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SCIENCE STUDIES EVENTS
THE ROLE OF METAPHOR IN THE DISCUSSION
OF NANOTECHNOLOGY
Joseph Pitt
Department of Philosophy
Virginia Tech
April 4, 2006
Tuesday, 12:30pm-2:00pm
Sumwalt College, Room 102
New Ideas can be troubling in a variety of ways. In many cases we
understand that they pose a challenge to the status quo, but we are not
really sure what that challenge is. Nor do we know how to judge the claims,
positive and negative, made by proponents and detractors. The proponents of
new ideas have often employed metaphors to make the unfamiliar appear less
threatening. Metaphors are used to explain the unfamiliar by appealing to
the familiar and drawing connections between them in ways thought to
illuminate and demystify the unfamiliar. In this presentation, I look at
the use of metaphor in two different oddly similar cases to see if they are
successful in explaining the new and making us feel better about it. The
first case is Galileo's appeal to both geometry and the Venetian water
barges to develop a theory of the tides that in turn can only be explained
by appealing to the motion of the earth. The second is Richard Smalley's
attack on the feasibility of nanobots. As we shall see, both arguments are
striking similar in form. We know Galileo's argument fails -- but what about
Smalley's?
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