Abstract
Analogies play an important role in scientific reasoning, as they often offer significant heuristic devices in the context of theory and model construction. In this paper, I argue that analogies are similarly important in the process of empirical data generation. With a proper understanding of scientific analogies, in terms of partial-structure preservation, I articulate an account of the role played by analogies in scientific imaging. In this way, it is not only in theoretical contexts, but also in the examination of empirical domains that analogies are central to scientific practice.
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Acknowledgements
My thanks go to Olivia Bueno for helpful discussions of the issues discussed in this work. Additional thanks are also due to Davis Baird, R.I.G. Hughes (in memoriam), Cyrus Mody, Catherine Murphy, Michael Myrick, Alfred Nordmann, Chris Robinson, and Christopher Toumey for earlier and enlightening discussions about microscopy at the nanoscale. Finally, many thanks go to Shyam Wuppuluri for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this work and for his patience and support throughout its writing process.
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Bueno, O. (2022). Analogies and Scientific Imaging. In: Wuppuluri, S., Grayling, A.C. (eds) Metaphors and Analogies in Sciences and Humanities. Synthese Library, vol 453. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90688-7_9
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