An example of an analogy drawing upon a scientific principle:
"The uncanonical science ("which we prefer to call 'primary' rather than 'primitive'") puts a philosophy of finitude into practice. The elements of the conceptual world are given, prefabricated as it were, and thinking consist in fiddling with the elements. Savage [sic] logic works like a kaleidoscope whose chips can fall into a variety of patterns while remaining unchanged in quantity, form, or colour. The number of patterns producible in this way may be large if the chips are numerous and varied enough, but it is not infinite. The patterns consist in the disposition of the chips via-à-vis one another (that is, they are a function of the relationships among the chips rather than their individual properties considered separately). And their range of possible transformations is strictly determined by the construction of the kaleidoscope, the inner law which governs its operation. And so it too with savage [sic] thought. Both anecdotal and geometric, it builds coherent structures out of 'the odds ad ends left over form psychological or historical process'."
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
Kaleidoscopes are often seen as toys or novelties- but clearly are based on scientific principles: The kaleidoscope is defined in Wikipedia as "an optical instrument with two or more reflecting surfaces (or mirrors) tilted to each other at an angle, so that one or more (parts of) objects on one end of these mirrors are shown as a symmetrical pattern when viewed from the other end, due to repeated reflection".
I have summarised this using the term indigenous science (cf. 'uncanonical science' and 'Savage logic'). The term 'traditional ecological knowledge' is often used which reflects the holistic nature of knowledge that certainly encompasses areas of physical and biological science, bit not clearly differentiated from myth, religion and (what in 'Western' traditions are often seen as) other ways of knowing. Geertz is use of the term savage may seem especially anachronistic and inappropriate (even for 1967) but he was discussing the work of Lévi-Strauss whose wrote the classic 'La Pensée sauvage' ('Wild thought').
Read examples of scientific analogies
