Abstract
If the body of formal theories known as physics were the result of imaginative rationality, we might be inclined to think of physics rather differently than is traditionally the case. We could then easily identify conceptual metaphoric structures and narrative forms and processes in our formal theories, and we would consider them constitutive of the scientific enterprise and not just superficially imposed linguistic phenomena.
We shall argue here that continuum physics is precisely this: the result of human imagination and imaginative rationality. We shall present linguistic and methodological evidence that modern classical macroscopic physics is metaphoric, analogical, and narrative all the way to its conceptual core. We will then outline a model of experience (action/perception/ conception) at different temporal, spatial, and systemic scales—but all within the range of human mesoscale worlds—that explains how metaphoric and narrative processes create the concepts of modern continuum physics.