From intriguing to misleading: The ambivalent role of metaphor in modern astrophysical and cosmological terminology
Keywords:
science, terminology, metaphor, representation, popular science.
Abstract
While metaphor has long been shown to pervade scientific discourse and terminology, little is known about how it affects the human comprehension of abstract concepts and underpins further development of related scientific ideas. In this article we focus on seven established terms in astrophysics and cosmology, which have also become staples of popular science, namely “big bang”, “wormhole”, “black hole”, “spaghettification”, “gravitational hair”, “fuzzball”, and “string” (in the context of string theory). We carry out etymological and contextual analysis to find out the specifics of their use in specialized and popular literature, with a particular emphasis on personification of physical entities. Also, we apply the conceptual metaphor theory to compare their source domain and target domains, identifying potentially misleading discrepancies between the two. We reveal that most of these metaphorical nominalizations invoke inaccurate and largely distorted images of the referenced entities, which are further extended and amplified with new details in scientific popularizations. We suggest that more research is needed into metaphorical terms in different disciplines to better understand their implications for the development of both expert and lay knowledge of the subject.
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References
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Black, M. (1993). More about metaphor. In Ortony, A. (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 19–41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boyd, R. (1993). Metaphor and theory change: what is metaphor a metaphor for? In Ortony, A. (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 356–408). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781139173865.023
Brookes, D.T., & Etkina, E. (2007). Using conceptual metaphor and functional grammar to explore how language used in physics affects student learning. Physical Review Special Topics – Physics Education Research, 3(1), 1-16.
Brustein, R., & & Medved, A. J. M. (2018). Quantum hair of black holes out of equilibrium. Physical Review. D., 97(4), doi: 10.1103/physrevd.97.044035
Burwell, J. (2018). Quantum language and the migration of scientific concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ceroni, G. (2014). Exploring the Use of Metaphor in Communication of Contemporary Physics. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, 1324-1332. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.391
Cornelis, G. (2000). Analogical Reasoning in Modern Cosmological Thinking. In F. Hallyn (Ed.), Metaphor and analogy in the sciences (pp. 165-180). Springer.
Corni, F., Fuchs, H. & Dumont, E. (2019). Conceptual metaphor in physics education: roots of analogy, visual metaphors, and a primary physics course for student teachers. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1286, 012059. doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/1286/1/012059.
DeCristofano, C. (2017). A black hole is not a hole. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing.
Ghose, T. (2016). Stephen Hawking: Black Holes Have 'Hair'. Live Science. Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/53363-stephen-hawking-black-holes-have-hair.html
Greene, B. (2019). What is String Theory? World Science Festival. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI6sY0kCPpk
Haack, S. (2019). The art of scientific metaphors. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 75(4), 2049-2066. doi: 10.17990/RPF/2019_75_4_2049
Haglund, J., Jeppson, F., & Strömdahl, H. (2010). Different senses of entropy – Implications for education. Entropy, 12(3), 490-515.
Hawking, S. (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Dell Publishing Group.
Hawking, S., Perry, M. J., & Strominger, A. (2016). Soft Hair on Black Holes. Physical Review Letters, 116(23), 231301.
Herdeiro, C.A., & Lemos, J.P.S. (2018). The black hole fifty years after: Genesis of the name. Gazeta de Fisica, 41(2), 2. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.06587
Johnson-Sheehan, R. D. (1997). The Emergence of a Root Metaphor in Modern Physics: Max Planck’s “Quantum” Metaphor. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 27(2), 177–190. doi: 10.2190/lxwh-uxtl-2bbt-prm5
Kragh, H. (2013). Big Bang: the etymology of a name. Astronomy & Geophysics, 54(2), 2.28–2.30. doi: 10.1093/astrogeo/att035
Kuhn, T. (1993). Metaphor in science. In Ortony, A. (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 533-542). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Lancor, R. (2014). Using metaphor theory to examine conceptions of energy in biology, chemistry, and physics. Sci & Educ, 23, 1245–1267. doi: 10.1007/s11191-012-9535-8
Lightman, A. (1989). SCIENCE: Magic on the mind: physicists' use of metaphor. The American Scholar, 58(1), 97-101.
Lior, M. B. et al. (2021). Scalar and gravitational hair for extreme Kerr black holes. Phys. Rev. D 103 (2), L021502. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.103.L021502
Mack, K. (2020). The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking). Scribner.
Mastin, L. (2019). The Big Bang and the Big Crunch. In Noble, F.R., Cooper, T.M., & Mullat, J.E. (Eds.), Cosmology that contradicts the big bang theory (pp. 25-77). Hvidovre, Denmark: Private Publishing Platform.
Mitton, S. (2011). Fred Hoyle: A life in science. Cambridge University Press.
Mathur, S. D. (2005). The fuzzball proposal for black holes: An elementary review. Advances in physics, 53, 793 - 827. doi: 10.1002/prop.200410203.
Misner, C. W., & Wheeler, J. A. (1957). Classical physics as geometry. Ann. Phys., 2(6), 525-603. doi: 10.1016/0003-4916(57)90049-0.
Montuschi, E. (2017). Metaphor in science. In Newton-Smith, W.H. (Ed.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Science. Blackwell Publishers. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405164481.ch41
Ouelette, J. (2015, June 23). The Fuzzball Fix for a Black Hole Paradox. QuantaMagazine. Retrieved from https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-fuzzballs-solve-the-black-hole-firewall-paradox-20150623/
Overbye, D. (2020, Oct. 17). A Black Hole’s Lunch: Stellar Spaghetti. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/17/science/astronomy-black-hole-at1910qix.html
Peterfreund, S. (1994). Colonization by means of analogy, metaphor, and allusion in Darwinian discourse. Configurations, 2(2), 237-255. Doi: 10.1353/con.1994.0029.
Pulaczewska, H. (2011). Aspects of metaphor in physics: Examples and case studies. Berlin, New York: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Raad, B. (1989). Modern trends in scientific terminology: Morphology and metaphor. American Speech, 64(2), 128-136. doi: 10.2307/455039
Scientific American (1997). What exactly is a 'wormhole'? Have wormholes been proven to exist or are they still theoretical? Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/follow-up-what-exactly-is/
Stahl, F. A. (1987). Physics as metaphor and vice versa. Leonardo, 20(1), pp. 57-64.
Strickland, A. (2020, Oct.12). Astronomers witness 'spaghettification' of star shredded by a black hole. CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/12/world/star-spaghettification-black-hole-death-scn-trnd/index.html
Taylor, C., & Dewsbury, B. M. (2018). On the problem and promise of metaphor use in science and science communication. Journal of microbiology & biology education, 19(1), 19.1.46. doi: 10.1128/jmbe.v19i1.1538
Theiss Research (2019). Nearly extreme black holes which attempt to regrow hair become bald again. PhysOrg. Retrieved from https://phys.org/news/2019-11-extreme-black-holes-regrow-hair.html
Theiss Research (2021). Extreme black holes have hair that can be combed. PhysOrg. Retrieved from https://phys.org/news/2021-01-extreme-black-holes-hair.html
Turney, J. (2001). Strings and things. Nature, 410, 873. doi: 10.1038/35073712
Volmar, A. & Pesic, P. (2014). Pythagorean Longings and Cosmic Symphonies: The Musical Rhetoric of String Theory and the Sonification of Particle Physics. Journal of Sonic Studies, 8. Retrieved from www.researchcatalogue.net/view/109371/109372/0/53
Published
2021-11-25
How to Cite
Kramar, N., & Ilchenko, O. (2021). From intriguing to misleading: The ambivalent role of metaphor in modern astrophysical and cosmological terminology. Amazonia Investiga, 10(46), 92-100. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2021.46.10.8
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