Editing Scientific theory (section)

===Analogies and metaphors===
The concept of a scientific theory has also been described using analogies and metaphors. For example, the logical empiricist [[Carl Gustav Hempel]] likened the structure of a scientific theory to a "complex spatial network:"

<blockquote> Its terms are represented by the knots, while the threads connecting the latter correspond, in part, to the definitions and, in part, to the fundamental and derivative hypotheses included in the theory. The whole system floats, as it were, above the plane of observation and is anchored to it by the rules of interpretation. These might be viewed as strings which are not part of the network but link certain points of the latter with specific places in the plane of observation. By virtue of these interpretive connections, the network can function as a scientific theory: From certain observational data, we may ascend, via an interpretive string, to some point in the theoretical network, thence proceed, via definitions and hypotheses, to other points, from which another interpretive string permits a descent to the plane of observation.<ref>Hempel CG 1952. ''Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science.'' (Volume 2, #7 of ''Foundations of the Unity of Science. Toward an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science''). University of Chicago Press, p. 36.</ref></blockquote>

[[Michael Polanyi]] made an analogy between a theory and a map:

<blockquote>A theory is something other than myself. It may be set out on paper as a system of rules, and it is the more truly a theory the more completely it can be put down in such terms. Mathematical theory reaches the highest perfection in this respect. But even a geographical map fully embodies in itself a set of strict rules for finding one's way through a region of otherwise uncharted experience. Indeed, all theory may be regarded as a kind of map extended over space and time.<ref>Polanyi M. 1958. ''Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy.'' London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 4.</ref></blockquote>

A scientific theory can also be thought of as a book that captures the fundamental information about the world, a book that must be researched, written, and shared. In 1623, [[Galileo Galilei]] wrote:

<blockquote>Philosophy [i.e. physics] is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth.<ref>Galileo Galilei, ''The Assayer'', as translated by [[Stillman Drake]] (1957), ''Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo'' pp. 237–38.</ref></blockquote>

The book metaphor could also be applied in the following passage, by the contemporary philosopher of science [[Ian Hacking]]:

<blockquote>I myself prefer an Argentine fantasy. God did not write a Book of Nature of the sort that the old Europeans imagined. He wrote a [[Jorge Luis Borges|Borgesian]] library, each book of which is as brief as possible, yet each book of which is inconsistent with every other. No book is redundant. For every book there is some humanly accessible bit of Nature such that that book, and no other, makes possible the comprehension, prediction and influencing of what is going on...Leibniz said that God chose a world which maximized the variety of phenomena while choosing the simplest laws. Exactly so: but the best way to maximize phenomena and have simplest laws is to have the laws inconsistent with each other, each applying to this or that but none applying to all.<ref>Hacking I. 1983. ''Representing and Intervening.'' Cambridge University Press, p. 219.</ref></blockquote>