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can't automatically be classified with mere name-calling; for warrant
depends in part on each scientist's grounds for assuming the compe–
tence of the others on whose work he depends-a thought that put me
in mind of the trouble I sometimes get myself into when I take up an
airline magazine crossword where the passenger before me left off. Nor
is clear presentation of evidence very aptly described as "logic," for
formal-logical cogency, though necessary, is not sufficient. Not only
does evidence ramify in all directions in a structure more like a cross–
word puzzle than a logical proof, but-the point that will most inter–
est the serious student of scientific language-supportiveness of
evidence is vocabulary-sensitive.
Scientific inquiry is hampered without good terminology, and good
scientific terminology is itself an achievement of inquiry, dense with the–
ory: a non-proteinaceous substance in the nucleus of cells is dubbed
"nuclein," and later comes to be known as "nucleic acid"; then "des–
oxyribose nucleic acid," later called "deoxyribose nucleic acid," then
"deoxyribonucleic acid," or just plain "DNA," is identified; then "pen–
tose nucleic acid" is specified as "ribose nucleic acid," then "ribonucleic
acid," subsequently acknowledged to be acids, in the plural, and to be
found mostly not in the nucleus but in the cytoplasm; and then, almost
a century after "nuclein" was coined, we had "transfer RNA," "mes–
senger RNA," and so on.
Since theory is fallible, scientific terminology may be bad as well as
good, and sometimes fails to pick out anything real. As theories are
modified, meanings will shift, and translation of a later theory into the
vocabulary of an earlier one may be possible only by way of clumsy cir–
cumlocution. This argues in favor of a modest form of what philoso–
phers of scientific language call the "meaning-variance thesis," but
offers no encouragement to the idea that supposedly rival theories are
invariably incommensurable.
Scientific metaphors run the gamut from merely picturesque speech
to serious speculative instrument. The cognitive usefulness of those seri–
ous metaphors, in scientific inquiry as elsewhere, is to direct speculation
into new avenues; their worth, therefore, depends on the fruitfulness of
the intellectual territory to which those avenues lead. Some scientific
metaphors call on familiar social phenomena; but my reasonable
rhetorician will resist the temptation to judge their worth by reference
to the desirability or otherwise of the social phenomenon in question.
If,
for example, he takes an interest in Hamilton's metaphor of parental
investment-described by Trivers as "the most important advance in
evolutionary theory since the work of Charles Darwin and Gregor
