I wish to describe what I shall mean by the term analog. An analog is a model, but a model of a special kind. It is not like a scientific model, whose source may be anything at all and whose purpose is to act as an hypothesis of explanation or understanding. Instead, an analog is at every point generated by the thing it is an analog of. A map is a good example. It is not a model in the scientific sense, not a hypothetical model like the Bohr atom to explain something unknown. Instead, it is constructed from something well known, if not completely known. Each region of a district of land is allotted a corresponding region on the map, though the materials of land and map are absolutely different and a large proportion of the features of the land have to be left out. And the relation between an analog map and its land is a metaphor. If I point to a location on a map and say, 'There is Mont Blanc and from Chamonix we can reach the east face this way,' that is really a shorthand way of saying, 'The relations between the point labeled 'Mont Blanc' and other points is similar to the actual Mont Blanc and its neighboring regions.

• analog
• consciousness
• metaphor
• understanding
• map
• model
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