overheated debate: Why climate change is neither communicated nor understood as an existential threat?

Metaphors of climate change, as many other scientific metaphors, are often inaccurate, if not in their intended content but in their form and emotional valence. A literal ‘greenhouse’ is an eloquent construction designed to preserve heat, ‘warmth’ is an overall positive notion (as opposed to ‘overheating’). First, we are going to overview how metaphors are comprehended, from their neural processing to their use in communication in an attempt to describe their working. Next, we are going to explore how metaphors in science deliver messages and how they spread, focusing on two powerful metaphors: an identical replication theory (memetics), and a vision constant reformulation through viral spreading (epidemiology). The form-content distinction is particularly relevant to how scientific metaphors frame debates via their spreading: it is the form that is transmitted, but which are the analogous parts of the content that should be carried over? We then turn to the challenges of climate communication: the reasons for climate metaphors not fulfilling their purpose (e.g., due to the implications of their literal reading); the hostile environment the fossil fuel industry has created for climate scientists (e.g., disinformation and defamation campaigns); the strategies climate scientist could adapt as a community to inform the public and decision makers of the looming cataclysm (e.g., finding a unitary voice as a group with privileged access to specialized knowledge). Next, we are going to address the dire, literal consequences of climate destruction and present ideas on how metaphors and expressions could be improved to transmit a message appalling enough to prompt action. We conclude by an overview of cognitive limitations of everyday thinking and mechanisms of inferential communication to provide ideas for science communicators in persuading contemporaries. Scientists and science journalists should choose their metaphors particularly carefully regarding climate change, as minor misconceptions are leading mankind towards collective extinction.

Metaphor and Scientific Explanation

The idea that metaphors can serve an explanatory function, or that they can carry any theoretical weight, has raised the hackles of philosophers of science from Hempel onward. But there seem to be bona fide cases of explanatory metaphors in science. This chapter sketches an account of explanation, grounded in the connection between explanation and understanding. It discusses some potential arguments for this account and shows how it allows us to make sense of the idea that metaphors can explain. The chapter illustrates these ideas by looking at the case of informational metaphors in cell biology.

Radio Sensors and Electric Storms: Scientific Metaphors in Media Talks

Metaphors play an important role in communicating research to professional and lay audiences and are frequently used by journalists to present research in familiar terms. Previous studies of metaphors in science news have examined edited press reports and the use of metaphors by journalists. However, this study looks into the use of metaphors by scientists interviewed in live broadcasts. Using conversation analysis, interviews are explored for the insertion of metaphors by scientists or their uptake of metaphors that their hosts introduce. Metaphor use is shown to respond to the interactional context and participants’ roles in communicating the topic reported.

Metaphors in Science

Usually it is held that metaphors are expressions in which something is said but it is evoked or suggest another thing. It is also said that they are - or should be - almost exclusive patrimony of literary or vulgar languages and are not relevant in scientific discourse. However, there are three arguments that lead one to suspect that there is something wrong in these points of view. First, the ubiquity of metaphor in past and present sciences. Second, in almost all such cases, metaphorical expressions are not substitutes or paraphrases of other literal expressions that scientists would use with their colleagues but instead are the common way they are expressed; there is just no other language, metaphors are part of the technical vocabulary. Third, the theoretical and practical consequences of metaphors are part of the corpus or theoretical system to which they belong, in the same manner that the consequences of theorems of an axiomatic system are part of the theoretical system. The three preceding arguments allow us to sketch the following hypothesis: metaphors used by scientists (at least a lot of them) say something in themselves, but are not mere subsidiaries of other literal expressions; therefore, they have legitimate and irreplaceable cognitive and epistemic functions. This change in approach challenges at least four different problem fields: 1) the concept of metaphor; 2) the standard epistemological tradition and its postmodern heresies such as the social studies of science; 3) the history of science; and finally, 4) the biological and cognitive sciences. These four problems will be addressed in this article.

Metaforer och analogier inom termodynamik i kemiläroböcker för gymnasietMetaphors and analogies in thermodynamics in upper secondary chemistry textbooks

Science education research has long taken an interest in how we may make full use of analogies and metaphors in science teaching. Further, more recently, the role of implicit, conceptual metaphors in connecting abstract conceptual knowledge to concrete embodied experiences has been recognised. The textbook plays a central role in upper secondary teaching, as it is, together with the teacher, a source of knowledge for the students. We have analysed the use of analogies, and explicit and implicit metaphors in two Swedish upper secondary chemistry textbook, and interviewed two of the authors of the textbooks. Abstract states and processes were found to be construed by means of the Object-Event and Location-Event Structure metaphors. Explicit metaphors and analogies were presented, but the comparisons were not always elaborated sufficiently in order to guide the students’ interpretations and avoid possible misunderstandings.