An example of an historical alternative conception, and the use of analogy by a scientist:
"The great strength of the Huygens principle (as it came to be known) was that all the laws of optics could now be explained by geometry. Simple lines on paper offered vivid and persuasive representations of phenomena that had seemed baffling in physical reality.
Lines were mathematical ideals. What was the physical reality? Huygens was not prepared to let go of the Cartesian idea of some from of matter in motion – not cannonballs perhaps, but fine particles of some kind dispersed through an ether, through which light travels as impulses received by one particle and then transmitted in all directions to further particles. He sought to develop the analogy … between light and sound waves, which are transmitted longitudinally by the compression and expansion of the air, but he was unable to do so in a way consistent with the mathematics."
Hugh Aldersley-Williams (2020) Dutch Light. Christiaan Huygens and the making of science in Europe. Picador.
This quote shows that analogies are actually used by scientists in the process of scientific discovery (a plausible analogy suggests a hypothesis to be explored and tested) – here that light might be a longitudinal wave like sound.
Read examples of scientific analogies
The idea that light transmission depended upon a medium, the æther or luminiferous ether (it had to be transmitted through something in space; if light is a wave, some medium must oscillate) was a widely accepted idea for centuries.
