Visual Metaphors in the Sciences
- Recent philosophical analyses of the epistemic dimension of images in the sciences show a certain trend in acknowledging potential roles of these images beyond their merely decorative or pedagogical functions. We argue, however, that this new debate has yet paid little attention to a special type of pictures, we call ‘visual metaphor’, and its versatile heuristic potential in organizing data, supporting communication, and guiding research, modeling, and theory formation. Based on a case study of Conrad Hal Waddington’s epigenetic landscape images in biology, we develop a descriptive framework applicable to heuristic roles of various visual metaphors in the sciences.
| Author details: | Jan BaedkeORCiDGND, Tobias SchöttlerGND |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-016-9353-9 |
| ISSN: | 0925-4560 |
| ISSN: | 1572-8587 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Journal for General Philosophy of Science |
| Subtitle (English): | the Case of Epigenetic Landscape Images |
| Publisher: | Springer |
| Place of publishing: | Dordrecht |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first publication: | 2017 |
| Publication year: | 2017 |
| Release date: | 2022/06/09 |
| Tag: | Conrad Hal Waddington; Epigenetic landscape; Modelling; Scientific images; Theory formation; Visual metaphor |
| Volume: | 48 |
| Number of pages: | 22 |
| First page: | 173 |
| Last Page: | 194 |
| Organizational units: | Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Informatik und Computational Science |
| DDC classification: | 0 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke / 00 Informatik, Wissen, Systeme |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Institution name at the time of the publication: | Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Informatik |
