Beyond the Dichotomy of Literal and Metaphorical Language in the Context of Contemporary Physics

1 Introduction

In his book Object-Oriented Ontology, philosopher Graham Harman claims that science is of limited utility in providing a metaphysical scheme for all that exists due to its scientific materialism, reductionism, and literalism. He is speaking in the context of a metaphysical framework of the same name, which expands the notion of an object into a four-fold structure, or a quadruple object. One can refer to four distinct aspects of the quadruple object: the real object, which is the thing-in-itself, without relation to other objects; the sensual object, the object as it is in relation to others; fixed real qualities of the object which determine what type of object it belongs to; and impermanent sensual qualities through which the object interacts with others. To make the distinction between the two types of objects clear, Harman suggests, “[w]hen speaking of objects in their own right, let’s speak of real objects. But when speaking instead of the realm in which objects have no inwardness but are nothing more than correlates of our experience, let’s speak of sensual objects.”^[1] Real qualities of an object are those that “cannot be stripped from the sensual object without destroying it, and since they are withdrawn from all sensual access, limited to oblique approaches by the intellect.”^[2] Nodding to Husserl, he notes that real qualities are never entirely present, but are “[g]rasped only by categorical and not sensuous intuition.”^[3]

In Harman’s view, science is concerned with real qualities rather than real objects, presumably because it is an empirical enterprise; and real qualities “turn out to be only relatively different from sensual qualities, since they are entirely commensurable with some form of human access: namely, scientific knowledge.”^[4] With their focus limited to qualities, be it real or sensual, scientists pursue knowledge with the assumption that “everything that exists must be able to be stated accurately in literal propositional language.”^[5] To illustrate his point, Harman suggests an example from astronomy: providing a proper name for a neutron star is of little value, “[b]ut the more you do your job as a scientist, the more you are able to replace the vague, place-holding name of this neutron star with the list of definite qualities proven to belong to it.”^[6]

Leaving aside questions of metaphysics, materialism, and reductionism, in this article, I focus on Harman’s claim that scientific pursuit adheres to literalism. He adopts the dichotomy of literal and metaphorical language, which goes roughly as follows. Literalism “holds that a thing can be exhausted by a hypothetical perfect description of that thing, whether in prose or in mathematical formalization.”^[7] Literal language can never capture the real object, which is withdrawn from direct access, but can only provide a description of sensual qualities:

If we weigh and measure a thing, describe its physical properties, or note its objective position in space-time, these qualities hold good for the thing only insofar as it is relates to us or to something else. In short, the thing as portrayed by the natural sciences is the thing made dependent on our knowledge, and not in its untamed, subterranean reality.^[8]

By contrast, metaphorical language does not supply us with ideas about an object’s qualities, but rather gives us “something like the thing in its own right: the infamous thing-in-itself.”^[9]

I feel conflicted by this characterization of scientific language. While I recognize that the empirical nature of science makes it primarily concerned with the qualities of objects, I find Harman’s characterization overly simplistic, perhaps even caricatured version of how scientists engage with knowledge. When teaching physics, I face the challenge of communicating to students how to interpret what is written on a textbook page and what it actually tells us about the world. We wave our arms, literally and metaphorically, as we talk about phenomena beyond the reach of our senses. The scene is the same, though perhaps a bit more restrained, at research group meetings and scientific conferences. As we engage in the creation and interpretation of scientific prose, we reach for analogies, images, and even vocalizations to make sense of what is being presented. Many physical processes studied by contemporary physicists are withdrawn from us because they are too small, too large, too fast, too slow, too far in space, or in time; or because they have properties which we can neither sense nor measure directly, not even in principle. We construct elaborate experimental schemes to tease out some of the features of such physical systems, always in indirect ways. To our bewilderment, some scientific models which make accurate predictions also defy common sense and intuition which we rely on in everyday life. Integrating them fully into our existing understanding of the world, both scientific and personal, requires non-trivial mental stretching that is not always purely intellectual. The characterization of scientific language as literal feels too restrictive.

At the same time, Harman’s dichotomy opens the possibility of considering scientific explanation as a metaphor. It is not uncommon to hear scientists refer to particular models as metaphors, though often what is meant by a metaphor in scientific contexts is more of a functional analogy with limited applicability. Furthermore, physicists, philosophers of science, and historians of science have noted the role of aesthetics in scientific judgment,^[10] some going as far as to fault aesthetic preferences for leading astray researchers who study physical systems inaccessible to currently available experimental methods.^[11] In this essay, I examine in a systematic way the possibility that scientific theories function as metaphors in a poetic sense, with all the aesthetic layers that such use implies. Limiting myself to the context of contemporary fundamental physics, I do so with two goals: to identify elements of scientific practice which show that Harman’s claim of strict adherence to literalism is premature and to outline an argument that at least some physical theories constitute complex metaphors based on Harman’s own definition of the same.

To assess how the literal/metaphorical dichotomy of language may apply to scientific theories, one must go beyond particular scientific claims, especially those made in texts aimed at the general public.^[12] Taking a closer look at the scientific inquiry as it is lived day-to-day, we recognize its two domains: the work of individual scientists, each endeavoring to understand for themselves some aspect of the physical world, and their collective efforts to reach a consensus on a range of topics, from proper methodology to the meaning of their theories. Although inseparable and in continuous exchange, the individual and the collective work are different in nature, in part because one is private and the other public. Both are relevant to our discussion.

A closer inspection of individual and collective inquiry suggests that, even though physicists make specific propositional claims and may even strive for a literal description of the physical world, the dichotomy of literal and metaphorical language as advanced by Harman cannot be applied cleanly and definitively, at least not in the context of contemporary physics, for the following reasons. At the individual level, first-person accounts indicate that learning, understanding, and problem-solving in physics involve unconscious processes, as well as non-linguistic elements that are integral to the scientific pursuit. As I discuss in Section 2, the former are beyond our reach, while the role of the latter, which include visual, auditory, and kinesthetic kinds, is largely understudied. Characterizing them as belonging to literal language is premature. One may expect that communication between physicists, whether oral or in writing, filters out such elements, leaving us only with collectively accepted propositional statements and mathematical formalism that are meant to be interpreted literally. That this is not the case I show through three considerations, which I briefly summarize below and take up in more depth in Section 3.

First, the extent of the use of non-linguistic elements in scientific discourse suggests that it is as integral to the collaborative aspects of scientific work as it is to the individual. Their function is varied but goes beyond simple representation that is meant to be taken literally or even as an approximate model of the physical world. Second, there are examples of theories, such as quantum mechanics, which employ mathematical formalism that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Physicists disagree on what constitutes the correct interpretation of the theory, the majority carrying on without committing to one at all. Yet this range of ontological commitments, which includes indifference to interpretation, does not prevent productive collaborations of researchers from different factions. Finally, the collectively accepted opus of physical theories includes incompatible theories describing the same physical object, such as an electron. Such incompatibility is acceptable because theories aren’t meant to be taken as literal descriptions of physical phenomena.

These considerations suggest that physicists don’t adhere to literalism as strictly as Harman would think. It then seems natural to ask whether scientific language is metaphorical. In Section 4, I take an additional step and venture to show that physical theories are complex structures, at least some of which can be considered metaphors according to Harman’s own criteria.

2 The Individual Scientific Practice

In the early twentieth century, French mathematician Jacques Hadamard was intrigued by the nature of discovery in mathematics, with a special interest in unexpected insights that seem to appear out of nowhere. Inspired by and building on the work of mathematician and theoretical physicist Henri Poincaré, Hadamard drew on literature in psychology, history of mathematics, and first- and second-person accounts of working mathematicians and scientists, to illuminate the process of inquiry in mathematics and science more broadly. Considering that mathematics is an essential element of contemporary physics research, Hadamard’s insights are relevant to our discussion. His book, The Mathematician’s Mind: The Psychology of Invention in The Mathematical Field, contains two particularly helpful points.^[13]

The first point is the role of unconscious mental activity in the process of inquiry. Based on the reported experiences of researchers, including his own, Hadamard proposes that the processes of discovery that involve sudden insights consist of several distinct stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verifying/precising. During the preparatory stage, the researcher does the conscious work of solving a problem, which may or may not yield a result. In some cases of failure, if this preparatory work is intense and followed by a period during which the researcher is not consciously engaging with the problem, a solution (or at least a pathway to it) arrives in the form of a sudden illumination. Hadamard suggests that this break from conscious work provides the “incubation” period, during which the researcher continues to work entirely unconsciously. As historians of science Loraine Daston and Peter Galison note in their book on the history of objectivity in science, Hadamard was only one of many concerned with the role of unconscious processes in scientific inquiry.^[14] Given that such processes are currently beyond access, it is impossible to determine whether they are bound by literal language.

The second relevant point is the role of non-linguistic conscious thinking, of which Hadamard cites a number of examples, including his own experience: “I insist that words are totally absent from my mind when I really think […] even after reading or hearing a question, every word disappears at the very moment I am beginning to think it over; words do not reappear in my consciousness before I have accomplished or given up the research […].”^[15] He also relays how a mathematician “Jessie Douglas generally thinks without words or algebraic signs. Eventually, his research thought is in connection with words, but only with their rhythm, a kind of Morse language where only the numbers of syllables of some words appear.”^[16] Finally, Hadamard reports Albert Einstein’s response to his questions, of which is worth including a lengthy quote:

The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined.

There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought—before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.^[17]

Einstein continues, “The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.”^[18]

Affirming Hadamard’s work some twenty years later, Nobel prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner reflects on the importance of the unconscious and non-linguistic thinking in physics:

Poincaré and Hadamard have recognized that, unlike most thinking which goes on in the upper consciousness, the really relevant mathematical thinking is not done in words. In fact, it happens somewhere so deep in the subconscious that the thinker is usually not even aware of what is going on inside of him.

It is my opinion that the role of subconscious thinking is equally important in other sciences, that it is decisive even in the solution of apparently trivial technical details. An experimentalist friend once told me (this was some twenty years ago) that if he could not find the leak in his vacuum system he usually felt like going for a walk, and very often, when he returned from the walk, he knew exactly where the leak was.^[19]

The experiences documented by Hadamard are perhaps explainable by theories of embodied cognition, which stand in opposition to the traditional, computational theories of cognition. The computational theories posit that thinking involves abstract symbols divorced from any physical experiences which generated them. There are a number of alternative embodied theories of cognition, unified by the view that cognitive processes involve the interactions of the body with the environment and are represented in the brain non-abstractly.^[20] It would appear that experiences described by Hadamard illustrate how researchers working with abstract mathematical objects or physical processes that lie beyond sensory perception use elements of their direct experience to reason about the intangible objects. In reflecting on the work of physicist Michael Faraday, who made extensive use of visualization, David Gooding writes about the value of Faraday's integration of various sensory modalities:

New empirical evidence emerges from the interaction of visual, tactile, kinaesthetic and auditory modes of perception together with existing interpretative concepts that integrate different types of knowledge and experience. Mental models that develop purely “in the mind’s eye” (without physically engaging the world) would lack this power to integrate (Tallis 2004). Visualisation works with other senses and capacities and with deliberative experimental manipulation to produce a phenomenology of interpretative images, objects and utterances.^[21]

The preceding discussion of personal experiences of working mathematicians and physicists shows that non-linguistic thinking is an integral part of scientific work. Harman’s account of scientific language fails to consider such elements, focusing instead on scientific prose and mathematical formalism. This is not surprising given the general scholarly neglect of the subjective aspects of scientific inquiry, as well as physicists’ heavy reliance on prose in scientific communication.

Hadamard acknowledges that non-linguistic work is followed by the verifying/precising stage of inquiry, during which the researcher attempts to express their reasoning and the result either with language or in mathematical form. So one may ask whether the verifying stage either eliminates the idiosyncratic non-linguistic aspects of mental activity or somehow converts them to propositional statements that are meant to be taken literally. As I discuss in the next section, the remnants of non-linguistic expression persist even at the collective level. Additionally, new challenges to the claim of literalism arise, namely the question of interpretation of a mathematical formalism and the collective acceptance of incompatible theories.

3 The Collective Scientific Practice

Three examples coming from contemporary physics show that physicists don’t strictly adhere to pure literalism even at the collective level, which I briefly state here before discussing them in more depth. The first example, though more of a feature, is the presence of non-linguistic representations that are essential for collaborative research practice. The examples of such representations go beyond mathematical descriptions to include visual, auditory, and even kinesthetic aspects. The second is the problem of interpretation of a physical theory, the poster child of which is quantum mechanics. While physicists generally agree that quantum mechanics is incredibly successful at explaining and predicting a certain set of phenomena, there is no consensus on what, if anything at all, it tells us about the nature of the physical world. The third example is the acceptance of incompatible theories describing the same physical object, which I discuss by considering how physicists understand and describe what we call an “electron.” I choose the electron because it is a familiar concept most scholars are introduced to as early as elementary school and because most physicists would not disagree that there is some physical phenomenon that manifests itself in different circumstances in enough consistent ways to be considered the object of the same kind.

4 Physical Theory as a Complex Metaphor

In Object-Oriented Ontology, Harman describes five features of a metaphor, which he develops based on the definition proposed by the Spanish poet José Ortega y Gasset.^[52] Below, I address each by considering the description of an electron in the framework of quantum mechanics and adopting, for the sake of simplicity, a version of a realist interpretation according to which the wave function tells us something about the electron itself. To illustrate the defining features of a metaphor, Harman uses the example of a simile penned by the poet López Picó, “the cypress is like the ghost of a dead flame.” There are two elements here, a “cypress tree” and a “dead flame.” In the position of the cypress tree, I place that entity which scientists call an electron, independent of any one particular theoretical description of it. It is something that exists in the world, which is beyond our direct human perception, but whose existence we infer from physical phenomena accessible either through direct perception, such as particle tracks in bubble chambers, or through readings of instruments, such as modern particle detectors. In the position of a “dead flame,” I place the wave function that aims to describe an electron according to quantum mechanics, and denote it by the Greek letter psi, Ψ, as it is customarily done in physics literature. The shorthand for my simile that parallels Picó’s is then “The electron is like Ψ,” where Ψ is a particular mathematical function that represents the state of an electron. Next, I show that this sentence could be considered a metaphor per Harman’s definition, and provide examples which indicate the presence and relevance of aesthetic judgments in scientific work.

First, Harman says that a metaphor does not try to give us perceptions of the object’s sensual qualities. As was discussed earlier, quantum mechanics describes the state of an electron by a wave function, which contains all the information that can be given about the electron. But the mathematical expression can’t possibly give us perceptions of an electron, at least not in any prescribed fashion. For one, some of the properties we ascribe to an electron, such as quantum spin, are phenomenologically inaccessible to a human body. Furthermore, electrons and mathematical wave functions are two entirely different types of objects which can’t resemble each other in any literal way. The former exists in the physical world, while the latter is an abstract mathematical object, technically a vector with complex number components living in an abstract mathematical space.

It is true that interpreting Ψ as the description of the state of an electron assigns a certain correspondence between the two. For example, the wave function will have a different form depending on the physical situation in which the electron finds itself, such as its interactions with other particles. It is also true that, regardless of its particular form, the wave function contains some numbers that correspond to the electron’s physical properties, such as its electric charge. But this correspondence between a particular physical system and its mathematical description that allows us to calculate and predict correct outcomes of experiments is not a given, but rather miraculous. In “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” Eugene Wigner considered such correspondence a mystery:

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.^[53]

It also turns out that particular forms of Ψ allow us to make definitive statements about some properties of the electron, but not of others. In general, it is impossible to determine the exact numerical values of certain pairs of qualities at the same time, such as position and momentum. One interpretation of this would be that an electron doesn’t possess definite values of these qualities at the same time, although it could acquire a definitive value of one or the other at a later time. For example, if the electron hits a screen, its wave function suddenly “collapses” to the form that gives a definite position value and an entirely indeterminate velocity. Yet, despite this change in the wave function, we’d still consider the electron to be one and the same. So while the wave function says something about the electron, it does not give us perceptions of the electron’s sensual qualities, even if we may form images that help us grapple with its meaning.

The second and third defining properties of a metaphor according to Harman describe the non-reciprocity and asymmetry of its elements.^[54] Non-reciprocity concerns the grammatical role of the two elements in a sentence; namely “cypress tree” is the grammatical subject, while “flame” is the grammatical object. The asymmetry arises from the fact that the metaphor attributes the qualities of one element to the object of the other element. Picó’s simile conjoins the cypress object with the qualities of a flame. Both features are found in the quantum mechanical description of the electron.

If the purpose of the scientific enterprise is to describe and explain physical phenomena, such intent by default creates a non-reciprocal relation between the electron, which is in the position of a grammatical subject, and the wave function, which is in the position of the grammatical object. The asymmetry arises in a similar fashion. One is looking at certain features of the wave function for clues about the electron. For example, the square of the value of Ψ at a particular point gives us the probability of finding the electron at that point – a quality of Ψ is interpreted as some property belonging to the electron. One could imagine an intellectual pursuit that aims to describe mathematical objects in terms of physical systems, but that would not be physics.

Harman’s fourth and fifth requirements for a metaphor concern the separateness of the two elements and the act of their coupling. In the framework of Object-Oriented Ontology, “cypress” of Picó’s simile is cypress-the-real-object. This is problematic for the execution of the metaphor because the real object is always withdrawn from direct access, leading to an “impossible case of disembodied flame-qualities floating in literary space with no object.”^[55] How is one to attach the sensible qualities of a flame to that which has no sensible qualities by definition? Harman proposes a solution in which we take on the role of the absent cypress, “If I do not step in and attempt the electrifying work of becoming the cypress-substance for the flame-qualities, then no metaphor occurs.”^[56] Furthermore, this act creates a new entity by fusing the human being and the withdrawn real object:

[T]he real object at stake in metaphor is neither the absent cypress-object to which we never gain direct access, nor the human being who takes note of it, but rather the new amalgamated reality formed from the reader (who poses as a cypress-object) and the qualities of the flame. These are the two components of the cypress-flame.^[57]

For Harman, the experience of a metaphor is “not cool or distant as the experience of knowledge is often said to be,” because through metaphor “we attach ourselves to the cypress more than ever, instead of claiming to wipe away those of its aspects that were ‘added by the mind’ and thereby give the cypress a distance from us.”^[58] The emphasis here is on the contrast between the depth of the engagement in the experience of a metaphor and the cold, detached experience of scientific knowledge. As I show next, observations of working physicists suggest that Harman’s fourth and fifth requirements are also fulfilled.

Scientific knowledge about the electron is not merely what exists in records, be it texts or images or sounds; rather it is a lived experience of a human being who is trying to understand the nature of this object we call an electron. In the case of a tree, there is an inherent ambiguity about whether the cypress in Picó’s simile refers to the real cypress or the sensual cypress; in the case of an electron, such distinction is harder to make because what physicists call an electron is withdrawn from the human senses from the get-go. And since science is a human pursuit, who else can step in to conjoin the withdrawn electron and the wave function, but the individual physicist engaged in the act of understanding?

While there isn’t much research on this aspect of scientific inquiry, such fusion has been described by the linguistic anthropologist Elinor Ochs and her collaborators who spent six months observing a group of physicists studying a physical system that is beyond direct human perception.^[59] Although in this study physicists were not researching the electron itself, the system under study exhibited quantum behavior. Ochs’s group recorded and analyzed both the language and gestures generated by physicists during their group meetings.

With regards to language, they observed physicist-centered and physics-centered language, already noted by prior studies. The physicist-centered language involved examples that describe the physicist acting on the system in some way or observing changes in the system. Physics-centered language involved clauses and sentences in which the physical system was the grammatical subject that is undergoing a change of state and even having a cognitive experience, the latter of which suggest that this was an example of the use of non-literal language. Both physicist- and physics-centered language assume the fundamental distinction between the physicist and the physical system under study. More interestingly, Ochs’ group recorded examples of grammar, which along with graphic and gestural representation, forms an indeterminate referential identity in which the boundary between the physicists and the physical system is blurred. This includes the phrase included in the article’s title, “When I come down I’m in the domain state” where the “coming down” refers to the motion in an abstract space of possible states of the physical system. Who or what is that entity moving through the space of states? Ochs et al. provide two strategies for interpreting such indeterminate referential identity. One strategy maintains the separateness between the physicist and the object of inquiry and attributes to the physicist the role of someone who is creating a change in the physical system. By such reading, “when I come down to the domain state” is meant to refer to an action by which the physicist acts on the physical system in a way that brings the system into the “domain state.”^[60] The other strategy, which the authors take to be correct, is that indeterminate constructions show that physicists take on the role of the physical system:

Indeterminate constructions are thus a resource which enables physicists to routinely manifest an extreme form of subjectivity by stepping into the universe of physical processes to take the perspective of physical constructs (i.e., to symbolically live their experiences). Like actors playing characters or reporters quoting others, however, while both voices are heard, the voice of the physicist is backgrounded, and that of the physical construct is foregrounded.^[61]

Furthermore, such indeterminate referents are not necessarily restricted to the speakers themselves. They often refer to a class of referents who may participate in these events – I, you, and we collectively can take on the qualities of the physical system.

Harman suggests that the act of coupling of the self, the withdrawn object, and the sensible qualities “goes a long way towards explaining the greater forcefulness and sincerity of genuine aesthetic experience compared with even the greatest precision of discursive prose scientific statements. In genuine aesthetic experience – which means simply the kind that does not bore us – we are not just observers, but place our chips on the casino table: or rather, we place ourselves on that table.”^[62] But as Ochs’ work suggests, and my own experience confirms, physicists do put themselves on that casino table, often in a communal experience.

As was mentioned in an earlier section, physicists frequently discuss their work with the help of visual aids and gestures as they speak. Ochs and colleagues conclude that such activities draw the participants into a complex communal space:

[I]ndeterminate constructions draw interlocutors into an intersection of multiple worlds, including the world of here-and-now interaction, the world of graphic space, and the world of physical events symbolically represented by the graphic display. It is as if interlocutors are able to situate themselves simultaneously on three referential planes through their talk and interaction yet never experience referential confusion as a result of this multi-leveled distribution of attention: physicists (1) attend to people and objects (especially graphic displays) in their meeting room, (2) carry out symbolic gestural motions within graphic representations, and, facilitated by these graphic representations and their own gestural enactments, (3) imagine themselves as physical systems in different physical states.^[63]

Participants in such discussions partake in a collective immersive experience that takes place on a fantastical stage that spans the physical and abstract spaces. Far from a dispassionate, detached inquiry described by Harman, achieving and communicating scientific understanding can be a dynamic, creative, and deeply embodied process that possesses all the elements which we associate with creation and understanding of metaphorical language.

One could question whether such experiences are genuinely aesthetic, in addition to being intellectual. While aesthetic aspects of scientific inquiry are largely understudied, they are nonetheless reported by practicing physicists and more recently addressed by philosophers of science.^[64]

For example, in Science and Method, mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré identifies aesthetic experience as essential to the process of discovery, particularly of the kind described by Hadamard. According to Poincaré, a good researcher uses intuition to identify one or a few out of innumerable possible solutions to a particular problem and only then proceeds to verify it. He observes that rules guiding such intuitive choices are “extremely subtle and delicate, and it is practically impossible to state them in precise language; they must be felt rather than be formulated.”^[65] This reference to feeling mirrors many reports discussed by Hadamard. Poincaré continues,

It may appear surprising that sensibility should be introduced in connexion with mathematical demonstrations, which, it would seem, can only interest the intellect. But not if we bear in mind the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and form and of geometric elegance. It is a real aesthetic feeling that all true mathematicians recognize, and this is truly sensibility.^[66]

For Poincaré, it is this aesthetic sensibility that sets a true discoverer from a mathematician who relies solely on intellect.

In the introduction to a collection of essays On Aesthetics in Science, art historian Judith Wechsler writes “Aesthetic sensibility also enters the appreciative mode. For the majority of practicing scientists, aesthetic criteria enter in the ways we grasp an idea, understand how a principle operates, or how a solution was found.”^[67] And one need not be an expert to have that experience. Surprise, awe, joy, even disbelief, often vocalized as a gasp or a sigh of contentment, by a student who has after a long struggle and frustration reached an understanding, suggest that a transformative aesthetic experience has taken place.

Aesthetic judgment sometimes also guides the collective scientific pursuit in physics. In an essay on the role of aesthetics in science, philosopher Catherine Elgin writes, “[s]cientists seek symmetry; they favor simplicity; they strive for systematicity; they appreciate elegance.”^[68] She argues that these are aesthetic qualities, but questions their relation to the truth-value of a theory and concludes that aesthetic judgments are invoked as “gatekeepers” in the selection of one model or a theory over another. The influence of such judgments is significant, even contentious in some subfields. For example, the reliance on symmetry as a guiding principle for the development of theories that extend the Standard Model has led the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder to write a book titled Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray.^[69]

These reports of aesthetic elements in contemporary physics show that research in this field is not exclusively guided by the intellect. The experience of knowledge in the context of contemporary physics is far from cool and distant – the nature of the subject necessitates the use of non-literal language, calls for metaphorical description, and demands of the physicist to be present in embodied ways, often charged with emotion.

5 Conclusion

What I hope to have achieved in the preceding pages is to provide an account of scientific inquiry in the context of contemporary physics that shows how scientific language doesn’t always fall cleanly on one or the other side of the literal/metaphorical dichotomy. Particular scientific statements, such as “electron is an elementary particle,” frequently have a form of propositional claims that could be taken literally. However, such claims are usually only parts of richer theoretical descriptions. To formulate, reason about, and communicate their theories, physicists go beyond simple propositional prose to include mathematical formalism and non-linguistic elements. Any claim of strict literalism in science ought to account for these elements. If we dig a bit deeper into the meaning of particular claims which have a form of propositional statements, we find that some resist a literal interpretation as claims about the physical world, serving perhaps a different function. On the other hand, stepping back to consider a larger body of physical theories shows that the collective opus of theories includes concurrently accepted, yet inconsistent descriptions of the same object, though in different contexts. This seems only possible if, despite appearances, such descriptions aren’t actually interpreted literally. It is an exciting prospect, for it opens the door for further investigation into the nature of scientific claims and the possibility of expanding our understanding of scientific language to include metaphors. A better understanding of scientific language would add to the broader discussions on ontology and epistemology in the context of physical sciences, and perhaps lead to changes to the ways in which physicists think about their work.

As the first step, I provided an account of how at least one scientific description of a physical system could be said to have the form of a metaphor. This contribution adds to the existing, yet still developing work on the role of aesthetics in science, by taking a systematic approach in the framework posed by Harman. But that is only one of many possible lines of inquiry on the role of metaphorical language in science. My hope is that this discussion will allow us to begin to think of scientific inquiry, in at least some cases, as a form of artistic practice, a mixture of intentional and unintentional creative acts, the content of which goes beyond the literal language or mathematical description.