Images, morphology and metaphors in biomedical research

Paolo VINEIS
2017 Azafea: Revista de Filosofía  
Some of the key discoveries of the last two centuries of biomedical research can be represented through a sequence of influential images that were originally powerful metaphors. Metaphor, as a model of proposition that includes the two extreme types of diaphor and epiphor, can serve the purpose of representing knowledge in a dynamic way. Metaphors are images, and therefore they have an intrinsic morphological component but of a special kind: ambiguous. The idea, originally suggested by
more » ... ein and then elaborated by MacCormac and Rosch, that all objects corresponding to the word chair are not a fixed prototype is crucial to understand how the model of abstraction of an essence from observable entities can be abandoned.
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