Analogies in Religious Symbolism

Abstract

Science, we have seen, makes use of indirect analogical models by means of which possible modes of connection in nature may be symbolized. We have also seen that such models are disciplined by the regulative idea of mechanism, which secures them against being mere postulations of occult qualities, such as those assumed, for instance, in the caloric theory which represented heat as if it were an imponderable fluid. Analogies of the latter kind in effect explain nothing; they may lull our minds with the impression that we understand how a thing works, but the analogy has been drawn ad hoc for this particular purpose, and suggests no possible developments or correlations beyond the immediate problem which it has been introduced to explain. On the other hand the fruitful scientific analogies, such as the valency bonds in the molecular theory of matter, or the planetary model of the atom, or the undulatory theory of light, have made possible wider generalizations, and so have helped to carry forward the body of scientific thought. Such models suggest a possible picture by which our imaginations may grasp a mode of connection otherwise only expressible in the abstract form of mathematical formulae.