Analogies

Analogies 16

An analogy transfers relationships or processes from a familiar situation to an unfamiliar problem. In lateral thinking, it helps generate ideas; in logical analysis, it can make an abstract relationship easier to inspect. The correspondence is partial, so check what carries over and what does not.

Movement and the two problems of lateral thinking

Lateral thinking faces two obstacles. The first is getting started—generating any train of thought at all. The second is escaping the obvious, cliché path that the mind naturally follows. Analogy is a direct response to both. By translating a problem into a different, self-contained story, we borrow that story’s momentum. The analogy has a “life” of its own: objects interact, processes unfold, and relationships shift over time. That life becomes a source of movement when the problem seems stuck.

A simple analogy carries all it needs. Consider boiling an egg. An egg is placed in a container, covered with water, and heated. The water conducts the heat and also caps the temperature, preventing the egg from burning. Over time the egg’s nature changes, and the degree of change depends on how long it stays in that special environment. Different people have strong preferences about the final state. The story can be told in terms of eggs and saucepans, or it can be abstracted to “an object subjected to controlled conditions changes progressively with time.” Either way, the movement—the process—is what matters. The butterfly collector provides another ready analogy, containing processes of search, rarity, classification, supply and demand, and the tension between beauty and interference with nature. Such stories are compact but rich in transferable dynamics.

Developing the analogy in parallel with the problem

The technique is to develop the analogy alongside the real problem, step by step. At each stage, what happens in the analogy is translated back as a process or a relationship. This is not the mathematical method of temporarily converting a problem into symbols, performing operations while ignoring the symbols’ meaning, and then translating the result back—though the spirit is similar. More often it is more fruitful to advance both lines at once, letting the analogy force questions about the problem as it unfolds.

Take the spread of a rumour. We might choose the analogy of a snowball rolling downhill. As the snowball moves, it grows larger (the rumour gets stronger). The bigger it becomes, the more fresh snow it picks up (the more people know the rumour, the more they pass it on). But immediately the analogy demands precision: is the snowball’s size the number of people who hear the rumour, or the rumour’s intensity? And does the snow on the ground represent all possible receivers, or only those predisposed to believe? The analogy pushes us to look harder at the original situation. It may also suggest consequences: a large snowball can become an avalanche—destructive, but if forewarned one might get out of the way. A destructive rumour similarly raises questions of whether to escape it, stop it, or divert it.

The snowball supplies questions and possible developments. Whether those developments occur in a rumour requires evidence about how people actually hear, believe and repeat it.

Analogies, abstraction, and the risk of distortion

In logical thought, analogies perform a similar bridging role. Abstraction takes us into a world of concepts where logic works cleanly. But the abstract world is not the real world; it is a simplified map. When we use an analogy to move between the two, something is always lost or distorted. The concrete details of the boiled egg do not perfectly match the abstract idea of “subjecting an object to controlled conditions.” The snowball can only illuminate rumour dynamics up to a point: a rumour does not literally obey gravity, and the “snow” of human belief is far less uniform than a blanket of white.

Lateral thinking uses the analogy to generate possibilities for later assessment. An argument by analogy can also support a tentative inference, provided the similarities are relevant and important differences are considered. It does not provide a deductive proof that the unfamiliar case must behave like the familiar one.

Choosing and using analogies

An effective analogy does not need to be elaborate. A brief activity or a miniature story is enough so long as it has a clear internal development—something changes, a process runs, or a relationship evolves. The analogy must be familiar enough that its development can be followed without effort, freeing the mind to focus on the problem it is meant to illuminate.

After developing the analogy, list the ideas it produced and check them against the original problem. Keep the useful correspondences and discard those that do not fit.