Hanna Pułaczewska: Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Metaphor in Natural Science
The interest in metaphor sparked off by the pioneering book by the linguists Lakoff and Johnson in 1980 led to the rejection of viewing
metaphors as matter of linguistic expression, and led to a wide search for conceptual metaphors applied in various domains as vehicles
of extending and transferring concepts from the known to the new. In the philosophy of science, the realization of the metaphor playing an
important role in creating scientific models came several years earlier. However, when talking of metaphorical concept formation, the linguist
and the philosopher do not mean the same. While the philosophers, and historians, of science discuss novel, creative, imaginative
juxtapositions of different domains that help establish new discovery routes, linguists are much more interested in the ubiquity of metaphor
as a universal and mundane tool of thought and communication. The linguist’s concept of metaphor starts at nominalization of verbs and
adjectives, and includes for example deployment of spatial notions when discussing differences in values of abstract physical parameters. The
paper discusses how the low-level, trite sort of metaphorisation permeates the way concepts in physics are formed and discussed.
The interest in metaphor sparked off by the pioneering book by the linguists Lakoff and Johnson in 1980 led to the rejection of viewing
metaphors as matter of linguistic expression, and led to a wide search for conceptual metaphors applied in various domains as vehicles
of extending and transferring concepts from the known to the new. In the philosophy of science, the realization of the metaphor playing an
important role in creating scientific models came several years earlier. However, when talking of metaphorical concept formation, the linguist
and the philosopher do not mean the same. While the philosophers, and historians, of science discuss novel, creative, imaginative
juxtapositions of different domains that help establish new discovery routes, linguists are much more interested in the ubiquity of metaphor
as a universal and mundane tool of thought and communication. The linguist’s concept of metaphor starts at nominalization of verbs and
adjectives, and includes for example deployment of spatial notions when discussing differences in values of abstract physical parameters. The
paper discusses how the low-level, trite sort of metaphorisation permeates the way concepts in physics are formed and discussed.