An examples of an analogy to a scientific concept,
"So far as culture patterns, that is, systems or complexes of symbols, are concerned, the generic trait which is of first importance for us here is that they are extrinsic sources of information. By 'extrinsic', I mean only that – unlike genes for example – they lie outside the boundaries of the individual organism as such in that intersubjective world of common understandings into which all human beings are born, in which they pursue their separate careers, and which they leave persisting behind them after they die. By 'source of information', I mean only that – like genes – they provide a blueprint of template in terms of which processes external to themselves can be given a definite form. As the order of bases in a strand of DNA forms a coded program, a set of instructions, or a recipe, for the synthesis of the structurally complex proteins which shape organic functioning, so culture patterns provide such programs for the institution of the social and psychological processes which shape human behaviour. Though the sort of information and the mode of its transmission are vastly different in the two cases, this comparison of gene and symbol is more than a strained analogy of the familiar 'social heredity' sort. It is actually a substantial relationship for it is precisely because of the fact that genetically programmed processes are so highly generalised in men, as compared with lower animals, that culturally programmed ones are so important; only because human behaviour is so loosely determined by intrinsic sources of information that extrinsic sources are so vital. To build a dam a beaver needs only an appropriate site and proper materials – his [or her] mode of procedure is shaped by this physiology. But man, whose genes are silent on the building trades, needs also a conception of what it is to build a dam, a conception he [or she] can only get from some symbolic source – a blueprint a textbook, or a string of speech by someone who already knows how dams are built – or, of course, from manipulating graphic or linguistic elements in such a way as to attain for himself [or herself] a conception of what dams are and how they are built."
Clifford Geertz (2000) Religion as a cultural system (first published 1966), in The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays. 2nd Edition. New York. Basic Books
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