Schools minister David Miliband, condemned to a life of perpetual enthusiasm for New Labour policies as he attempts to climb the greasy pole, has drawn an analogy between students getting As at A-level and Paula Radcliffe beating a world record; while the gay cleric Canon John, recently rejected as Bishop of Reading, finds a ‘true analogy’ between homosexual use of the body parts in love-making with unconventional methods of painting a picture (e.g. with the feet). Both had better read Aristotle on the subject before they get carried away.
Aristotle sees analogy as a sort of paradigm. These he divides into three groups: historical paradigm (‘do not let the Persian king take Egypt, because everyone else who has done that goes on to attack Europe’); comparisons drawn from arts and skills (‘do not choose public officials by lot because no one chooses athletes or ship’s pilots by lot’); and fables (useful because so easy to invent, he says).
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