Uskoković Vuk
Advanced Materials and Nanobiotechnology Laboratory, Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, 851 South Morgan Street, Chicago, IL 60607-7052, USA
J Mater Educ. 2014 Apr;36(1-2):25-50.
Every time we communicate our science, we are involuntarily involved in an educational activity, affecting the listeners' methodology and motivation. In a beautiful metaphor, late Nobel Laureate, Richard E. Smalley compared interacting atoms and molecules to boys and girls falling in love. Elaborated and exemplified with a couple of entertaining analogies in this discourse is the effectiveness of the use of metaphors in illustrating scientific concepts to both scientific novices and peers. Human brain has been considered to be a complex neural circuitry for the computation of metaphors, which explains the naturalness of their usage, especially when solid arguments could be given in support of the thesis that scientific imagery in general presents a collection of mathematically operable metaphors. On top of this, knowledge could be enriched through logic alone, but new concepts could be learned only through analogies. The greater pervasion of metaphors in scientific presentations could boost their inspirational potential, make the audience more attentive and receptive to their contents, and, finally, expand their educational prospect and enable their outreach to a far broader audience than it has been generally accomplished.
每次我们传播科学知识时，都不由自主地参与到一项教育活动中，影响着听众的方法和动机。已故诺贝尔奖获得者理查德·E·斯莫利用了一个美妙的比喻，将相互作用的原子和分子比作坠入爱河的男孩和女孩。本文通过几个有趣的类比详细阐述并举例说明了隐喻在向科学新手和同行阐释科学概念方面的有效性。人类大脑被认为是一个用于计算隐喻的复杂神经回路，这解释了隐喻使用的自然性，尤其是当能够给出有力论据支持科学意象总体上呈现出一组可进行数学运算的隐喻这一论点时。除此之外，知识仅通过逻辑就能得到丰富，但新概念只有通过类比才能学到。隐喻在科学展示中的更广泛应用可以提升其启发潜力，使听众更专注并更容易接受其内容，最终，拓展其教育前景，使其能够触及比以往更广泛的受众。
