An example of simile in scientific writing:
"For this reason you should understand two reciprocal movements belonging wholly to the poles, like hanging balances, since the poles and circles in a sphere imply one another mutually and are in agreement. Therefore there will be one movement which changes the inclination of those circles [66˚] by moving the poles up and down in proportion to the angle of section. There is another which alternately increases and decreases the solstitial and equinoctial precessions by a movement taking places crosswise. Now we call these movements 'librations', or 'swinging movements' because like hanging bodies swinging over the same course between two limits they become faster in the middle and very slow at the extremes.
…And so these two librations competing with one another make the poles of the earth in the passage of time describe certain lines similar to a twisted garland."
pp.124-125
Nicolaus Copernicus (1543/1995) On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Translator: Charles Glenn Wallis) Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books
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As well as the twisted garland simile, there is arguably here an analogy in how aspects of the movement of the beam of a beam balance (or a simple pendulum) can be mapped onto the movements of the planet, such that the term libration is used metaphorically by analogy. (Perhaps a torsional pendulum would make a better analogy?) The term is also now used in relation to some modes of oscillation in molecules.
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