An example of an historical analogy used to explain a scientific idea:
"While Leibniz had associated life with sensation and appetite, Stahl [Georg Ernst Stahl] associated it with a capacity to resit decay…He argued for vegetable souls using a mechanical clock metaphor to contrast machines and organisms. The clock has been designed by a human. It acts as an organism by fulfilling its purpose: to tell the time accurately. As an extension of its designer, it is both organic and instrumental. When the clock breaks, it continues to follow the laws of physical necessity, but it is no longer instrumental. It becomes simple mechanical. The human provides the clock with formal, efficient, and final causes, making it organic, but only when it runs properly. An organism, occurs when the formal, efficient, and final causes exist within the clock: when it defines, creates, directs and copies itself."
Lucas John Mix (2018) Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin. On vegetable souls. Cham, Switzerland: plagrave macmillan.
Read examples of scientific analogies
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.
