Figure 57: Theoretical approaches to analogy (1800-2001)

 

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Kant and Goethe

Owen and Thomson

19th century: analogy in different sciences

20th century: sparse research

 

 

Kant and Goethe

 

Since Kant and Goethe the concept of analogy became more interesting.

 

According to Kant analogy - as well as induction – is

„useful and indispensably to the purpose of extend our knowledge of experience. Due to the fact she gives only empiric certainty, we must avail ourselves with cautiousness and care“ (Logic, 1800, § 84 - see Ernst Laas 1876; Ernst Konrad Specht 1952; Sueo Takeda 1969; Arthur Melnick 1973; Muus Gerrit Jan Beets 1986; Georg Sans 2000).

 

For Goethe (Ferdinand Weinhandl, 1932) analogy has

„the advantage that she does not close and in fact not wants final things. In contrast induction is perishable because she has a prefixed purpose in the eye and on the way reaching it she carries away wrong and true“ (maxims and reflections, 1833, 532).

 

 

Owen and Thomson

 

In 1843 Richard Owen specified for biology the important distinction between analogy and homology (Leonid J. Bljacher 1982) - just a year after the physicist William Thomson had postulated an analogy between the formulas for heat and attraction.

 

 

19th century: analogy in different sciences

 

Analogy is difficult to conceive. It could be assigned to

·        the philosophy of language (Laurenz Lersch 1838; Victor Henry 1883);

·        physics (Ludwig Merz 1842);

·        etymology (Christian Friedrich Ludwig Wurm 1848);

·        biology (Heinrich Hess 1851);

·        logic (Janus Hoppe 1873);

·        the metaphoric thinking (Alfred Biese 1893);

·        popular thinking (Abram Smythe Palmer 1882; L. William Stern 1893).

 

One of the first to investigate the use of analogy in science has been William Stanley Jevons („The principles of science“, 1874).

 

 

20th century: sparse research

 

In 1902 Ernst Mach diagnosed „Similarity and analogy as guidelines of research”. In the previous year Albert Thumb and Karl Marbe had made „experimental investigations into the psychological bases of linguistic analogy formation” in the context of their pioneering work to psychology of thinking at the University of Wuerzburg.

 

All alone stayed studies on analogy by Harald Hoeffding (1905, 1924), Scott Milross Buchanan (1932), S. T. Cargill (1947) and Maurice Dorolle (1949).

In shorter contributions Lothar von Strauss and Torney (1936), Rudolf Seeliger (1948), Werner Theis (1951), Mary Brenda Hesse (1952) and Joseph Turner (1955-56) examined the analogy term in physics.

 

In a lecture in December 1958 the linguist Max Black (1962, 219-243) differentiated "scale models" from "analogue models". The first are mostly reduced images, eventually chemical or social experiments. Analogue models consist of another material than the original; they describe only its structure. They are based on the principle of "isomorphism".

 

Also from 1960 to 2000 research on analogy remained sparse. In 1963 Mary Brenda Hesse published a booklet „Models and Analogies in  Science“. Peter Achinstein followed on analogies 1964.

 

Some momentum resulted ten years later from the three-fold titles of

·        William Hilton Leatherdale „Analogy, model, metaphor"(1974) as well as of

·        Danielle and George Arthur Mihram “The role of models, metaphors and analogy" (1974).

They were followed by more or less funky ideas of Kurt Seidl (1981) and Hermann de Witt (1983).

 

Back to scientific realms have led Dedre Gentner (1980; 2001), Nancy J. Nersessian (1988) and Rom Harré (1988), Brian Carl Falkenhainer (1989), Kenneth J. Gilhooly (1990), Adam Biela (1991), Alex Tiemann (1992), Derek Long, Roberto Garigliano (1994), John A. Barnden, Keith James Holyoak (1994), Robert Matthew French (1995), Keith James Holyoak, Paul Thagard (1995; 1997), Hans Czap (1996) and Srini Narayanan (1997).