First of all, emotionally satisfying metaphors can govern science as
> much as they do religion. If you look at contemporary science, this is
> not obvious; but if you look at science that is more and more removed
> in the past, it's clearly true.
Examples, please? If you mean really *far* in the past, one example might be Copernicus, who put the sun in the center of things because he was a sun-worshipper. But it's been a long time since science stopped working that way. _________________________ Copernicus is relatively modern. By "far" I was thinking more of the Greeks. One example from very recent "science" might be from the seventies at UCLA where they were running programs lobotomizing black men for their propensity for violence. Or how about the scientific recommendation, fifty years ago that mothers not breastfeed their kids or, shortly thereafter, that they feed them on a rigorous every-four-hours schedule?
Some discussion of the metaphysical foundations of science can be found in Christopher Caudwell's "Illusion and Relaity." More discussion can be found in the writings of Paul Feyerabend. Still more discussion in the first chapter of "Donne's Dialogue of One," which focuses on the claim that "mathematics is the language of science" and unravels the cultural basis of that claim (my unpublished dissertation).
Joanna