Creating Analogies – On Aspects of the Mapping Process between Knowledge Domains
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Abstract
Analogical reasoning plays a fundamental role in science and also in everyday life. The mapping process between knowledge domains is a complex and creative human capability. Gentner’s principle of systematicity (Gentner 1983, Falkenhainer, Forbus & Gentner 1987, Skorstad, Falkenhainer & Gentner 1987, Gentner 1989, Clement & Gentner 1991) describes the way in which people generate analogies.
The approach of this paper is to extend the principle of systematicity and to demonstrate the main constraints and interactions of the mapping process. The main question is how analogue knowledge is activated in the mind and how this determines the mapping process. The focus lies on the semantic distance between the knowledge domain and the observed situation or constellation that has to be explained by creating an analogy. Furthermore, the conceptional and relational structure of different analogies are taken in account. The approach is founded on the theory of mind and mental operations by Klix (1992, 1993) based on concepts and relations.
First I will show that analogical reasoning is a process of combining knowledge from different distances within the mind. The experimental results provide the thinking that analogical reasoning is a process of abstraction and probably not a result of a direct comparison of similarity between concepts. Factors are found which extend or shrink the radius of search. Further findings determine the expressivity, understand ability, and information gain in analogical mapping results.