Conversations in <i>Isis</i> about the Usefulness of Metaphors

If we look at Isis as an archive of research articles representing ways in which historians have written about science over the past century, then one changing practice can be found in discussions of the usefulness of metaphors in the history of the sciences. During the first half of Isis’s history, metaphors were represented in stable categories: image studies, scientific analogies, diffusion, and individual scientists associated with metaphor. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, tools drawn from sociology, feminism, and the history of literature, among others, created new discussions about how metaphors might be used. More recently, useful hybrids have further diversified the ways in which metaphors are discussed. Throughout the history of Isis, the usefulness of metaphors has been renegotiated in ways that suggest a periodization of metaphoric use and access to alternative histories of the sciences.