This book brings together powerful ideas and new developments from internationally recognised scholars and classroom practitioners to provide theoretical and practical knowledge to inform progress in science education. This is achieved through a series of related chapters reporting research on analogy and metaphor in science education. Throughout the book, contributors not only highlight successful applications of analogies and metaphors, but also foreshadow exciting developments for research and practice. Themes include metaphor and analogy: best practice, as reasoning; for learning; applications in teacher development; in science education research; philosophical and theoretical foundations. Accordingly, the book is likely to appeal to a wide audience of science educators –classroom practitioners, student teachers, teacher educators and researchers.
This collection of papers contains historical case studies, systematic contributions of a general nature, and applications to specific sciences. The bibliographies of the contributions contain references to all central items from the traditions that are relevant today. While providing access to contemporary views on the issue, the papers illustrate the wide variety of functions of metaphors and analogies, as well as the many connections between the study of some of these functions and other subjects and disciplines.
Shows how analogy-making pervades human thought at all levels, influencing the choice of words and phrases in speech, providing guidance in unfamiliar situations, and giving rise to great acts of imagination.
How did literature shape nineteenth-century science? Erasmus Darwin and his grandson, Charles, were the two most important evolutionary theorists of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. Although their ideas and methods differed, both Darwins were prolific and inventive writers: Erasmus composed several epic poems and scientific treatises, while Charles is renowned both for his collected journals (now titled The Voyage of the Beagle) and for his masterpiece, The Origin of Species. In The Age of Analogy, Devin Griffiths argues that the Darwins’ writing style was profoundly influenced by the poets, novelists, and historians of their era. The Darwins, like other scientists of the time, labored to refashion contemporary literary models into a new mode of narrative analysis that could address the contingent world disclosed by contemporary natural science. By employing vivid language and experimenting with a variety of different genres, these writers gave rise to a new relational study of antiquity, or “comparative historicism,” that emerged outside of traditional histories. It flourished instead in literary forms like the realist novel and the elegy, as well as in natural histories that explored the continuity between past and present forms of life. Nurtured by imaginative cross-disciplinary descriptions of the past—from the historical fiction of Sir Walter Scott and George Eliot to the poetry of Alfred Tennyson—this novel understanding of history fashioned new theories of natural transformation, encouraged a fresh investment in social history, and explained our intuition that environment shapes daily life. Drawing on a wide range of archival evidence and contemporary models of scientific and literary networks, The Age of Analogy explores the critical role analogies play within historical and scientific thinking. Griffiths also presents readers with a new theory of analogy that emphasizes language's power to foster insight into nature and human society. The first comparative treatment of the Darwins’ theories of history and their profound contribution to the study of both natural and human systems, this book will fascinate students and scholars of nineteenth-century British literature and the history of science.
This collection of papers contains historical case studies, systematic contributions of a general nature, and applications to specific sciences. The bibliographies of the contributions contain references to all central items from the traditions that are relevant today. While providing access to contemporary views on the issue, the papers illustrate the wide variety of functions of metaphors and analogies, as well as the many connections between the study of some of these functions and other subjects and disciplines.
In this highly-interdisciplinary volume, we systematically study the role of metaphors and analogies in (mis)shaping our understanding of the world. Metaphors and Analogies occupy a prominent place in scientific discourses, as they do in literature, humanities and at the very level of our thinking itself. But when misused they can lead us astray, blinding our understanding inexorably. How can metaphors aid us in our understanding of the world? What role do they play in our scientific discourses and in humanities? How do they help us understand and skillfully deal with our complex socio-political scenarios? Where is the dividing line between their use and abuse? Join us as we explore some of these questions in this volume.
Metaphors are widely used within marketing literature, yet so far have remained unacknowledged. This book aims to redress that omission. Such widely known topics such as globalization of markets, viral marketing and many others are in fact metaphors; moreover, marketing itself may be a metaphor, underlying many exchanges and relationships.
Covering a range of metaphors from a diverse field of sciences, from cell and molecular biology to evolution, ecology, and biomedicine, Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences explores the positive and negative implications of the widespread use of metaphors in the biological and life sciences. From genetic codes, programs, and blueprints, to cell factories, survival of the fittest, the tree of life, selfish genes, and ecological niches, to genome editing with CRISPR's molecular scissors, metaphors are ubiquitous and vital components of the modern life sciences. But how exactly do metaphors help scientists to understand the objects they study? How can they mislead both scientists and laypeople alike? And what should we all understand about the implications of science's reliance on metaphorical speech and thought for objective knowledge and adequate public policy informed by science? This book will literally help you to better understand the metaphorical dimensions of science.
Marketing decisions often misfire when driven more by beliefs than by knowledge. This book will guide you on how to differentiate between the two and to think more clearly and correctly when making those decisions, thereby increasing organizational success. The author has based this book on the fields of epistemology—the study of how knowledge is created—and the philosophy of science— the study of what it means for a science to be called a science. The motivation behind the book is quite simple: Given that science is so successful, why shouldn’t marketers borrow thinking and reasoning skills from science and apply them to marketing? Indeed, why not? The book details the groundwork for learning how to apply scientific reasoning to the field of marketing, such as some basic and important definitions (“What is a belief?” “What is knowledge?”), and identifies barriers to scientific reasoning, giving an example from the Dow Chemical Company and just how Dow uses critical thinking and reasoning skills to make more effective marketing and business decisions. You’ll also learn some real “thinking tools” you will need to apply scientific reasoning to solving your marketing problems. It introduces topics relating to attributes versus constructs, the meaning of causation, the relationship between coherence and justified beliefs, the importance of logic to sound reasoning, and the avoidance of logical fallacies in making sound recommendations. The book concludes by giving you direction to further improve your ability to apply scientific reasoning to solving marketing problems.
