An example of an analogy used in scientific writing:
"Physics is not a machine that can be taken apart. One cannot test every piece individually and wait until it has stood this sort of testing before putting it in the system. Physical science is a system that must be accepted as a self-contained whole, an organism of which no single part can be made to work without all the others, even those farthest removed, becoming active – some more, some less, but all in some precise degree. When the functioning is blocked in any way the physics must try to guess from the behaviour of the whole which part is at fault and in need of repair, with no possibility of isolating and testing it separately. Given a watch that will not go, the watch maker removes all the parts, examining them one by one until he finds which was out of place or broken, but the physician cannot dissect a patient in order to make a diagnosis; he must guess at the seat and cause of the disease merely by studying a disturbance that affects the whole body. The physicist resembles the latter when he has a defective theory before him which he has to improve."
Ernst Cassirer
Cassirer, E. (1950/1978). The Problem of Knowledge. Philosophy, Science, & History since Hegel (W. H. Woglom & C. W. Hendel, Trans.). Yale University Press.
Note that in this extract Cassirer makes one analogy whilst rejecting another:
- the system of physical science is like an organism;
- but it is not like a machine such as a watch.
Read examples of scientific analogies
