Comparisons – Page 5 – Science-Education-Research

reality is a beacon winking in the remote distance

An example of an extended metaphor used by a scientist:

"It is at this modest point that scientific research enters with its exact methods, and it works its way step by step from the specific to the always more general. To this end, it must set and continually keep its sights on the objective reality which it seeks, and in this sense exact science can never dispense with Reality in the metaphysical sense of the term. But the real world of metaphysics is not the starting point, but the goal of all scientific endeavour, a beacon winking and showing the way from an inaccessibly remote distance."
Plank, M. (1947/1949). The meaning and limits of exact science (F. Gaynor, Trans.). In Scientific Autobiography and other papers (pp. 80-120). Philosophical Library.

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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.

foundation of science is not braced properly

An example of an extended metaphor in a scientist's writing:

"…if we take a closer look and scrutinise the edifice of exact science more intently, we must very soon become aware of the fact that it has a dangerously weak point – namely, its very foundation. Its foundation is not braced, reinforced properly, in every direction, so as to enable it to withstand external strains and stresses. In other words, exact science is not built on any principle of such universal validity, as to be fit to support the edifice properly."
Plank, Max (1947/1949). The meaning and limits of exact science (F. Gaynor, Trans.). In Scientific Autobiography and other papers (pp. 80-120). Philosophical Library.

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head of an octopus is like a train passenger

An example of an analogy offered to explain a scientific idea:

"How can we understand what it might be like to be an octopus which has a central brain that delegates to subsidiary organs in each tentacle, so they work as somewhat autonomous units. Imagine only finding out you are going for a walk 'second hand' – the octopus head must be a bit like a traveller on a train who notices when pulling out of a station but has no direct input into the action."
What it is like to be a mosquito

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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.

mosquitoes feel rubbish if they eat a massive meal just after waking

An example of anthropomorphism in public scientific discourse,

"We feel rubbish if we eat a massive meal just before we go to bed or immediately if we wake up. The same is going to be true for mosquitoes as well. Taking a huge blood meal which is kind of like drinking a bath of soup if you are a human, and doing that a strange time of day when our circadian clocks aren't expecting it isn't going to be so good for our health – better than starving, but not great. Same is probably true for the parasites [hosted by some mosquitoes]."
Prof. Sarah Reece (Professor of Evolutionary Parasitology at the University of Edinburgh) was talking on an episode ('Don't Bite Me!') of Curious Cases.

Perhaps mosquitoes do feel rubbish, but I am not sure we can every know whether that is true.

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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.

The comparison of a blood-mean to a bath of soup is an example of how making a comparison with something on a more human scale.

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A document listing a wide range of examples of science analogies, similes, metaphors and other comparisons, drawn from diverse sources, can be downloaded using this link: 'Creative Comparisons: Making Science Familiar through Language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts.'

Read: 'What it is like to be a mosquito'

The image shows a mosquito feeding on a human (picture by FotoshopTofs sourced from Pixabay). Inset image shows the website icon for BBC Curious Cases. — What is it like to be a mosquito?

computer app analyses neural network like an MRI scanner

An example of an analogy used in science journalism,

"What this research team are doing is almost like using computer applications that act a bit like an MRI scanner to analyse the so-called neural network, you know, the brain-like computing structure that underlies these chat-bots. So they said 'let's see which bits light up when we do something related to language'. … it turns out only about 1% of them are. The scientists thought, 'aha, well let's see what happens if we deactivate these, they call it ablation, which sounds very sci-fi, so they ablate these, the bits that had been lighting up, just to see what they do, and sure enough the models really, they carry on working, but they just spit out a whole load of gobbledygook."

[VG: "They can't construct language"]

'Exactly they loose their ability to construct and to process language."

Gareth Mitchell (Imperial College London) was talking to presenter Victoria Gill on an episode ('Will the Hole in the Ozone Layer Close?') of BBC Inside Science.

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Whether or not 'ablation' "sounds very sci-fi", this seems to be a metaphor where the researchers excised some of the nodes of the neural net like a surgeon ablating brain tissue.

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velocity of light is like the quantum of action

An analogy used by a scientist,

"The velocity of light is to The Theory of Relativity as the elementary quantum of action is to the Quantum Theory: it is its absolute core."
Plank, M. (1948/1949). A scientific Autobiography (F. Gaynor, Trans.). In Scientific Autobiography and other papers (pp. 13-51). Philosophical Library.

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it is as if Nature prefers terminal states

An example of simile in a scientist's writing,

"A process which in no manner can be completely reversed I called a 'natural' one. The term for it in universal use today is: Irreversible'."

…in the case of an irreversible process the terminal state is in a certain sense more important than the initial state – as if, so to speak, Nature 'preferred' it to the latter. I saw a measure of this 'preference' in Clausius's entropy…"
Plank, M. (1948/1949). A scientific Autobiography (F. Gaynor, Trans.). In Scientific Autobiography and other papers (pp. 13-51). Philosophical Library.

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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.

passing of heat was considered analogous to the sinking of a weight

An example of an analogy that influenced scientific thinking,

"Up to that time, as a consequence of the theory that heat is a substance, the universally accepted view had been that the passing of heat from a higher to a lower temperature was analogous to the sinking of a weight from a higher to a lower position, and it was not easy to overcome this mistaken opinion .

…the existence of an absolute zero of temperature was disputed, on the ground that for temperature, just as for height, only differences can be measured."
Planck, M. (1948/1949). A Scientific Autobiography (F. Gaynor, Trans.). In Scientific Autobiography and other papers (pp. 13-51). Philosophical Library

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The idea that heat was a substance, often called 'caloric' was once widely accepted by scientists. Today this would be considered an alternative conception or misconception.

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Historical examples of alternative conceptions

proteins are upgrades like matches

An example of an analogy used by a scientist to explain a scientific idea:

"I think proteins are only a necessary part of present-day life because they work better, as matches work better than flint and steel. There is no reason to think of them as original."
N. W. Pirie, quoted in J. D. Bernal (1951) The Physical Basis of Life, Routledge and Kegan Paul

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centromeres eat their way away from the equator towards the poles

Example of figurative language in a scientist's writing:

"The centromeres of each paired chromosome, for the chromosomal division occurs at an earlier stage, proceed to separate, but in such a way as strongly suggests that each pair are the poles of a negative tactoid, and are in fact centres of disaggregation of the protein fibres. Thus they, so to speak, eat their way away from the equator towards the poles. That considerable forces are involved is shown by the fact that anomalous chromosomes which have not fully divided are literally torn in two. Much more research is needed to show whether this hypothesis is the correct one…

Similar explanations based on the knowledge of long range forces may go far to explain the mechanics of chromosome pairing itself. In reproduction the chromosomes belonging to the father and mother nuclei are together in identical pairs. These must, in fact, seek each other out and arrange themselves mutually with extraordinary accuracy. The variation of nucleic acid material along the chromosomes, with its complicated pattern and the corresponding variation in long range forces, may serve to explain this process. Full interaction can only occur if there is a proper opposition of parts, and the difference between a good fit and a bad may ensure that after a number of trials a fit is achieved in one place and then proceeds by zipper action over the rest of the chromosomes."
J. D. Bernal (1951) The Physical Basis of Life, Routledge and Kegan Paul

The 'eating' ('so to speak') can be considered a simile. (The reference to the 'poles' and 'equator' can be understood as metaphorical.)

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The 'zipper action' is only metaphorically the action of a zipper. (An analogy could be developed here considering which features of the two systems, chromosomes and zippers, do or do not map across.)

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The description of how chromosomes or chromatids "seek each other out and arrange themselves mutually" is metaphorical as they do not act deliberately with purpose – so this is an example of anthropomorphism.

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processes of life are like those found in a chemical factory

An example of an analogy used by a scientist to explain a scientific idea:

"The processes of life have a close analogy to those of a chemical factory, only here, instead of the materials being poured from one reaction vessel to another; the individual molecules diffuse from one enzyme to the next, the rates are fixed, and a number of them circulate in these cycles, making use of a certain fraction of the available energy of the reaction, to reverse the entropy gain. As Schrödinger has said, life consumes not food, but negative entropy, and it is able to do so by the existence of what are effectively solid structures in the protein molecules themselves. It is with the establishment of any one such chain of reactions where complex molecules can be fed in at one end and simple ones liberated at the other, with a net energy gain, that we may imagine that living processes started."
J. D. Bernal (1951) The Physical Basis of Life, Routledge and Kegan Paul

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interpreting X-ray data of protein structures was like archaeologists discovering rock inscriptions in an unreadable script

An example of an analogy used by a scientists to explain a scientific idea:

"The work of the physico-chemists, particularly of Svedberg, has shown that active proteins exist in the form of molecules of definite molecular weight, and more recently x-ray structure analysis has shown that they are perfectly definite chemical compounds with identical molecules which persist unchanged through various grades of crystal hydration and into solution. We possess already much information as to the actual molecular arrangement, but unfortunately its full interpretation is a task for the future. The situation at the moment is extremely similar to that of an archaeological expedition that has discovered large quantities of rock inscriptions in an unreadable script. They may not know what the inscriptions mean, but they do know they mean something, and they may reasonably hope to decipher them."
J. D. Bernal (1951) The Physical Basis of Life, Routledge and Kegan Paul

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