Metaphors in Cognitive and Neurosciences

Which impact have metaphors on scientific theories and models?

Abstract

In this article, I am going to explain how the most frequent metaphor types used in cognitive and neurosciences – reification and spatial metaphors, personification, and technological metaphors – are connected to theoretical problems that occur in these scientific disciplines. These theoretical problems include the idea of memory as space, which is connected with the difficulty of a realistic description of the mental lexicon, the problem of free will, and the mind-body problem. Because of some obvious parallels between metaphorical language and arguments made in the scientific description of the mind, I will argue that certain metaphors used in scientific language are not merely linguistic problems but deeply rooted in scientific arguments. This holds for metaphors that scientists are aware of as well as for unconsciously used metaphors. My observations are intended to highlight some characteristics of metaphors in science. Furthermore, they provide a possible approach to investigating the connection between linguistic and conceptual metaphors in complex cases as scientific models.