metaphors and theory

First, some quotes from Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots:

Darwinism, like all theories, has distinct metaphorical associations that are familiar from the use of descriptive terms such as survival of the fittest, competitive interactions between species, selfish genes, survival strategies, even war games with hawk and dove strategies. Such metaphors are important. They give meaning to scientific theories, and they encourage particular attitudes to the processes described—in the case of Darwinism, to the nature of the evolutionary process as predominantly driven by competition, survival, and selfishness. This make sense to us in terms of our experience of our own culture and its values. Both culture and nature then become rooted in similar ways of seeing the world, which are shaped at a deeper level than metaphor by cultural myths, from which the metaphors arise. (Goodwin x-xi).

All theories have metaphorical dimensions, which I regard not only as inevitable but also as extremely important. For it is these dimensions that give depth and meaning to scientific ideas, that add to their persuasiveness and color the way we see reality” (Goodwin 33).

My thoughts: It was absolutely lovely to hear a scientist talking about the metaphorical roots of theory rather than hearing them bash social scientists and culture studies scholars...and I heard a lot of this in my research on "the Third Culture" (for a paper still to be written).

What are the metaphorical roots of our theories? On first thought, Marxism and neo-Marxism seems to, at some level, be metaphorically based upon this Darwinism, the whole "survival of the fittest" thing...in that it implies that life is nothing but a big competition. This leads to the cultural dupes argument, to the indoctrination of the working class argument, to many arguments. Are many of the identity politics movements based upon this? Probably so.

Does competition hold up as a metaphor for interpreting life? I doubt it. What would a non-competition-bound theory look like? How can I incorporate competition as a process with all the other processes?

Complexity theory holds some of these answers, I think.