An example of simile in writing about science:
"…Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608-79), who was a mathematician and a friend of Galileo. His book On the Motion of Animals, published in 1680-81, just after his death, represented a supreme example of the application of the science of mechanics to the study of the living organism. …
Starting from the work of William Harvey, he examined the action of the fibres of the heart, and calculated that, to maintain the circulation, the heart at each beat must exert a force equivalent to not less than 135,000 Ib. We find him comparing the heart to a piston or a wine-press. Also, he worked out that if the blood flows evenly from the arteries, through the minute capillaries, into the veins (for its return journey to the heart), this steady flow is due to the elastic reactions of the arterial walls. The arteries after expansion contract and force the blood forward as though a rope had been twisted round them – so that a certain regularity in the flow is not directly, but indirectly, attributable to the beats of the heart itself."
Herbert Butterfield (1957) The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800 (New Edition: Revised and enlarged). G. Bell and Sons Ltd., London.
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