Science is all metaphor.

Taken at face value, the line argues that scientific knowledge is mediated through figurative models—conceptual frameworks (like “fields,” “waves,” “genetic code,” or “information”) that translate complex, often invisible phenomena into graspable language. In this view, science does not deliver reality “unfiltered”; it constructs explanatory metaphors that are tested, refined, and sometimes replaced. Attributing this to Leary also fits his broader tendency to treat perception and cognition as programmable systems and to emphasize how language and models shape experience. The quote can be read less as anti-science than as a reminder of science’s dependence on imaginative representation and provisional description.