Analogy in Scientific Discovery: The Case of Johannes Kepler

Analogy is often linked with scientific discovery. In this paper I lay out a theory of analogical processing and apply it to the work of Johannes Kepler. Kepler is striking not only for the magnitude of his discoveries but because of the articulateness with which he laid out his reasoning processes, including his frequent and extended use of analogies. I discuss four analogical subprocesses - highlighting common structure, projecting inferences, re-representing relations, and noticing alignable differences - by which analogy brings about newideas and show how they apply in Kepler’s work. I focus particularly on a central extended analogy in which he used the phenomenon of the light from the sun, which travels to the planets and illuminates them, as a base domain for a new ontological entity (a precursor of gravity) - the vis motrix, that causes the planets to move.

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