An example of an analogy in public science discourse:
"The importance of the mixing is that the ocean surface layer tends to be depleted in nutrients throughout the Summer as the phytoplankton, the marine plants, they're using up the nutrients in the mixed layer…nitrates, phosphates, and in particular iron as well in the Southern Ocean. And, there's plenty of iron underneath, in the waters underlying it, so mixing, whether it is due to the animals or the physical processes, can replenish this upper layer with the nutrients. It's similar to ploughing a field, replenishing the nutrients and stirring it up."
Professor Angus Atkinson
Professor Angus Atkinson (Marine Ecologist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory) was talking on an episode of BBC Inside Science.
Note: I considered classing this as a simile, as an analogy needs to have some explicit mapping (e.g., a to b as c to d), but here it both mixing of ocean waters and ploughing a field have the same effect of moving nutrients to a different level (in the water, in the soil). So mixing the ocean waters moves nutrients to the surface layers as ploughing a field move nutrients to the surface.
Read examples of scientific analogies
[Please be aware that a word may have different nuances, or even a different meaning, according to context.]« Back to Index
