Analogies As a Way to Provide Justification: Analytical Essay

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Knowledge is information that we gain everyday, which can be from facts, opinions or through social interactions with one another. There are many ways through which we gain knowledge, but we often try to seek ways through which we can make it easier. One of the things that we use to do this are analogies. Analogies are tools that we often use in our daily lives to help explain an idea that would otherwise be difficult to understand. It is essentially a comparison between two unlike objects which furthers the understanding of a person because it uses an object that a person is familiar with, to explain an unfamiliar idea. Teachers often implement the use of analogies, but the use of analogies depends on each subject,and some subjects may use it explicitly while others may use it implicitly. While the prescribed question states that “the role of analogy is to aid understanding rather than provide justification” I believe that the role of analogy is dependent on the principle that a person is trying to explain, and while in some cases it can only be used to aid understanding, in other cases it may also provide justification. This can be seen in the two areas of knowledge: natural sciences and human sciences.

Chemistry is a subject which involves a lot of theory. Some concepts can be difficult for students to understand, which is why teachers often use analogies. At the beginning of the course, when we are learning about the specifics of an atom, teachers use an analogy of a solar system to show how an atom and our solar system are similar. Just like the sun is at the center of the solar system, the nucleus (with protons inside) is also at the center of the atom. While the sun represents the nucleus (with protons inside), the different planets orbiting the sun show that there are electrons that are also found around the nucleus of the atom. We can see that in this case, the use of this analogy aids the student’s understanding because it allows the student to see the structure of an atom from another perspective. While this analogy aids the understanding due to the similarities between an atom and our solar system, it does not provide justification for anything. Justification in chemistry is similar to explanation, which means that there must be a valid reason for why a principle occurs. This analogy does not provide justification to many things; for example, it cannot justify why the electrons cannot exist inside the nucleus of an atom OR . To understand this, students need to understand the theory, and while this theory is not studied in chemistry, the answer to this question can be found in quantum mechanics. This shows how an analogy only aids understanding rather than providing justification.

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Even though there are many analogies in chemistry that aid understanding, some not only aid understanding, but they also provide justification. For example, when studying trends in ionization energy, which is the “energy required to remove an electron from a gaseous atom or ion” (Helmenstine) in an atom, teachers often use the analogy of a soccer stadium. Consider the soccer pitch to be the nucleus of an atom and the different people sitting in the stadium to be electrons. Imagine that a person sitting close to the pitch wants to leave the stadium. It will be much more difficult for them to leave compared to a person sitting at the far back end of the stadium. Just like there are different rows in a stadium, there are different shells in an atom. So a person that is sitting in the last row of the stadium represents an electron in the outermost shell of the atom, and the rest of the people sitting in the other rows are considered to be in the inner shell. Using this analogy, we can understand that since the nucleus of an atom is positively charged due to the protons inside it and the electrons are negatively charged, it will be much more difficult for an electron that is in in the inner shell to be removed because it is closer to the nucleus and there will a much greater attraction between the positive and negative charge. This analogy aids understanding because it brings in an object which we are familiar with and uses that to explain an unfamiliar concept. However, it also provides justification to the argument because in chemistry, as mentioned before, a justification for a principle is the reasoning behind that principle, and this analogy provides a reason as to why the inner shell electrons are harder to remove, which is justification.

Besides chemistry, analogies are also often used in the human sciences. For example, in history we often look at political cartoons in order to …. One example of a political cartoon can be seen below, and this was made by Frank Boyle to mock the US for their oil consumption.

Made by Frank boyle, and adapted from www.boylecartoon.co.uk/

In this political cartoon, we can see that the author uses an analogy as he compares Lady Liberty to the US and suggests that America’s addiction to oil has led to the war against Iraq. The analogy used in the political cartoon helps aid understanding but does not provide justification, because in history

Some may argue that analogies only serve as tools which aid understanding rather than to provide justification; however, this is not always true. For example, in the human sciences, specifically in economics, we study a concept called tragedy of the commons which explains how individuals often act according to their own self-interest in a resource shared environment. To explain this idea, the economist Garett Hardin used an analogy consisting of herdsmen and cattle(BRITANNICA). Think of a scenario in which a small piece of pasture is open to all ranchers. Naturally, for their benefit, the ranchers will try to keep as many cattle as possible. The more cattle they have, the more profit they will earn, therefore all the other ranchers will try to increase the number of cattle. After one point, there will not be any space left on the pasture and this will cause overgrazing of the land. In this analogy, Hardin uses an object that we are familiar with, which is rancher and cattle, and uses this to explain a complex idea that we are not familiar with, and this helps aid understanding. However, the tragedy of the commons is an idea that is only applicable to non excludable and non rivalrous goods. A non excludable good means “that individual consumers are unable to prevent others from also consuming the good” (Chapellow) and a rival good is one “ that may only be possessed or consumed by a single user” (Liberto) and their availability decreases affecting the consumption for other consumers. While this analogy does not apply to resources that are non-rivalrous and excludable, it does provide justification to rival and non excludable resources because justification in economics is a reason for why a phenomenon occurs. And by providing a reason for why…. This analogy not only aids understanding, but also provides justification.

While an analogy can be used not only to aid understanding but also to provide justification, its purpose is dependent on where we use it. While in some areas of knowledge, it might have a single purpose, in the natural sciences and human sciences, it can be seen that depending on the context, it can be used to aid understanding and provide justification. However, analogies can sometimes cause confusion rather than aiding understanding or providing justification. For example, in the analogy used for the structure of an atom, upon a closer look, it can be understood that while the planets in the solar system stay in their orbit around the sun, electrons on the other hand transfer between different energy levels.

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