An example of figurative language drawing upon scientific ideas:
"…the 'stratigraphic' conception of the relations between biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors in human life. In this conception, man is a composite of 'levels', each superimposed upon those beneath it and underpinning those above it. …
One did not have to assert that man's culture was all there was to him in order to claim that it was, nonetheless, an essential and irreducible, even a paramount ingredient in his nature. Cultural facts could be interpreted against the background of noncultural facts without dissolving them into that background or dissolving that background into them. Man was a hierarchically stratified animal, a sort of evolutionary deposit, in whose definition each level — organic, psychological, social, and cultural – had an assigned and incontestable place. To see what he really was, we had to superimpose findings from the various relevant sciences – anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology – upon one another like so many patterns in a moiré; and when that was done, the cardinal importance of the cultural level, the only one distinctive to man, would naturally appear, as would what it had to tell us, in its own right, about what he really was."
Clifford Geertz (2000) The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man (first published 1966), in The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays. 2nd Edition. New York. Basic Books
There is a kind of implicit analogy here between this model of the nature of man and the layering of geological deposits. As this is not made entirely explicit (there is no direct reference to geological structures), it can be seen as metaphor (Man is a hierarchically stratified animal, perhaps 'dissolving' as well) and simile (man is a sort of evolutionary deposit).
Read about examples of science similes
