2. The Root Metaphor Theory. The thought was
bound to arise sooner or later that metaphor in the
above sense was the characteristic mode of developing
philosophic theories. Perhaps the first emphatic ex-
pression of this thought is in Francis Bacon's discussion
of the “idols,” in particular the “idol of the theater”
which he described as man's tendency to develop
comprehensive systems in the language of myth and
fantasy far beyond the data of observation. He was
pleading for a method of solid empirical cognition in
terms of collecting diverse instances of a subject to lift
out the “form” that held them together. His intention
was to disparage the use of metaphors, and he virtually
excluded their use in hypotheses as means of cognition,
although he did recognize them as “anticipations of
nature.”
However, in recent times with a more generous
conception of the use of hypotheses as constructive
instruments for both scientific and philosophical think-
ing, the metaphorical conception of the origin and
development of philosophical thinking has been re-
vived without any pejorative connotations.
In World Hypotheses (1942), this view is called “the
root metaphor theory.” It is itself an hypothesis about
the origin and development of schools of philosophy
or, more specifically, of world hypotheses. World
hypotheses are distinguished from the more limited
hypotheses of the special sciences by being “unre-
stricted” in their subject matter or in the scope of the
evidence the hypotheses are expected to cover. An
hypothesis in optics can reject as irrelevant any items
that do not bear on optical phenomena or laws, as
would be the case for so many observations in acoustics,
geology, astronomy, linguistics, or social psychology.
But a world hypothesis cannot be exclusive in this
manner, for it cannot evade a group of items that do
not seem to fit nicely into its system by declaring them
outside its field and so irrelevant. Everything is relevant
to a world hypothesis.
The root metaphor theory gains a good deal of
credibility if one is persuaded that methods of deriving
philosophical systems from claims of certainty (such
as those of infallibility, self-evidence, or indubitable
and incorrigible data) have proved unreliable. Once
such methods of philosophizing from supposedly cer-
tain bases of knowledge have been given up, methods
for seeking probable knowledge by way of hypotheses
and their confirmation become acceptable. And this
is the point of departure for the root metaphor theory
of philosophic thought.
The problem then arises as to what are the sources
of world hypotheses. The suggestion is that world
hypotheses get started like any man's everyday hy-
pothesis framed to solve some puzzling practical prob-
lem. The man looks back over his past experience for
some analogous situation which might be applicable
to his present problem. Similarly, a philosopher, puz-
zled about the nature of the universe, looks about for
some pregnant experience that appears to be a good
sample of the nature of things. This is his root meta-
phor. He analyzes his sample, selects its structural
elements, and generalizes them as guiding concepts for
a world hypothesis of unlimited scope. This set of
concepts becomes the set of categories of his world
hypothesis.
If the world hypothesis proves fruitful in its appli-
cation to the varied items of the world, it will be
adopted by other men, and a school of philosophy
comes into being, dedicated to the development of this
world theory (Weltanschauung). Its categories will be
refined and modified to render them as adaptable as
possible to the total range of the world's facts to which
they are applied. The root metaphor itself becomes
refined by this process. There evolves a give-and-take
between the categories and the facts to which they
are applied. The categories are modified to fit the facts,
and the facts are interpreted in terms of the categories.
The philosophers of the school will then perceive the
facts as they are structured by their categories, and
the ultimate facts in terms of their categories will come
to appear to these philosophers as indubitable. Then
it can become almost impossible to disabuse them of
the certainty of the foundations of their philosophy
except by introducing them to an alternative but
equally justifiable world theory constructed with an-
other set of categories yielding a different inter-
pretation of the facts and a different group of apparent
indubitables.
Only a limited number of categorial sets, however,
according to this root metaphor theory, have proved
fruitful enough to acquire a relatively adequate inter-
pretation of the full scope of the world's facts. The
position held in World Hypotheses was, up to the time
of its publication, that the fruitful root metaphors could
be reduced to four: (1) formism, based on the root
metaphor of similarity, or the identity of a single form
in a multiplicity of particular exemplifications; (2)
mechanism, based on the root metaphor of material
push and pull, or attraction and repulsion culminating
in the conception of a machine or an electromagnetic-
gravitational field; (3) organicism, based on the root
metaphor of a dynamic organic whole as elaborated
by Hegel and his followers; and (4) contextualism,
based on the root metaphor of a transitory historical
situation and its biological tensions as exhibited by
Dewey and his followers. None of these is fully ade-
quate. There are also several less adequate root meta-
phors, and in World Hypotheses it is suggested that
still more adequate ones may appear in the future.
