Try a change in metaphor (Gould)

July 5th, 2007  |  Published in Quotes, Science, Writing

When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor—not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies “out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.

–Stephen Jay Gould, “Glow, Big Glowworm” in Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History (1991), p. 264

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