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              Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 450.
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    [1]    From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
           Subject: new book on metaphor and analogy (54)

    [2]    From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
           Subject: METASCIENCE - New Issue Alert (99)


--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2023-03-17 05:20:46+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: new book on metaphor and analogy

Shyam Wuppuluri and A. C. Grayling, eds. Metaphors and Analogies in
Sciences and Humanities: Words and Worlds. Synthese Library, vol. 453.
Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2022.

Preface

It is a great thing, indeed, to make proper use of the poetic forms . .
. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor . . .
ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor
that we can best get hold of something fresh
– Aristotle

The ﬁsh trap exists because of the ﬁsh. Once you’ve gotten the ﬁsh you
can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once
you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because
of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.
Where can I ﬁnd a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
– Zhuangzi

Metaphors and analogies occupy a prominent place in our scientiﬁc
discourses as they do in literature, humanities and at the very level of
our thinking itself. They shape our mind, our experiences and our
interpersonal/intrapersonal behaviour. Etymology of the word ‘metaphor’
can be traced to the Greek word μεταϕoρ´α (metapher¯o), which is derived
from μετ´α (meta) ‘across’ and ϕ´ρω (pher¯o) ‘to carry’. In our ﬁnal
analysis of things, given the structure of language and cognition, we
can always ﬁnd similarities between dissimilar things and vice versa –
and metaphors and analogies that dwell in that space between can either
help us shape our understanding of the world in beautiful ways using
familiar objects and ideas to convey the concrete graspable aspects of
the underlying abstractions or forever derail our understanding of the
concepts due to their ambiguities and incongruities and can even bring
about socio-political ramiﬁcations when one doesn’t whet them
appropriately. Despite the baggage that comes along with them, metaphors
and analogies are (and continue to be) indispensable to our scientiﬁc
practices and outreach. They promote interdisciplinary thinking and
collaboration across domains. Also, metaphors by their nature aren’t
precise, and one has to add bells and whistles and tinker around with
them before fully grasping their contextual meaning. So, the task is to
employ and decode them skilfully: being mindful of the dividing line
between their use and abuse.

[...]

Review: Andrew S. Reynolds, "A smorgasbord of essays on metaphor and
analogy". Metascience 32: 11-14 (2023).
<https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11016-022-00830-9?utm_source=toc
&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=toc_11016_32_1&utm_content=etoc_springer_20230316>

--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2023-03-16 07:49:14+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: METASCIENCE - New Issue Alert

Metascience 32.1.

Editors: K. Brad Wray and Jonathan Simon
Managing Editor: Lori Nash

<https://link.springer.com/journal/11016/volumes-and-issues/32-1>

In this issue:

EDITORIAL

1.K. Brad Wray & Lori Nash: Metascience builds connections

REMEMBRANCE

2.Howard Sankey: Robert Nola as I remember him

GENERAL PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

3.Bartlomiej Swiatczak: Understanding life through metaphors
4.Andrew S. Reynolds: A smorgasbord of essays on metaphor and analogy
5.Michał Oleksowicz: A new grammar of science
6.Kareem Khalifa: Thinking about mechanisms need not be deep

HISTORY OF SCIENCE, EDUCATION AND SCIENCE EDUCATION

7.George A. Reisch: How American colleges and universities got the hook
8.Amy Kind: A cautionary tale and how-to guide to wonder

HISTORY OF THE MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

9.Gabriel Galvez-Behar: Colonial microbiology
10.Erling Norrby: Nobel Prizes and cancer

PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

11.Joseph Gough: Is Social Darwinism wrong because mechanistic
explanation is useful?
12.Richard A. Richards: The meaning and definition of ‘species’

THE ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

13.Evelyn Brister: Philosophy, ethics, and conservation science
14.Joseph D. Madison: Microbial communities as interactors

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND PSYCHIATRY

15.Kathryn Tabb: Psychiatry and biomarkers
16.Zack Bliss: Climbing the ladder: agency and its evolution
17.Ida Toivonen: The experience, representational content, and
epistemology of perceptual and intellectual impressions
18.Przemysław Robert Nowakowski: Mind, material, meditation

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND VIDEO GAMES

19.Gábor IstvánBíró: Fireworks of AI
20.Christopher Bartel: Understanding video game players through game
data analysis

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY 

21.Victoria Lorrimar: The conflict thesis between science and
Christianity: it makes for a good story
22.Michel-Antoine Xhignesse: Brains, ectobrains, and the construction of
a subgenre
23.Katherine Puddifoot: Normative judgements about the epistemic lives
of people like us
24.John Capps: Writing public-facing philosophy about science

PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

25.Magdalena Małecka: Chasing the human in modern economics
26.Stefan Bargheer: What the social sciences can learn from the natural
sciences

PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS AND LOGIC

27.Nicholas Danne: The incubus of inter-translatability … a realist’s
nightmare?
28.William D’Alessandro: A compendium of paradoxes

HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY

29.Jan Faye: If so, I beg to disagree
30.Vanessa A. Seifert: In search of the elements

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

31.Thomas Uebel: Rudolf Carnap’s diaries: from the German Youth Movement
to the Vienna Circle
32.David Hyder: The legal background to Kant’s practical and theoretical
philosophy
33.Thornton Lockwood: Aristotle, law, and contemporary jurisprudence

ON METHODS: EXPERIMENTATION AND MANUSCRIPTS

34.Laura Søvsø Thomasen: Finding new stories in eighteenth-century
manuscripts
35.Alfred Nordmann: Epistemic bricolage


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