Andrew S. Reynolds, The Third Lens: Metaphor and the Creation of Modern Cell Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 272 pp., $30.00 Paper, ISBN: 9780226563121.

In the second chapter, Reynolds delves into cell biochemistry and the wealth of terms that reflected the overall metaphor of the cell as a machine. According to Reynolds, Bradie claims that metaphors perform three functions: (1) rhetorical or communicative, (2) heuristic, and (3) explanatory (Reynolds adds the prescriptive role as a fourth). In twenty-first century biology, there is renewed interest in the cell, driven by a more detailed appreciation of the complexity of living systems and the realization that insights provided by DNA sequences are limited. [Extracted from the article]