Abstract
Similarity is partial identity: the characteristics of similar objects are in part identical and in part different. Not a single observable mark of one object need coincide with a mark of the other, and yet the marks of the one may be interrelated in exactly the same way as those of the other. Jevons2 calls analogy a more deep-seated similarity; one might say, an abstract similarity. Analogy may in some circumstances remain quite concealed from direct sense observations and reveal itself only through comparison of conceptual interconnections between the marks of one object with the corresponding connections in the other. Maxwell3 not only defines analogy but also underlines those features of it that are most important for scientific enquiry, when he describes analogy as that partial similarity between the laws in one field and those in another, so that each illustrates the other. However, we shall see that Maxwell’s approach is not different from ours. Hoppe4 regards the concept of analogy as superfluous, since as with similarity in general it is merely a matter of conceptual agreement of certain marks in the objects between which analogy is found. Although this is correct, there are good grounds for taking analogy as a special case of similarity and distinguishing it from the general concept. Above all, it is the enquirer into nature who is driven to this view, since taking notice of analogies greatly furthers his work.
Reproduced from Ostwald, Annalen der Naturphilosophie, Vol. I, with amplifications.
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Notes
Jevons, The principles of science, London 1892, p. 627.
Maxwell, Transact, of the Cambridge Philos. Soc., Vol. X, 1855, p. 27. (Ostwalds Klassiker No. 69).
Hoppe, Die Analogie, Berlin 1873.
W. Stern, Die Analogie im volkstümlichen Denken, Berlin 1893.
Tylor, Die Anfänge der Kultur, German translation Leipzig 1873.
Euclid’s Elements, (quoted in the German from the edition by J. F. Lorenz, Halle 1798.)
Kepler, Opera, ed. Frisch, Vol. II, p. 186. The relevant diagrams will be obvious and are omitted.
Oeuvres de Desargues, ed. Poudra, Paris 1864.
Cf. Couturat, La logique de Leibniz, Paris 1901.
Mach, ‘Bemerkungen über die historische Entwicklung der Optik’, Poskes Zeitsch.f. physik. u. chem. Unterricht XI, 1898.
Vitruvius, De architectura V, Cap. III, 6.
Huygens, Traité de la lumière, Leiden 1690.
Bence Jones, The life of Faraday, London 1870, Vol. II, p. 205.
W. Thomson, Cambridge math. Journal III, Feb. 1842.
Maxwell, A treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Oxford 1873, Vol. I, p. 99.
Maxwell, ‘Dynamical Theory of the electromagn. field’, London Phil. Trans. 1865.
Hertz, Untersuchungen über die Ausbreitung der elektrischen Kraft, Leipzig 1892.
Maxwell, Trans. Cambr. Phil. Soc. X, p. 27, 1855. When I myself mentioned these analogies in a similar way, in the Prague periodical Lotos (Feb. 1871) and in Erhaltung der Arbeit (Prague 1872), the work of Thomson and Maxwell was still unknown and inaccessible to me. It seems that S. Carnot was the first consciously to have adopted this mode of thought.
Newton, a, Optice, ed. Clarke, London 1719, p. 366.
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© 1976 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Mach, E., Hiebert, E.N. (1976). Similarity and Analogy as a Leading Feature of Enquiry. In: Knowledge and Error. Vienna Circle Collection, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1428-1_13
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