Fertilization Metaphors - Cover Sheet SCI Home | SCI Faculty Page | Case Notes | Reference List | Users Notes

Author - Mary Kot - Summer 1997

Case Purposes This case allows students to investigate how metaphors, maps and pictures are used to create consensible and consensual scientific communication. This case will use examples form reproductive biology.

Relation to Texts This case asks students to examine the use of language to create metaphors, maps and pictures as discussed in Chapter 4 of Ziman's Reliable Knowledge pages 77-92

Description of Case Materials This case consists of readings that vary in they way they describe the events of fertilization. Another reading points how out how the differences in the metaphors affect our thinking.

Case Use

1. Assignment for Day 1: read two descriptions of fertilization. One is classical the other is gender neutral.
2. Day 1 students will:
   • List and understand the events of animal fertilization
   • Compare the language-the metaphors, maps and pictures-used to describe fertilization in each of the two articles
3. Assignment for Day 2-read Chapter 4 Ziman and the article The Aggressive Egg
4. Day 2 Students will;
   • Compare the metaphors , maps and pictures in The Aggressive Egg to those from Day 1
   • Discuss how the language used i9nfuence the science
   • Develop clear definitions for maps, scientific theory, picture, metaphor, and paradigms

Reference List

• Small M.(l 991). Sperm Wars: The Baffle for Conception. Discover. July, 1991. Pp48-53.
• Gilbert, SF (1 991). Chapter 2: Fertilization in Development Biology. Sinauer: Sunderland, Mass. Pp33-52
• Freedman, DH(l 992). The Aggressive Egg. Discover. June 1992. Pp6l-65.
• Ziman, J(l 978). Chapter 4: World maps and pictures in Reliable Knowledge. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England. Pp77-92.