The shift from metaphor to analogy in Western science

Abstract

Analogy and metaphor are central to scientific thought. They figure in discovery, as in Rutherford's analogy of the solar system for the atom or Faraday's use of lines of magnetized iron filings to reason about electric fields (Nersessian, 1984; Tweney, 1983). They are also used in teaching: novices are told to think of electricity as analogous to water flowing through pipes (Gentner & Gentner, 1983) or of a chemical process as analogous to a ball rolling down a hill (Van Lehn & J. S. Brown, 1980). Yet for all its usefulness, analogical thinking is never formally taught to us. We seem to think of it as a natural human skill, and of its use in science as a straightforward extension of its use in commonsense reasoning. For example, William James believed that “men, taken historically, reason by analogy long before they have learned to reason by abstract characters” (James, 1890, vol. II, p. 363). All this points to an appealing intuition: that a faculty for analogical reasoning is an innate part of human cognition, and that the concept of a sound, inferentially useful analogy is universal.