Metaphorical analogy

A method closely related to synectics is one called Metaphorical analogy. As its name implies it uses one problem and its solution as a metaphor for a problem in a completely different area, which has not yet got a solution. It is simpler to use than synectics and is possibly better when dealing with a specific problem. 

Articulation extemalisation deduction, induction metaphor, analogy... 

Stan Shostak Just one moment, about metaphor and analogy. I think those are the diagnostic characteristics of reductionism. As soon as you find metaphor and analogy-this morning we heard the word machine , the cell machine, and I m sure you didn t intend it in any way to be reductionist, but that s how you know it s there. 

Chemical form became biological in Laurent s metaphor of the chemical "tree" "I have searched if there does not exist in all parts of a same chemical tree, something analogous to this mother cell, in a word a nucleus common to all compounds of the same series. "25 Like so many chemists, Armstrong could not resist the military metaphor, for example, in describing the chemistry of camphor "Whatever the agent, the attack is always delivered from the oxygen center and. .. the direction in which the attack becomes effective depends on... 

Another word expressing this idea of combining power was "saturation" capacity. Using an electrochemical theory of chemical reaction, Berzelius hid the assumption of electrical neutralization by the material analogy or metaphor... 

Calling hydrogen the "comet" of the chemical universe 13 was laden with levels of meaning for a new mechanistic chemistry. The metaphor expressed a hypothesis that hydrogen is a finite particle, that it is in continuous and repetitive motion within a dynamic molecule, and that the gravitational analogy for chemical affinity is an apt one. 

Leatherdale, W.H. The Role of Analogy, Model and Metaphor, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1974. 

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