Analogy has traditionally been viewed as a powerful engine of discovery, for the scientist, the mathematician, the artist, and the child. In the age of form, however, it fell into disrespute. Analogy seemed to have none of the precision found in axiomatic systems, rule-based production systems, or algorithmic systems. When these new and powerful systems came to be viewed as the incarnations of scientific thinking, analogy was contemptuously reduced to the status of fuzzy thinking and mere intuition. The absence of formal mechanisms for analogy was mistakenly equated with a supposed absence of analogy itself as a fundamental cognitive operation. At the high point of popularity of rule-based systems, analogy had lost status as an important scientific topic and was ridiculed as a method of discovery and explanation. But toward the end of the 1970s, analogy and its disreputable companions- metonymy, mental images, narrative thinking, and, most unpalatable of all to the formally minded, affect and metaphor- made a roaring comeback. (Fauconnier and Turner 2002, The way we think).
