Ruben Sampieri

Na filosofia de Nelson Goodman, um dos aspectos mais relevantes para compreender o funcionamento da ciência é a forma como ele relaciona ciência e arte. Para o autor, ambas constituem formas igualmente legítimas de conhecimento para a compreensão do mundo. Com base nessa premissa, e complementando-a com seu pluralismo ontológico, neste artigo, propomos exemplificar essa relação por meio da análise de metáforas e ficções como componentes não apenas heurísticos, mas também necessários na elaboração teórica e na justificativa científica. Defendemos que arte e ciência compartilham essa natureza comum na investigação e na descoberta: a experiência estética-linguagem-modos de fazer mundos.

Studies on metaphor and models have been receiving wider attention and getting a deeper understanding of the role these resources play in scientific theories. From Mary Hesse and Max Black´s seminal works in 1960’s a wellspring of metaphor and models accounts has raised in the fields of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language, Pragmatics, Cognitive Sciences and Science Teaching. History of science has played an important role in showing the ubiquity of metaphorical process in science. This paper aims to clarify how metaphor play that major role in the context of discovery by being one of the most reliable thought tools for scientists in “knitting” the plausible and unobservable into the previous accepted world of the theory and by generating trustworthy access to theoretical entities and fertile explanatory hypotheses. We tent to show how this was possible through a philosophical demystification of its power and function and how to a certain extent, metaphors are synthetic models and models are systematic metaphors.