Analogy
WordNet
noun
(1) Drawing a comparison in order to show a similarity in some respect
"The operation of a computer presents and interesting analogy to the working of the brain"
"The models show by analogy how matter is built up"
(2) An inference that if things agree in some respects they probably agree in others
(3) The religious belief that between creature and creator no similarity can be found so great but that the dissimilarity is always greater; language can point in the right direction but any analogy between God and humans will always be inadequate
WiktionaryText
Etymology
From from from +
Noun
- The use of a similar example or model to explain or extrapolate from.
- The birthing class instructor used a balloon and a ping-pong ball as an analogy for the baby in the womb.
- Many use the Gospels' analogy of a mustard seed growing into a huge plant to explain faith.
- 1997: Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 67, The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)
- Words and things were united in their resemblance. Renaissance man thought in terms of similitudes: the theatre of life, the mirror of nature. There were four ranges of resemblance.
Aemulation was similitude within distance: the sky resembled a face because it had “eyes” — the sun and moon.
Convenientia connected things near to one another, e.g. animal and plant, making a great “chain” of being.
: a wider range based less on likeness than on similar relations.
Sympathy likened anything to anything else in universal attraction, e.g. the fate of men to the course of the planets.
- Words and things were united in their resemblance. Renaissance man thought in terms of similitudes: the theatre of life, the mirror of nature. There were four ranges of resemblance.