Blends and connective modeling in mathematics
As mentioned briefly in the opening chapter, it was Max Black (1962) who put forward the notion that scientific models are basically metaphors or the result of metaphorical thinking. Science, as Black elaborated, is essentially an attempt to render visible those things we can never see with our eye – atoms, sound waves, gravitational forces, magnetic fields, etc. The trace to this “inner vision” is metaphor. This is why sound waves are said to undulate through empty space like water waves ripple through a still pond; atoms to leap from one quantum state to another; electrons to travel in circles around an atomic nucleus; and so on.
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