Making Science Public  ·  makingsciencepublic.com

Reading Guides & AnthologiesLanguage, metaphor and the making of science, technology and public life

Brigitte Nerlich, Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham

Three collections of blog posts, sorted by theme, tracing how metaphor and language shape public understanding of AI, synthetic biology and climate change.

Since 2012 I have used the Making Science Public blog to track the words we reach for when talking about science and technology — and what those words quietly do to the way we think.

The three anthologies below gather that work by theme rather than by date. Each stands alone; together they trace a couple of decades of watching language catch up with — or run ahead of — the science itself.

Collections
Anthology One
AI Metaphor Anthology
On the language of artificial intelligence — ghosts, minds, mirrors, tools and agents — and how the metaphors we choose for AI shape what we think it is, what it can do, and who is responsible when it acts.
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Anthology Two
Synthetic Biology Anthology
On the language of engineering life — circuits, chassis, blueprints and code — and how metaphors borrowed from computing and industry have framed synthetic biology as a field of design rather than discovery.
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Anthology Three
Climate Change Anthology
On the language of a warming world — cliffs, tipping points, heat domes and carbon bombs — drawn from blog posts written between 2012 and 2026 tracking climate language, politics, culture and extreme weather.
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About this site

Each anthology is compiled from posts on Making Science Public, organised by theme so that readers can follow a thread of thought rather than a chronology.