An example of an analogy used in the development of science:
"According to the view developed by these thinkers, the projectile was carried forward by an actual impetus which it had acquired and which bodies were capable of acquiring…this view made it possible for men to contemplate the continued motion of a body after the contact with the original mover had been lost. It was explained that the impetus lay in the body and continued there, as heat stays in a red-hot poker after it has been taken from the fire;
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Even the apostles of the new theory of impetus, however, regarded a projectile as moving in a straight line until the impetus had exhausted itself, and then quickly curving round to make a direct vertical drop to earth. They looked upon this impetus as a thing which gradually weakened and wore itself out, just as a poker grows cold when taken from the fire. Or, said Galileo, it was like the reverberations which go on in a bell long after it has been struck, but which gradually fade away."
Herbert Butterfield (1957) The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800 (New Edition: Revised and enlarged) G. Bell and Sons Ltd., London.
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Impetus theory was an attempt to explain the motion of objects, that preceded the modern conceptions of momentum and inertia.
