•  24
    Audience Perceptions of COVID-19 Metaphors: The Role of Source Domain and Country Context
    with Britta C. Brugman, Ellen Droog, W. Gudrun Reijnierse, Saskia Leymann, and Kiki Y. Renardel de Lavalette
    Metaphor and Symbol 37 (2): 101-113. 2022.
    Metaphors abound in descriptions of the COVID-19 pandemic: it is described, among other things, as a war, a flood, and a marathon. However, not all metaphors may resonate equally well with members...
  •  16
    Plasticity of the neural coding metaphor: An unnoticed rhetoric in scientific discourse
    with Pierluigi Zoccolotti
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 42. 2019.
    The convincing argument that Brette makes for the neural coding metaphor as imposing one view of brain behavior can be further explained through discourse analysis. Instead of a unified view, we argue, the coding metaphor's plasticity, versatility, and robustness throughout time explain its success and conventionalization to the point that its rhetoric became overlooked.
  •  20
    Thomas Hunt Morgan and the invisible gene: the right tool for the job
    with Mauro Capocci
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (2): 31. 2018.
    The paper analyzes the early theory building process of Thomas Hunt Morgan from the 1910s to the 1930s and the introduction of the invisible gene as a main explanatory unit of heredity. Morgan’s work marks the transition between two different styles of thought. In the early 1900s, he shifted from an embryological study of the development of the organism to a study of the mechanism of genetic inheritance and gene action. According to his contemporaries as well as to historiography, Morgan separat…Read more
  •  35
    Fare metafore e fare scienza
    Aisthesis: Pratiche, Linguaggi E Saperi Dell’Estetico 7 (2): 25-42. 2014.
    The analysis of the status of the constitutive metaphor in science is considered along with the examination of some principal models of metaphors among biology, medicine and neurosciences. This allows to highlight the two ages of the scientific metaphor, the crossover between metaphors and models, and some open questions about the hidden ideologies concealed in the scientific theoretical terms that come from the use of metaphors