Abstract
AT the recent British Association conference more attention was given to agencies (Press, B.B.C., etc.) for 'getting science across' to the ordinary citizen than to the mental technique. An outstanding technique is illustration by analogy (Jeans and Eddington in theoretical physics and the late Alfred Marshall and recently Miss Scott in economics). Instances are afforded by the likening of an atom (or electron) to a railway system, solar system and organism (de Broglie), of economic elasticity to mechanical elasticity, of economic laws to tidal law in an estuary, and of the bankers' loan and reserve system to the cyclic juggling of five oranges with both hands. Such comparisons are often effective and exact ; but it is desirable that the authors, in writing, and the reader, in reading, should be clear as to what precisely is being asserted and should not fall into the intuitive trap of assuming either too much or too little.
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DUNLOP, W. IIIustration by Analogy. Nature 151, 700 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151700a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151700a0
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