Explanation
“We only need to adjust the right settings” promises identifiable variables and tractable effects. This can direct useful inquiry into responsibilities or procedures. It can also make people seem replaceable components and disagreements mere malfunctions. Analysis must state which properties of the source model are transferred. Machines can involve feedback, adaptation and complexity, so the image is not necessarily a simple linear clockwork model. Nor does metaphorical origin disqualify an explanation. The pertinent test is what its specified structure explains and where it fails to do justice to the case.
Movement of thought
1. Identify the technical source and nontechnical target. 2. Specify transferred properties such as control or replaceability. 3. State the interventions and expectations they invite. 4. Search for relevant aspects the model misses. 5. Return with a bounded account while retaining alternatives.
Scientific use case
Organisational discourse analysis can reconstruct imagery, proposed interventions and excluded conditions. Assessing the intervention's effectiveness is a separate empirical task, not something established by metaphor identification.
Example
“Reset the bonus scheme and the team will run smoothly.” Compare: “Are incentives the issue, or do conflicting duties and mistrust need attention?” The second formulation does not deny incentive effects; it questions the completeness of the control-settings model. Original example.
Counterexample
An actual machine is not automatically metaphorical. A conventional term such as social mechanism needs contextual analysis. Labeling something a machine metaphor establishes neither simple causation nor the falsity of its account.
Distinction
Organism imagery highlights other properties without being automatically more humane or more accurate. Anthropomorphism projects human characteristics; machine imagery can depersonalise. An evidenced scientific mechanism is more than a convenient mechanical phrase.
Effect on thought and perception
The model can create manageable structure and causal focus. It can also overpromise control and minimise participants' independent agency or their ability to contest the purpose.
Resonance
The organisation is heard as coordinated functioning. Reflective return listens for what does not merely operate: dissent, meaning and the option to change the ends themselves.
Etymology
The English heading groups a selected image-field. It does not derive every mechanistic theory from the history of the word machine or establish a first technical attestation.
Provenance
DE/EN editorially accepted on 15 October 2026. Historical context, language comparison and source status are shown separately in the full entry.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Machine metaphors“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-ADD-20261015-0017. ATLAS 259, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-ADD-20261015-0017The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Guiding question
What does a machine model make explainable, and which aspects can it leave outside the account?
Five coordinate questions
These descriptions explain the entry. They are not yet controlled register values and generate no shared register results.
- Where can the process be observed?
- Technical imagery within a nontechnical explanation.
- What happens to the material?
- Model relations as parts, operations and possible interventions.
- At what level does a change occur?
- Causal understanding and planning of action.
- What temporal structure is involved?
- Situated model use; a process over time only where explicitly described.
- How can the description be tested?
- Test transferred properties and intervention expectations against the case.
Historical context
Bernd Remmele's reference article examines the model-making role of machine imagery in philosophy and mechanism. Historical forms are kept apart from contemporary technology and from the invented organisational scenario used here.
Cross-language distinction and terminology
“Keep the organisation running” may be highly conventional. The English treatment therefore examines available inferences and context rather than requiring a conspicuous literal equivalent of every German machine expression.
Scholarly relations: explained reading links
Each relation is named and explained. These reading links are neither shared register results nor newly canonised relation edges.
- Metaphor · Selected case
A particular model-making metaphor field.
- Organism and body metaphors · Distinction
Alternative images can disclose different aspects of the same organisation.
- Framing · Possible support
Technical imagery can support a frame; not all framing is metaphorical.
Proposed thought pathway
What does the machine image explain compared with another model?
Machine metaphors → Organism and body metaphors → Dissimilitudo (comparison by difference) → Machine metaphors
Countertest and return
An actual machine is not automatically metaphorical. A conventional term such as social mechanism needs contextual analysis. Labeling something a machine metaphor establishes neither simple causation nor the falsity of its account.
This route is an editorial exploration, not a necessary ordering of concepts. Return: Machine metaphors
Source scope and provenance
The texts are editorially accepted. Acceptance does not turn a reference article, abstract or register record into a full primary-source verification. Examples and the proposed thought sequence are independent Atlas applications.
- Bernd Remmele: Maschine. In: Ralf Konersmann (Hg.), Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern. Studienausgabe 2014, unveränderter Nachdruck der erweiterten 3. Auflage 2011. · Einleitung: Teilebeziehungen und modellbildende Wirkung
The philosophical image-field and the selected historical context discussed in the entry.
Atlas headings and contemporary examples are editorial constructions. Not every historical original has been rechecked; no cross-cultural universality is asserted.