Assessing metaphor as mediator between Christianity and science
Bibliographic record
Abstract
There are many studies on the mediating role of analogy and metaphor in science. But few address whether metaphor mediates between science and religion. This paper explores the implications of the work of Mary Hesse on metaphor for the interaction between scientific and religious knowledge. I focus on the mediating role of metaphor between science and Christianity because that was the focus of Mary Hesse. I take this interaction as a special case of the engagement of science and society. My thesis is that metaphor can mediate between science and religion and satisfy Hesse’s requirement that their relative independence be respected. After explaining my approach, I summarize Hesse’s views on science and religion. Next I show that standards of assessment of metaphors that mediate between science and religion are needed. Two sections follow assessing the applicability of contemporary conditions for the adequacy of metaphor in general to the mediation between science and religion. I review error correction as well as its failure in ideology and strategies for correction of the latter. I conclude that the possibilities for metaphor to mediate between science and Christianity are limited, but that it is possible while respecting the integrity of both.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.063 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".