For Margaret Macdonald, philosophical theories are akin to stories, meant to enlarge certain aspects of human life
Because creativity by definition involves not only novelty but value, and because values are highly variable, it follows that many arguments about creativity are rooted in disagreements about value.
Margaret Boden • Creativity in a Nutshell
With sufficient care, that wheelbarrow full of things could become an entire system of meaning, saying truthful things about our world, some of which might have been impossible to say via a more conventionally realistic approach. That system would mean, not by the plausibility or acuity of its initial premise, but by the way it reacts to that premi
... See moreGeorge Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
The role of metaphor and narrative, as opposed to new theories or experiments, is too little recognised in discussions of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shifts, supposed (and contested) moments of dramatic change in science. All scientists know how to go about scrutinising a theory: you use it to formulate some testable hypothesis,... See more
Philip Ball • We need new metaphors that put life at the centre of biology | Aeon Essays
Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen (2016) put it even more concisely:
Theories then, are ideas about how things work - about causality and how to create change. And those who dismiss theory dismiss the practical application and power of ideas.
“A theory is a statement of causality. It’s a statement of what causes what and why.”
Theories then, are ideas about how things work - about causality and how to create change. And those who dismiss theory dismiss the practical application and power of ideas.