ABSTRACT
TYPES OF SIMILARITY Analogising involves taking a problem, concept, or situation that you already know and understand and applying it to a new problem, concept, or situation. The problem, concept, or situation that you already know is known as the source, and the problem, concept, or situation to which it is being applied is known as the target. “To propose an analogy or simply to understand one, requires taking a kind of mental leap. Like a spark that jumps across a gap, an idea from the source analogue is carried over to the target. The two analogues may initially appear unrelated, but the act of making an analogy creates new connections between
them” (Holyoak & Thagard, 1995, p. 7). Table 5.1 gives some examples of a source being used to understand or as inspiration for a target.
