Entanglements between language, science, and worldviews

ABSTRACT

This introduction offers a synoptic overview of some of Evelyn Fox Keller's influential works on the role and nature of metaphor in science, followed by a short précis of each of the contributed papers.

KEYWORDS:

• Evelyn Fox Keller
• metaphor
• classical genetics
• Mendelian genetics
• program
• agency
• information
• Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Marga Vicedo is an historian and philosopher of science, primarily biology. She is interested in the history and philosophy of genetics, evolution, and animal research in the twentieth century. She is also interested in how ideas from biology are used in other fields such as psychology and the social sciences. Her 2013 book The Nature and Nurture of Mother Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America (University of Chicago Press) situates scientific views about maternal care and love in their historical context and provides a critical analysis of the ethological theory of attachment behavior. Her forthcoming book Intelligent Love: The Story of Clara Park, Her Autistic Daughter, and the Refrigerator Mother (Beacon) documents the way that Clara Park's groundbreaking and defiant study of her own autistic daughters' behaviour changed medical and popular attitudes toward autism. Vicedo is a Professor at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto.

Denis M. Walsh is a philosopher of biology. His work concentrates on philosophical issues arising from evolutionary theory. In particular he is interested in the various modes of scientific explanation evident in biology. He is currently involved in a collaborative project entitled Agency in Living Systems with biology laboratories in U. Indiana, Wesleyan, Stanford U, and U. Helsinki. His book Organisms, Agency, and Evolution (2015 Cambridge UP), calls for a re-evaluation of the place of organisms, construed as naturally purposive entities in evolutionary biology. He is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy, the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto.

Notes

1 See Pollitzer (2017).