The Why and How of Dynamic Modeling - Dynamic Modeling of Diseases and Pests - page 19

1.6 Analogy and Creativity
If necessity is mother to invention, then analogy is father. Many new insights are
generated by learning something from the structure or behavior of one entity, which
is well understood, about another entity of which we have less knowledge. Leonardo
da Vinci's observations of the forms and function of bones, tendons, and muscles of
the human body, illustrated in his anatomical drawings, is analogous to the beam-
bending device with supports and levers that he invented 3 . Newton's discovery of
the law of gravity is thought to have been spurred by the realization that the ap-
ple and the moon are victims of the same forces, each within a different situation.
Charles Babbage's invention of the “difference engine” that ultimately gave rise to
the computer evoked images of a thinking machine 4 . Observations of the micro-
scopic hierarchies of biological materials, ranging from the architecture of minerals
and proteins in rats to the layers in chitin fibers in beetles are now used as biolog-
ical analogues in the development of new, biomimicked materials or construction
methods 5 . Recent attempts to generate artificial intelligence, using insight about the
workings of the human brain, could be seen as still another extension of the human-
machine analogy, this time in the realm of information processing rather than the
purely material world 6 .
Much of human reasoning is based on sparse data and the identification and com-
parison of patterns, instead of logical inference. We look at a new experience and
try to match it with similar experiences in the past. A set of experiences and the
patterns they form provide the basis for generalizations that then influence our deci-
sions. Formation of analogies is a method to establish and organize correspondences
among experiences and make them available for retrieval in the creative problem
solving process.
There is often no strong logical base for mental models—at a deeper level, it is
claimed, all thinking is metaphorical 7 .
The interpolation and extrapolation among analogous patterns help form men-
tal models that are often inadequate to provide a comprehensive perspective on the
many interrelated aspects of systems and to anticipate their behavior—especially
3 Mazlish, B., The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-evolution of Humans and Machines, Yale
University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1993.
4 Penrose, R., The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics,
Penguin Books, 1989.
5 Amato, I., Heeding the Call of the Wild, Science , Vol. 253, 1991, pp. 966-968.
Rubner, M. Synthetic Sea Shells, Nature, Vol. 423, 26 June 2003, pp. 925-926.
6 Newby, T.J., P.A. Ertmer, and D.A. Stepich, Instructional Analogies and the Learning of Con-
cepts , Educational Technology Research and Development, Vol. 48, No. 1, 1995, pp. 5-18.
7 Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1981,
and:
—————, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western
Thought, Basic Books, New York, 1999.