ABSTRACT My interest in scientific metaphor focuses on its role in charting our search for knowledge of a world not yet known. How else is one to seek understanding of the new, of the not yet intelligible, if not by comparison with what is already familiar? But comparison is hardly enough; a useful guide to the unknown must also keep us mindful of the strangeness, the incomparability, of novelty. Metaphor accrues its value in the instability it generates by confronting similarity with difference, insisting that man both is and is not a wolf. Lose this duality, and one loses the vitality of the metaphor. My question is almost mundane: how do the particular metaphors scientists invoke shape their view of the natural world? How would that knowledge be different had it been guided by different choices? Are there features made salient by one metaphor that lose significance in the framework invited by another? How is our scientific picture of the world shaped by the metaphors we choose to guide our search? To what other discoveries might different choices have led us?

中文翻译：

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隐喻在自然科学中的认知功能

摘要 我对科学隐喻的兴趣集中在它在描绘我们对未知世界知识的探索中的作用。如果不是通过与已经熟悉的事物进行比较，否则如何寻求对新事物的理解，对尚未理解的事物的理解？但是比较还不够。对未知事物的有用指南还必须让我们注意新奇的陌生性、不可比性和新奇性。隐喻通过面对相似性和差异性而产生的不稳定性增加了它的价值，坚持认为人既是狼又不是狼。失去这种二元性，就失去了比喻的生命力。我的问题几乎是平凡的：科学家们引用的特定隐喻如何塑造他们对自然世界的看法？如果这些知识受到不同选择的指导，它会有什么不同？是否有一个隐喻突出的特征在另一个隐喻的框架中失去意义？我们选择用来指导我们搜索的隐喻如何塑造我们对世界的科学图景？不同的选择可能会将我们引向哪些其他发现？