Comparisons – Page 35 – Science-Education-Research

Thomson dissected the delicate body of the atom

An example of an extended metaphor used in discussing science:

"The honour of making the first incision in the complicated operation of dissecting the delicate body of the atom belongs to the famous British physicist J. J. Thomson, who was able to show that the atoms of various chemical elements consist of positively and negatively charged parts, held together by the forces of electrical attraction."

George Gamow (1961) One, Two, Three…Infinity. Facts and speculations of science, Revised Edition, Dover Publications Inc., New York.

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Many examples of science metaphors are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.

escaping high density gas is like a crowd leaving a burning theatre

An example of an analogy used by a physicst to explain science:

"The difference in behaviour between gases escaping at high and low densities can be easily understood if one remembers that the vapour is formed by a very large number of separate molecules rushing through space in all directions and continuously colliding with one another. When the density of vapour is high the stream of gas coming out through the opening can be compare with a frenzied crowd rushing through the exit doors of a burning theatre. Having passed the doors the people still bump into one another as they scatter in all directions on the street. When the density is low, on the other hand, it is as though only one person were passing through the door at one time and therefore proceeded straight ahead without interference."

George Gamow (1961) One, Two, Three…Infinity. Facts and speculations of science, Revised Edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

luminiferous ether is like sealing wax

An example of an analogy that was used in science:

"One used to speak about the fluidity, rigidity, various elastic properties, and even the internal friction of light ether. Thus, for example, the fact [sic] that light ether behaves on the one hand as a vibrating solid when carrying light waves, but on the other hand shows a perfect fluidity and a complete absence of any resistance to the motion of celestial bodies, was interpreted by comparing it with such materials as sealing wax. Sealing wax and other similar substances, are, in fact, known to be quite hard and brittle in respect to forces acting rapidly in a mechanical impact, but will flow like honey under the force of their own weight if left alone for a sufficiently long time. Following the analogy, the old physics assumed that light ether, filling all interstellar space, acted as a hard solid in respect to very rapid distortions connected with the propagation of light, but behaved as a good liquid when the planets and stars, moving many thousand times slower than light, were pushing their way through it."

George Gamow (1961) One, Two, Three…Infinity. Facts and speculations of science, Revised Edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

Here an analogy is used in comparing the properties of a conjectured and known materials. There is also a simile, in comparing sealing wax to honey.

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Many examples of science analogies are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.

Read about similes in science

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Many examples of science similes are listed in 'Creative Comparisons: Making Science Familiar through Language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.

Despite the detailed discussion here of the properties of the ether, which was once a serious preoccupation of some scientists, it is now considered a fictitious substance.

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Michelson experiment effected physics like the blast of Joshua's trumpet on the walls of Jericho

An example of an analogy used in explaining science:

"The first impact against the very foundations of the beautiful and, apparently eternal, castle of classical physics, an impact that shook practically every single stone of this elaborate building and sent its walls tumbling down, like the walls of Jericho before the blast of Joshua's trumpet, was delivered by what would seem to be an unpretentious experiment carried out in 1887 by an American physicist, A. A. Michelson. The idea of Michelson's experiment is very simple and is based on a physical picture according to which light represents some kind of wave motion travelling through the so called 'light-carrying ether', a hypothetical substance uniformly filling up interstellar space as well as the intervals between the atoms in all material bodies."

George Gamow (1961) One, Two, Three…Infinity. Facts and speculations of science, Revised Edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

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The idea of a light-carrying ether was widely accepted by scientists at one time.

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Historical examples of alternative conceptions

Read about the ether

snails build houses

An example of metaphor and analogy in popular science writing:

"For example, there are two varieties of snails, which are identical in all other respects, but differ in the way they build their house: one variety has the shell spiralling clockwise, whereas the other spirals in a counterclockwise [i.e., anticlockwise] way. Even the so-called molecules, the tiny particles from which all different substances are built, often possess right- and left-handed forms, very similar to those of right and left gloves, or clockwise and counterclockwise snail shells."

George Gamow (1961) One, Two, Three…Infinity. Facts and speculations of science, Revised Edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

Snail shells are only 'houses' metaphorically (and this might be seen as an anthropomorphic metaphor).

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The analogy between optical isomerism of molecules, and the handedness of gloves (or helices) is a common comparison.

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The suggestion that all different substances are built from molecules is incorrect as metals such as iron and salts such as sodium chloride do not contain any molecules. Gamow was a physicist and physicists sometimes disregard differences between atoms and molecules even though these differences are important to chemistry. So, it may be that Gamow did not actually hold this alternative conception himself (rather he may have just been using economic phrasing), but this could encourage the misconception in readers.

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physics likes mathematics

An example of anthropomorphising science:

"Mathematics is usually considered, especially by mathematicians, the Queen of all Science and, being a queen, it naturally tries to avoid morganatic relations with other branches of knowledge. …
But although mathematics likes to be pure and to stand quite apart from other sciences, other sciences, especially physics, like mathematics, and try to 'fratenize' with it as much as possible."

George Gamow (1961) One, Two, Three…Infinity. Facts and speculations of science, Revised Edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

This is written in a humorous style so it should be clear to readers that the anthropomorphisms (maths and sciences liking, trying) is not to be taken to seriously.

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Many examples of anthropomorphism are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.

Fraternize is put in 'scare quotes' to mark this is not meant literally (a simile). It is also notable that, although a Queen, mathematics is described as an 'it' not as a 'she' (as when personified).

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Read about personification in science texts

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Many examples of personification are included in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.

Enceladus receives a vigorous massage

An example of the use of metaphor and analogy in science writing:

"…it is thought that Enceladus is heated by friction generated by the constant movement of its solid core produced by the fluctuating gravitational field of its massive parent planet, much as a squash ball becomes warm in the hand with repeated squeezing. By chance, this vigorous massage has raised temperatures to levels conducive to the emergence of life."

Hugh Aldersley-Williams (2020) Dutch Light. Christiaan Huygens and the making of science in Europe. Picador.

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Saturn is like a gateway drug

An example of simile and metaphor in science writing:

"…Huygens's discoveries do surely have an intoxicating appeal. As [an] American science writer has suggested, haloed Saturn is, for many amateurs, the 'gateway drug' to their astronomical habit."

Hugh Aldersley-Williams (2020) Dutch Light. Christiaan Huygens and the making of science in Europe. Picador.

(I am considering the 'gateway drug' reference as simile, as the inverted comma mark that this is only meant as a comparison.)

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Saturn with its 'halo': Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

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comet tails contain levitating material

Examples of historical scientific ideas (no longer considered):

"One idea on offer in the seventeenth century was that comets were a matter of levity: the tail was said to be a stream of levitating material subject to a supposed force of anti-gravity that repelled it from the Sun. Or the comet allegedly stirred up the aether in cosmic space like a ship ploughing through the sea."

Nigel Calder (1980) The Comet is Coming! The feverish legacy of Mr Halley. British Broadcasting Corporation

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Historical examples of alternative conceptions

These days the term 'levity' is used metaphorically, but once it was meant more literally as a kind of opposite of weight.

Read about the aether

The reference to a ship is an analogy that is based on the alternative (historical) conception that space is filled with aether.

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light travels as impulses between particles in the ether

An example of an historical alternative conception, and the use of analogy by a scientist:

"The great strength of the Huygens principle (as it came to be known) was that all the laws of optics could now be explained by geometry. Simple lines on paper offered vivid and persuasive representations of phenomena that had seemed baffling in physical reality.
Lines were mathematical ideals. What was the physical reality? Huygens was not prepared to let go of the Cartesian idea of some from of matter in motion – not cannonballs perhaps, but fine particles of some kind dispersed through an ether, through which light travels as impulses received by one particle and then transmitted in all directions to further particles. He sought to develop the analogy … between light and sound waves, which are transmitted longitudinally by the compression and expansion of the air, but he was unable to do so in a way consistent with the mathematics."

Hugh Aldersley-Williams (2020) Dutch Light. Christiaan Huygens and the making of science in Europe. Picador.

This quote shows that analogies are actually used by scientists in the process of scientific discovery (a plausible analogy suggests a hypothesis to be explored and tested) – here that light might be a longitudinal wave like sound.

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The idea that light transmission depended upon a medium, the æther or luminiferous ether (it had to be transmitted through something in space; if light is a wave, some medium must oscillate) was a widely accepted idea for centuries.

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Historical examples of alternative conceptions

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eye lens is a kind of secretary

An example of simile used in science writing:

"Thanks to the new dissectors prepared to press sharp steel into slimy viscera, it became understood that the lens of the human eye is not in fact the organ of sight, only its enabler, a kind of secretary, sorting incoming information into order for executive processing by the brain."

Hugh Aldersley-Williams (2020) Dutch Light: Christiaan Huygens and the making of science in Europe. Picador.

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teacher demonstrations are like miracles

An analogy used for describing science teaching

"Teachers talk of showing experiments, which is sheer nonsense. You can't show an experiment. What teachers do in classes is to give demonstrations, in explanation and verification of statements made – an improvement on clerical method, which merely involves taking statement on faith, yet a dogmatic, not a heuristic method. The clerics, however, only appeals to miracles: teachers enact them. You will understand me when I call your attention to that delightful passage in Bernard Shaw's wonderful play, Joan of Arc, where the Archbishop – who defines himself as a sort of idol, who has to keep still and suffer fools patiently, as a teacher has – discusses miracles…The archbishop defines a miracle as 'an event which creates faith. That is the purpose of miracles' (as of teachers' demonstrations), he says. 'They may seem very wonderful to the people who witness them and very simple to those who perform them. That does not matter: if they confirm or create faith, they are true miracles.'
An experiment as often as not has the result of undermining faith, not of confirming it…"

Armstrong, H. E. (1924) in H. E. Armstrong and the teaching of science 1880-1930 (Ed.: W H Brock, 1973), Cambridge University Press

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