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Conference publications

Abstracts

XXIX conference

Metaphorical thinking: its language and its role in scientific cognition

Chernejko L.O.

Lomonosov Moscow State University

(accepted)

1.Scientific cognition and thinking inherits all attributes of everyday thinking adding scientific concepts as logical models of intentional objects reflecting the parameters of original object relevant to some scientific paradigm.

2. The main instrument of theoretical thinking is the term denoting the notion in its logiсal form - definition. It is supposed that terms should be monosemantic. should not have sinonyms and the scientific language as such should obey to formal logic.

3. But that is not enough due to objective reasons which we discuss basing on concepts existing in Russian philosophy of science (V. Nalimov and others) and regarding scientific intuition and myphlogy as the basement of rational cognition and logical thinking.

4. If Term represents the linguistic form and cognitive instrument.of logical thinking, then Metaphor plays the same role for scientific mythology, intuition.

5. The argument on the role of metaphysics in science and the balance of rational and irrational has a long history. But no scientific theory can be built without abstract metaphysical terms. And those terms cannot exist in the so called "lighted zone of consciousness" besides their likening to empirically apprehended items of the subject's experience. So the mechanism of metaphorical thinking as a way to comprehend an object is simple: it is always a projection of the unknown, unclear, unseen to the "pictorial plane" - to the world of more clear and well-known things. Abstract phenomena of intelligible world are always projected to items of a subject's of scientific school's experience. This must influence their verbalization. There are quite few special scientific verbs and adjectives, lack of them is compensated by borrowing from everyday language. Motivation of combinations of terms with common "non-scientific" predicates in an open issue.

6. We provide reasons why scientific mythology should be more widely discussed and studied.

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