wrote in message
>
> > Following Richard Dawkins, we would like to reassert
> > that we indeed live as disposable somas, slaves of our germline
> > genome, but could soon start rebelling against such slavery.
>
> If the authors are infatuated with metaphors, they should become poets
> in their spare time, and restrict themselves to technical language when
> writing about biology.
>
This raises some quite deep issues. The problem is that it is exceedingly
difficult to avoid metaphors even in technical speech. For instance you say
the authors should "restrict" themselves to technical language, but
"restrict" is from the Latin "to bind back tight". What
makes your dead
metaphor less of a metaphor than "slaves of our germline genome?". When we
talk about abstract things we usually use words derived ultimately from the
world of concrete things.

The most ridiculous word in this passage, "soma", is in fact a technical
term. Inappropriate use of technical language is often done to make a social
point, in this case that the authors are scientists and thus that their
opinions are privileged.

(More of a linguistics post than an evolution one. I don't think I've told
anyone on this ng that I have a degree in English as well as one in
biology.)
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