An example of an analogy used to explain a scientific idea:
"In the account which follows an attempt is made to present the main outlines and the critical stages in the development of life from its inorganic origins. It is based essentially on two kinds of data-the geochemistry and physico-chemistry of the cooling planet, and the organic chemical composition common to all existing living organisms. Such an attempt reveals at once the large gaps that still exist, but it also reveals the lack of perfectly feasible research which is bound to help to reduce these gaps and to bring out others that may now be unsuspected.
The process is one which we can imagine as taking the form of a play divided into a prologue and three acts. The prologue introduces the scene on the surface of the primitive earth, and the first group of actors of an entirely inorganic kind which must start the play. The first act deals with the accumulation of chemical substances and the appearance of a stable process of conversion between them, which we call life ; the second with the almost equally important stabilisation of that process and its freeing from energy dependence on anything but sunlight. It is a stage of further synthesis and of the appearance of molecular oxygen and respiration. The third act is that of the development of specific organisms, cells, animals and plants from these beginnings. All we have hitherto studied in biology is really summed up in the last few lines of this act, and from this and the stage set we have to infer the rest of the play."
J. D. Bernal (1951) The Physical Basis of Life, Routledge and Kegan Paul
[I am not sure if the 'stage' of further synthesis was a deliberate theatre reference.]
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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.
