Texts Do Not Reflect Outer Reality. What Do They Do Then?

Abstract

The question “what do the scientific texts do?” is one of the aspects of the problem of language-reality relation. A realistic philosopher would say that the texts reflect outer reality. In my text, I argue, that this position is undefendable. I use four general models and several empirical observations from Science Studies to support my claim. While rejecting the mirroring metaphor, I propose four different metaphors that could help to answer the initial question: network assembling, reference circulating in circuits, activating and dis-activating, and representing.