Pepper's Root Metaphor and World Hypothesis

By a root metaphor, I mean an area of empirical observation which is the point of origin for a world hypothesis. When anyone has a problem before [her or] him and is at a loss how to handle it, [s]he looks about in [her or] his available experience for some analogy that might suggest a solution. This suggestive analogy gives rise to an hypothesis which [s]he can apply towards the solution. The method of development of world hypotheses for the problem of gaining comprehension of our world follows, I find, the same procedure. The originating analogy, I have called the root metaphor of a world hypothesis. An analysis of the root metaphor generates the categories of the hypothesis. The adequacy of the hypothesis then depends on the capacity of the categories to render interpretations of the features of our world with precision and unrestricted scope. A world hypothesis differs from other hypotheses only in its unrestricted scope. Other hypotheses are implicitly, if not explicitly, limited to a local problem in hand or, as in the special sciences, to a special field of subject matter. Such hypotheses may always reject certain considerations as being outside their field of inquiry. A world hypothesis never has this way out. It is responsible for the interpretation of any item of criticism proffered. It is an unrestricted hypothesis.