A meta-metaphor for science: the true and the fictional within the book of nature

Abstract

Evelyn Fox Keller is unsurpassed in the perspicuity with which she has drawn attention to the power of metaphor within science, to the work it does in defining scientific discourse, and in developing methodologies to analyse the consequences of semantic ambiguity. In this paper I consider a great metaphor for science, rather than within science. The 'Book of Nature' in which we 'read' the structures that science reveals is at least as old as Augustine, and enjoyed strong advocacy in other ages from Hugh of St. Victor, Boyle and Galileo, to name a few. Yet it is not without its dangers. The significance of 'books' changes with their availability, the language they are written in, the communities who are educated to read them, and their hermeneutic context. I will suggest ways that science has been construed differently following these changes in the metaphor's meaning, including a suggestion that part of the early modern shift is from pure 'reading' of the Book of Nature, to writing it.