An example of how analogy has been used in developing scientific thinking:
"Dr. Black's surmises about the thermometric scale were those of a chemist, studying the nature of fluidity.
There is such an analogy between the cessation of thermometric expansion, during the liquefaction of ice, and during the conversion of water into steam, that Dr. Black had no sooner explained the first of those anomalies, than he felt in his own mind that all his former conjectures about a variety of phenomena in the boiling, and even in the gentle evaporation of fluids, were well founded; and he was persuaded that in the same manner as ice, in liquefaction, requires the combination of a great quantity of heat, in order to form water, so water, in order to its conversion into steam, also requires another combination with heat, in an unknown proportion. When he considered the slow production of steam, notwithstanding the continued heat of glowing fuel in contact with the vessel….the scalding power of steam….and the great heat raised in the refrigeratory of a still.. ..he was so much convinced of the perfect similarity of Nature's procedure in both cases, that he taught this doctrine, in his lectures in 1761, before he had made a single experiment on the subject; and he explained with great facility of argument, many phenomena of nature which result from this vaporific combination of heat."
Robison, J. (1806), Editor's preface to Joseph Black, Lectures on the elements of chemistry: delivered in the University of Edinburgh.
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