Metaphorical Extension in Instances of Artistic and Scientific Creativity

In his book Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski (1956) argues that the act of creation is fundamentally the same in both the sciences and the arts. They differ not in terms of process, but in terms of outcomes. That is, the art that is created is judged by an audience and either succeeds or fails accordingly. Science, on the other hand, must meet the criteria of verification or falsifiability, lending it a self-corrective quality. From a behavior analytic perspective, Bronowski essentially claims that metaphorical extension is critical to the creative processes of both art and science and that it plays a significant role in our understanding of creative insight. But are scientific and artistic acts of creation the same, and does metaphorical extension play the same role in each? This article considers this question by drawing upon Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior, Layng's (2019) distinction between interdimensional and intradimensional abstract tacts, Goldiamond and Thompson's (1967/2004) distinction between dimensional and abstraction stimulus control, and a new distinction between metaphorical tacts and metaphorical mands.