An example of a simile drawing upon a scientific concept:
"The early polities were thus not so much solidary territorial units as loose congeries of villages oriented toward a common urban centre, each such centre competing with others for ascendency…. So far as the the pattern was territorial at all, it consisted of a series of concentric circles of religio-military power spreading out around the various city-state capitals, as radio waves spread from a transmitter. The closer a village to a town, the greater the impact, economically and culturally, of the court on that village."
Clifford Geertz (2000) Ideology as a cultural system (first published 1964), in The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays. 2nd Edition. New York. Basic Books
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Note: I considered classing this as analogy as I could read a specific mapping between conceptual structures (urban centre :transmitter; religio-military power : radio waves), but felt the mapping was not made explicit and the sense of "as radio waves spread from a transmitter" was more of a simile. I do not pretend such classification is an exact science.
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