An example of the use of metaphor and simile in scientific writing:
"In the centre of all rests the sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place than this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern, others, the mind and still others, the pilot of the world. Trismegistus calls it a 'visible god'; Sophocles' Electra, 'that which gazes upon all things'. And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars which wheel around."
Nicolaus Copernicus (1543/1995) On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Translator: Charles Glenn Wallis) Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books
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