It reminded of something I heard recently, that, if you ask an average class of high school chemistry students what the colour of oxygen is, the majority will respond "red!". Whether true or not I'm unsure, however the issue of analogy and metaphor in science is a long standing one.
I suspect it is so ubiquitous that for the most part it goes completely unnoticed - exhibit (A) the ball and stick diagram. Some more examples which come to mind: "polar molecules prefer polar solvents" or "an excited atom will relax into it's ground state" or "viruses are alien invaders which attempt to hijack a cells translation machinery, engaging it in a struggle to the death".
I certainly think there is a place for analogy and metaphor in teaching and thinking about scientific concepts. However, my suspicion is that it's often taken too far and becomes an intrenched part of a fields vocabulary, helping to propagate common misconceptions.
I do agree. Some analogies used as teaching tools are far too broad and and quite often provide incorrect information in order to make concepts easier to understand - for example, first year chemistry courses. For example "certain atoms are more greedy when it comes to electrons".
ReplyDeleteAnother big example which always bothered me was the term "hydrophobic". A lipid molecule, for instance, is not actually "afraid" of interacting with water. It's that water "prefers" to interact with itself, due to hydrogen bonding and increase entropy.
It is sad when analogies are equated as the truth easily observed in a model without knowing the science behind why it is like that.
ReplyDeleteSure analogies can help simplify in absorbing the theories with ease just to prepare for an exam, but it just lessens the science behind the model.