"[…] key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions." (Meyer H Abrams, "The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition", 1953)
"[…] theoretical science is essentially disciplined exploitation of metaphor." (Anatol Rapoport, "Operational Philosophy", 1953)
"Scientific metaphors are called models. They are made with the full knowledge that the connection between the metaphor and the real thing is primarily in the mind of the scientist. And they are made with a clearly definable purpose - as starting points of a deductive process. […] Like every other aspect of scientific procedure, the scientific metaphor is a pragmatic device, to be used freely as long as it serves its purpose, to be discarded without regrets when it fails to do so." (Anatol Rapoport, "Operational Philosophy", 1954)
"[…] we see from these formulations how difficult it is when we try to push new ideas into an old system of concepts belonging to an earlier philosophy, or, to use an old metaphor, when we attempt to put new wine into old bottles. Such attempts are always distressing, for they mislead us into continually occupying with the inevitable cracks in the old bottles, instead of rejoicing over the new wine." (Werner K Heisenberg, The Development of the Interpretation of the Quantum Theory, 1955)
"Speaking without metaphor we have to declare that we are here faced with one of these typical antinomies caused by the fact that we have not yet succeeded in elaborating a fairly understandable outlook on the world without retiring our own mind, the producer of the world picture, from it, so that mind has no place in it. The attempt to press it into it, after all, necessarily produces some absurdities." (Erwin Schrödinger, "Mind and Matter: the Tarner Lectures", 1956)
"The symbol and the metaphor are as necessary to science as to poetry." (Jacob Bronowski, "Science and Human Values", 1956)
"We are always looking for metaphors in which to express our ideas of life, for our language is inadequate for all its complexities. Life is a labyrinth […]. Life is a machine […]. Life is a laboratory […]. It is but a metaphor. When we speak of ultimate things we can, maybe, speak only in metaphors." (Charles Singer, "A Short History of Scientific Ideas to 1900", 1959)
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