Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors

not lie in the conceptual distinctions but in the perceived functions of metaphors and whether in the concrete case they are judged positive or negative. The ongoing debates reflect these concerns quite clearly~ namely that metaphors are judged on the basis of supposed dangers they pose and opportunities they offer. These are the criteria of evaluation that are obviously dependent on the context in which the transfer of meaning occurs. Our fundamental concern is indeed the transfer itself~ its prospects and its limits. Looking at possible functions of metaphors is one approach to under standing and elucidating sentiments about them. The papers in this volume illustrate, by quite different examples, three basic functions of metaphors: illustrative, heuristic~ and constitutive. These functions rep resent different degrees of transfer of meaning. Metaphors are illustrative when they are used primarily as a literary device, to increase the power of conviction of an argument, for example. Although the difference between the illustrative and the heuristic function of metaphors is not great, it does exist: metaphors are used for heuristic purposes whenever "differences" of meaning are employed to open new perspectives and to gain new insights. In the case of "constitutive" metaphors they function to actually replace previous meanings by new ones. Sabine Maasen in her paper introduces the distinction between transfer and transforma tion.

Auteur
Peter Weingart lehrt Wissenschaftssoziologie und ist Direktor des Instituts für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung an der Universität Bielefeld.

Texte du rabat

The disciplines of biology and the social sciences share common roots in history and yet have drifted so far apart that the demarcation line between them has become a contested boundary. br/ The boundary shift between the natural' and thesocial' is becoming permanent: moves in either direction are subject to ideological rhetoric. Yet there is continual exchange across the line: metaphors are moving freely between biology and the social sciences. As messengers of meaning they become agents of change, forever undermining any attempt at fixing similarities and differences. br/ emBiology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors/em offers a unique look at the function of metaphors in mediating between two disciplinary cultures which represent and mold our views about nature and society, and the boundary between them. br/ For professionals and students of history, philosophy and sociology of science, biology, and literary science alike. br/

Contenu
Introduction: Metaphors: Is There a Bridge over Troubled Waters?.- I: Metaphors Revalued.- Who is Afraid of Metaphors?.- How Nature Became the Other: Anthropomorphism and Anthropocentrism in Early Modern Natural Philosophy.- The Manifest and the Scientific.- The Nexus of Animal and Rational: Sociobiology, Language, and the Enlightenment Study of Apes.- II: Struggle.- Social Metaphors in Evolutionary Biology, 18701930: The Wider Dimension of Social Darwinism.- Struggle for Existence: Selection and Retention of a Metaphor.- III: Evolution and Organism.- The Importance of the Concepts of Organism and Evolution in Emile Durkheim's Division of Social Labor and the Influence of Herbert Spencer.- Herbert Spencer: Biology, Sociology, and Cosmic Evolution.- The Superorganism Metaphor: Then and Now.- Defining the Organism in the Welfare State: The Politics of Individuality in American Culture, 18901950.- IV: Economics.- A Plague Upon Your House: Commercial Crisis and Epidemic Disease in Victorian England.- Evolutionary Metaphors in Explanations of American Industrial Competition.- Biological and Physical Metaphors in Economics.