Andrew S. Reynolds, Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 223 pp. $14.95 Pb. ISBN 9781108938778
I think most of us know that popular science arrives to us refracted through many media. As we follow the ray to the source, we may find that it arrives to us a little slant, with some dilution by long-evaporated contexts.[1] Metaphors are one way to ease the way from the simple surface to dense and complex depths. In his latest book, Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences, philosopher of science Andrew S. Reynolds shows us how metaphors can also muddy conceptual complexities. His strategy for serving, in his words, ‘a booster shot to the readers’ “critical thinking system”’ (17), highlights the numerous ways in which metaphors mediate science communication, hypothesis formulation, and change scientific understanding.
The book expands upon Reynolds’s previous work, Third Lens: Metaphor and the Creation of Modern Cell Biology, where the titular ‘third lens’ is the metaphor, a perception-altering ‘instrument’ beyond the ocular and the optical lenses. It forms part of the Cambridge University Press series, ‘Understanding Life,’ which is intended to bridge gaps on current scientific issues, and covers topics such as ‘Evo-devo’ and coronavirus. Metaphors might seem, at first glance, to be a discordant note in this mix; but, like zealous fungi that colonise different ecological niches, their presence and impact proliferates across key biological concepts and so, they deserve some time under the dissecting microscope.
Although I initially expected an examination on the cross-domain, subconscious operation of the ‘cognitive metaphor’, along the lines of George Lakoff’s pioneering book, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (1987), I was soon introduced to a much wider project. Reynolds’s exploration covers both the intentional and unintentional operation of terminology chosen by biologists. In chapters one and two, he showcases the purposes fulfilled by the metaphor in scientific language – the rhetoric, the heuristic, the cognitive and the instrumental (32-33). Metaphors can whir away in the background, artefacts of past theories; they can be theory-constitutive and change research directions; and they can teach. Reynolds posits that further, metaphors can function ‘as a kind of technological instrument: that changes not only the way we think about or understand the world, but also leads to real material change in the very nature of the thing to which the metaphor is applied’ (33). He captures the metaphor’s journey from a linguistic construct, to a mental perspective, and finally to a deliberately, yet loosely-held tool for performing scientific investigation; every new theory, we might hazard, requires a new metaphoric tool.
Reynolds also notes that philosophers have looked askance at the metaphor and questioned its position in a truthful ‘language of science’. He quickly introduces counter-narratives however, such as the philosopher Mary Hesse’s exposition of how the fecundity of metaphors generates imaginative leaps in theory, as they are ‘an excellent facilitator of analogical reasoning’ (24-25). This includes subtly implying the ‘nature of causation involved’, through the selection of agentive, machine or information metaphors (46). On this grounding, he progresses from the minute to the macroscopic as he works his way from chapters 3 through 7, deconstructing the metaphorical underpinnings of domains such as genes and genomes, proteins, cells and cell societies, evolution, ecology, and biomedicine, ending with a general overview of misunderstandings of metaphors in the life sciences.
Two stand-out chapters for me were ‘Proteins’ and ‘Ecology’. The former has Reynolds breaking down the history of protein research and attendant metaphors. He suggests that using mechanistic metaphors for proteins based on their functionality – such as the lock and key metaphor for enzyme action on substrates – leads to a perception of rigidity and a state of stasis. This is but a partial perspective of the flexible, dynamic and ‘fuzzy’ nature of protein biochemistry (78-79). He also cautions that the empirically-inadequate language of neat mechanistic design and execution, teleological attribution, and agentive molecules is ripe for being co-opted by intelligent design proponents – to the detriment of public science culture. I would wager that the average reader would be unaware of the complex, stochastic protein environment beyond the ‘chemical cogwheel of the Krebs Cycle’ and the schoolbook dictum of the mitochondria as a powerhouse of the cell.[2] Thus this chapter is a powerful demonstration of how a new metaphorical paradigm fosters novel scientific understanding, but excludes the uninitiated.
In ‘Ecology’, Reynolds bears down on the fond myth of ‘ecological balance’, a rallying cry for environmental protection. He quotes biologist John Kricher in The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth (2009), wherein Kricher notes that the balance of nature ‘has always been a fuzzy, poorly defined idea that nonetheless has had great heuristic appeal throughout the ages because it seems so self-evident’ (146-147). Rather than natural forces actively striving for an equilibrium, Kricher says, ‘the overwhelming trend is of dynamic continual change’. This is the kind of metaphor targeted by Reynolds in the epilogue, when he exhorts readers to ‘resist a reactionary embrace of alternative “holistic” metaphors that might sound more humane and spiritually uplifting than the mechanistic and engineering metaphors currently in vogue in many areas of the life sciences, but that promote an unhelpful obscurantism’ and that ‘public understanding of science is, at least in part, a struggle over metaphors’ (186-187). This reveals the tension between precision, unexciting ‘technomorphic’ metaphors that liken biological phenomena to technology, and more palatable human-centric or anthropomorphic language – a complex negotiation, he concedes, in his concluding remarks on whether scientists should avoid metaphorical language (185).
Chapter eight, titled ‘Biomedicine’, assesses competing metaphors available for genome splicing and editing, and shows the importance of judicious metaphor selection. Reynolds hones in on the obvious metaphor used to describe genomic editing – that is, CRISPR ‘scissors’ or ‘cut-and-paste’ models. He broaches infectious disease researcher Elinor Hortle’s concerns that this metaphor implies certainty of outcome, while, as she vividly illustrates, the complex causality of the process is more like ‘attempting to prevent soccer hooligans from rioting in a city by manipulating a bit of the online code for the FIFA rule book’ (168). This ‘malware’ metaphor is a better fit, as it showcases the multiplicity of outcomes for the process – which includes ‘polygenic disease, incomplete penetrance, missense/nonsense mutations, epigenetic silencing, genetic compensation, off-target and germline effects’ (169). The notion of ‘editing’ genes almost certainly affects scientists’ assessment of the goals and process of their work. Metaphors can thus prove to be ‘prescriptive and performative’ for the science practitioner (180).
The discussion converges on two important objectives of science, mirrored by corresponding choices of metaphor – representing (scientific) reality and facilitating the manipulation of reality. Reynolds illustrates how both are served and done a disservice; in doing so, he achieves the unique feat of writing a book for the lay scientific-minded reader as well as the seasoned scientist. One may gain insight into how the processes of scientific ideation may turn on a word; while the other is given a duty of care to tread carefully in the act of naming things that may go on to fulfil the word’s inner semantic destiny(ies).
Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences is a denser book than its slim size may indicate, unpacking many fundamental concepts with impact beyond biology. This might leave some pet metaphors out in the cold, disproved and deracinated. In my opinion, however, a more truthful language of science does not conflict with, and even expands, scope for the literary imagination. Terms evoked by Reynolds such as the ‘intrinsically disordered proteins’, proteins as ‘melted solids’ or ‘dense liquids’, and the nebulae of the ‘molecular storm’ display untapped potential for both scientific and linguistic experimentation. The literature-loving reader is invited to explore a new territory, metaphor in hand.
Sravya Darbhamulla, Archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS)
1 Tell all the truth but tell it slant– Emily Dickinson
2 Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), p.8.
