Science is based in metaphor offers a somewhat complex but deep insight into the nature of science.
The focus is on realism.Our science is necessarily perspectival and rooted in metaphor. Like maps, these metaphors are useful, but we shouldn't mistake the map for the territory, writes Andrew Reynolds.
That borders on postmodernism.There is a very common view of science, one is inclined to call it the ‘common sensical’ view, that depicts science as the objective description of reality, telling us what kinds of things there are in the world and how they work. We then apply that objective knowledge to create new technologies and medical therapies and so on.
...Some philosophers, however, refer to metaphysical and scientific realism as naïve realism. Why naïve? Because it seems to assume the existence of a pre-Kantian noumenal ‘world-in-itself’, which even if it does exist, we could not possibly hope to describe or know about in its own objective terms. The best we humans can do is to describe reality as it appears to us to be using the contingent linguistic, mathematical, and visual-pictorial terms that make sense to us.
Back to metaphor.The philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen has described scientific realism as the thesis that, “science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like.” In one sense it is ironic that realism would be described in terms of a story, for narratives are human constructs that rely on a subjective selection of actors and events. Yet it is not so ironic if we recognize that a literally true statement or description is not the same as an objectively true one....
On to post-realism...but you'll have to follow the link to red about that....This is why the philosopher of science Ernan McMullin said that, “Science aims at ever more fruitful metaphor and at ever more detailed structure.” McMullin was a scientific realist who argued that far from being a hindrance to science’s success, metaphor is a positive contributor. Likewise, the philosopher Mary Hesse showed how important the use of metaphor and analogy is in the expansion of scientific explanation by means of model making.
...But metaphor goes beyond mere simile. Whereas simile says A is like B, (which is always literally true in some sense), metaphor asserts an identity: A is B. Simile says DNA is like a code and the genome is like a computer program; metaphor says DNA is a code and the genome is a program. And as a consequence of accepting (or entertaining) the identity asserted through the metaphor, it is only natural that we then attempt to extend it, for instance, by editing the code, to reprogram how cells operate and thereby switch off the cancerous ones....