Mathematics as Metaphor

Mathematics as Metaphor
Author: I͡U. I. Manin
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2007
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0821843311

Includes essays that are grouped in three parts: Mathematics; Mathematics and Physics; and, Language, Consciousness, and Book reviews. This book is suitable for those interested in the philosophy and history of mathematics, physics, and linguistics.

How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science

How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science
Author: Anke Beger
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2020-04-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902726144X

Metaphors are essential to scientists themselves and strongly influence science communication. Through careful analyses of metaphors actually used in science texts, recordings, and videos, this book explores the essential functions of conceptual metaphor in the conduct of science, teaching of science, and how scientific ideas are promoted and popularized. With an accessible introduction to theory and method this book prepares scientists, science teachers, and science writers to take advantage of recent shifts in metaphor theories and methods. Metaphor specialists will find theoretical issues explored in studies of bacteriology, cell reproduction, marine biology, physics, brain function and social psychology. We see the degree of conscious or intentional use of metaphor in shaping our conceptual systems and constraining inferences. Metaphor sources include social structure, embodied experience, abstract or mathematical formulations. The results are sometimes innovative hypotheses and robust conclusions; other times pedagogically useful, if inaccurate, stepping stones or, at worst, misleading fictions. As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.

Physics and Literature

Physics and Literature
Author: Aura Heydenreich
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2021-12-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110481251

Physics and Literature is a unique collaboration between physicists, literary scholars, and philosophers, the first collection of essays to examine together how science and literature, beneath their practical differences, share core dimensions – forms of questioning, thinking, discovering and communicating insights.This book advances an in-depth exploration of relations between physics and literature from both perspectives. It turns around the tendency to discuss relations between literature and science in one-sided and polarizing ways. The collection is the result of the inaugural conference of ELINAS, the Erlangen Center for Literature and Natural Science, an initiative dedicated to building bridges between literary and scientific research. ELINAS revitalizes discussion of science-literature interconnections with new topics, ideas and angles, by organizing genuine dialogue among participants across disciplinary lines. The essays explore how scientific thought and practices are conditioned by narrative and genre, fiction, models and metaphors, and how science in turn feeds into the meaning-making of literary and philosophical texts. These interdisciplinary encounters enrich reflections on epistemology, cognition and aesthetics.

Metaphor in Communication, Science and Education

Metaphor in Communication, Science and Education
Author: Francesca Ervas
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2017-08-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110549921

This collection of papers presents some recent trends in metaphor studies that propose new directions of research on the embodied cognition perspective. The overall volume, in particular, shows how the embodied cognition still remains a relevant approach in a multidisciplinary research on the communicative side of metaphors, by focusing on both comprehension processes in science as well as learning processes in education.

The Trouble with Physics

The Trouble with Physics
Author: Lee Smolin
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2006
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780618551057

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Surfaces and Essences

Surfaces and Essences
Author: Douglas Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2013-04-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0465018475

Shows how analogy-making pervades human thought at all levels, influencing the choice of words and phrases in speech, providing guidance in unfamiliar situations, and giving rise to great acts of imagination.

First You Build a Cloud

First You Build a Cloud
Author: K. C. Cole
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1999
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780156006460

Demystifying physics in a fascinating read, "First You Build a Cloud" does for physics what the bestselling "The Universe and the Teacup" did for math.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Author: Marisha Pessl
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2006-08-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101218800

The mesmerizing bestseller that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock—A New York Times Ten Best Book of the Year Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit. At the center of the novel is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel—with visual aids drawn by the author—that has won over readers of all ages.