The metaphorical foundations of chemical explanation

To address the question of whether typical chemical explanations have characteristics that distinguish them from explanations in other sciences, it is important to recognize the deeply metaphorical nature of scientific explanation in general. The theory of conceptual metaphor, based on results from modern cognitive sciences, postulates that largely unconscious thought processes, grounded in embodied experience and in experiences drawn from the social domain, are at the core of scientific reasoning. I argue, using several examples, that models employed by chemists as explanatory instruments are metaphorical in nature and have a character distinguishable from explanatory representations employed in other fields of science.