Introduces the diverse roles metaphors play in the life sciences and highlights their significance for theory, communication, and education.

Covering a range of metaphors from a diverse field of sciences, from cell and molecular biology to evolution, ecology, and biomedicine, Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences explores the positive and negative implications of the widespread use of metaphors in the biological and life sciences. From genetic codes, programs, and blueprints, to cell factories, survival of the fittest, the tree of life, selfish genes, and ecological niches, to genome editing with CRISPR's molecular scissors, metaphors are ubiquitous and vital components of the modern life sciences. But how exactly do metaphors help scientists to understand the objects they study? How can they mislead both scientists and laypeople alike? And what should we all understand about the implications of science's reliance on metaphorical speech and thought for objective knowledge and adequate public policy informed by science? This book will literally help you to better understand the metaphorical dimensions of science.

This appealing title helps children identify and understand the meaning of metaphors. Examples familiar to children are used to help them learn how to decode this often tricky figurative language form and distinguish it from a simile. Understanding metaphors will expand children's reading comprehension and give them skills to add creativity to their writing.

Understanding Careers: The Metaphors of Working Lives uses a unique framework of nine archetypal metaphors to encapsulate the field of career studies. Using an easy-to-read style, author Kerr Inkson examines key concepts, illustrating them with over 50 authentic career cases, to build an excellent bridge between theory and “real life.”

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Grammar, Style, Working Technique, grade: 3,0, University of Freiburg, language: English, abstract: “Metaphor has a long and controversial history, going back at least to the views of Aristotle, who spoke both of metaphor’s brilliance and dangers. However, discussions of metaphor continued to be the realm of philosophers and poets until the birth of disciplines of linguistics and verbal learning.” [Mey: 1676] As time went by, more and more researchers showed their interest in the mysterious topic of metaphor and started to carry on researches. While Aristotle limited metaphors to four types, which are (1) genus for species (e.g. “my ship stands here”), (2) species for genus (e.g. “ten thousand noble deeds has Odysseus accomplished”), (3) species to species (“drawing off the life with bonze” & “cutting with slender-edges bronze”) and (4) analogy (‘b’ to ‘a’ as ‘d’ is to ‘c’: e.g. “the day’s old age” & “life’s sunset”) [comp. Pramling], subsequent researchers came up with several new theories and undertook many studies to support their ideas concerning the question of how human beings are able to understand metaphors and which areas of the brain are involved in processing metaphorical data. The publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s work in 1980 changed the research concerning metaphors significantly and shifted it to a search for general cognitive principles. The new idea was that „metaphor is largely a matter of thought“. [Hadl: 27]

Metaphors show students how to make connections between the concrete and the abstract, prior knowledge and unfamiliar concepts, and language and image. But teachers must learn how to use metaphors and analogies strategically and for specific purposes, helping students discover and deconstruct effective comparisons. Metaphors & Analogies is filled with provocative illustrations of metaphors in action and practical tips.

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.