Analogy

The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence of memory. ~ Giacomo Casanova

Analogy (plural: analogies) (from Greek ἀναλογία, analogia, "proportion") is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. Analogy is also relationship of resemblance or equivalence between two situations, people, or objects, especially when used as a basis for explanation or extrapolation. The concepts of association, comparison, correspondence, mathematical and morphological homology, homomorphism, iconicity, isomorphism, metaphor, resemblance, and similarity are closely related to analogy. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy.

Quotes

• Analogies are figures intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent toys if they fail.
  • Henry Adams, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904), Ch. XIV

• Nothing escapes God's knowledge. This is proved by the witness of the Scriptures and the analogy of the sun, which, although created, yet by its light or heat enters into all things.
  • Saint Ambrose, in Duties of The Clergy, p. 11

• A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories. One can imagine that the ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between analogies.
  • Stefan Banach, in Banach Spaces and Their Applications in Analysis (2007), p. 5

• The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence of memory.
  • Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life

• The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.
  • George Eliot, Common Precedents: The Presentness of the Past in Victorian Law and Fiction, p. 94

• Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (1876)

• Analogy: ... a form of reasoning that is particularly liable to yield false conclusions from true premises.
  • The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (1977) ed. Alan Bullock, Olive Stallybrass, p. 20.

• That is why the analogy of stealing does not work. With a thief, we want to know how much money he stole, and from whom. With the artist it is not how much he took and from whom, but what he did with it.
  • Lukas Foss, About The Creative Process

• Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.
  • Sigmund Freud, Personality (1998), p. 5

• The trouble with analogies — and also their greatest strength and value — is that they can work reciprocally. The crowd scene in nightdress that looks (and feels) like the Last Judgment. And the Last Judgment, at least for this play, in its ...
  • Arthur F. Kinney, Lies Like Truth: Shakespeare, Macbeth, and the Cultural Moment (2001), p. 273

• One good analogy is worth three hours discussion.
  • Dudley Field Malone, "Aha!" Teaching by Analogy (2012), p. 111

• If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative.
  • Peter Morgan, The Fifth Estate: When biopic subjects strike back (18 October 2013)

• Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding.
  • Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts (2008), p. 214