An examples of a scientific concept being used as a simile.
"The job of the ethnologist is to describe the surface patterns as best he [or she] can, to reconstitute the deeper structures out of which they are built, and to classify those structures, once reconstituted, into an analytical scheme – rather like Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements."
Clifford Geertz (2000) The cerebral savage: on the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss (first published 1967), in The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays (2nd Edition). New York. Basic Books
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