Both of these traditional interpretations were seriously challenged by Vico and the romantic movement. Rather than viewing metaphor as an ornamental substitution for the proper word, or as a mere comparison, Vico, Croce and Collingwood insisted that metaphor historically or logically precedes the solidified meanings of conceptual language, and further performs a uniquely revelatory function. While the fixed meanings of literal and logical discourse might be practically or intellectually useful, only the fluidity of poetic metaphor can reveal the concrete physiognomy (...) of the experienced world. Still, by stressing the pre-conceptual character of metaphor, the traditional dichotomy between it and all intellectual pursuits was made even more pronounced. Moreover, on the basis of this theory, it became impossible to distinguish poetic metaphor from primitive myth, or even from the assertions of schizophrenics. Equally embarrassing is the fact that aphasiacs, who have actually lost the use of conceptual language, are also completely unable to understand metaphors of any sort. (shrink)

Scientific Models. On the most primitive level of scientific popularization, common sense analogies are omnipresent, and are indispensable to layman and popularizer alike. Reichenbach's discussion of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle--in terms of a police car's inevitable effect on the speed of traffic--is a nice example. "In our intercourse with electrons we cannot don civilian clothes; when we watch them we always disturb their traffic." In this or any other such use of metaphor, however, the purpose is merely illustrative, and in an (...) extremely naive or vague sense at that. The structural form A:B::C:D is clearly present, but the repeated ratios are of such a superficial, inexact and limited nature that no further inferences can be drawn from the one side of the proportion to the other. Only a familiarizing picture, helpful to the layman but fairly useless to the scientist, has been introduced. Still, it is also important to realize that the difference between the metaphorical popularization of science and the creative use of metaphor by scientists themselves is a difference in degree only, not of kind. (shrink)