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Time is money. We spend it wisely, invest it in projects, and waste it on lazy afternoons.

Our idea of time as money colors how we think about and conceptualize time. It even influences what we decide to do with our time. By emphasizing the similarities between time and money, we minimize the ways in which time and money are not alike.

“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another,” write linguists and philosophers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. In Metaphors We Live By, the pair pushes us beyond the common conception of metaphor as a literary or rhetorical device, arguing that human thought processes and the very concepts we discuss are often metaphorical.

Metaphorical concepts

We’ve talked before about how systems thinking can help us grasp metaphorical connections. 

Lakoff and Johnson introduce something called the “systematicity of metaphorical concepts,” where we systematically apply the vocabulary of one concept to the concept for which it serves as a metaphor. For example, we often think of war in terms of argument: attacking, defending, and countering our opponent’s positions. 

This borrowed language then colors our concept of the analogue. While metaphors can help us more fully appreciate certain qualities, “a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor,” they write. 

Thus, we ignore the ways in which argument can be collaborative and constructive; the fact that once time has been spent, it can’t be earned back; and so forth. 

Metaphors for science

What about the metaphors we use to think and talk about science—might they be falling short?

Take the equation of truth and light, for an example. 

A quick search turns up dozens of cases of scientists and researchers “illuminating” this and that. Some are punny, involving literal illumination (by means of fluorescent probes, for example), but many others are not (scientists illuminate battery mechanics, or researchers illuminate demographic gaps in test scores). 

To illuminate means to brighten with light. Setting aside real issues of accessibility, there’s democratic implication here: light makes things visible so that everyone can see them. 

This logic might apply when you’re discovering Australia’s heaviest insect. But the linguist S.I. Hayakawa distinguishes between reports of things we see directly and inferences, which are statements based on reports.

“In some areas of thought, such as geology, paleontology and nuclear physics, reports are the foundations, but inferences—and inferences upon inferences—form the main body of the science,” Hayakawa writes. Especially today, it takes specialized learning and interpretation, as well as some very expensive equipment, to “see” what most scientists see. 

In our speech, we ask people to trust in scientists’ interpretations (often to the dismissal of their own experience; Stuart Chase wrote, "Common sense tells us that the world is flat”); but with our words, we say, “Anyone can see for themselves.”

Perhaps it’s time to move beyond this terminology to find some new conceptual metaphors—ones that lay bare the more creative, interpretive, rigorous, and community-centered aspects of science.

Check out:

• Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

• This paper on metaphors in science by Cynthia Taylor and Bryan M. Dewsbury

• Language in Thought in Action by S.I. Hayakawa

• Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability by Brendon Larson

• This editorial by Holden Thorp about science as convergence vs. consensus