[betty boop]

It becomes evident that the way our minds work corresponds in some mysterious way to the way the universe works.... The only really plausible explanation for all that--other than sheer coincidence that is statistically unlikely on an astronomical order of magnitude--is the Logos, a general principle of order and rationality that pervades the universe. God made our minds to accord with these rational principles underlying His universe.

What a splendid essay/post, Cicero! Thank you ever so much!

The above italics explains why analogy is not just a literary device....

[cornelis]

Some more along this line of thought.

Hayek points out that modern science fought against the old analogies to replace them with relations that go beyond mere appearances.

Take the stars, for example. They make patterns easily discernible to a child, but what is that to science? A real star for science is found in relations that are not sensuous but mathematical. Superceding the classification based on the senses, the new method of the natural sciences claimed greater precision and universal consent in their focus on quantitative relations. The question will be whether the definition of science is complete once it has thoroughly eclipsed the qualitative relations. In other words, must the prejudice of the old analogies against science become the prejudice of science against the traditional analogies in order to be science?

Hayek writes,

Nor is Science as such interested in the relation of man to things, in the way in which man's existing view of the world leads him to act. . . When the scientist stresses that he tries to study things independently of what men think or do about them. The views people hold about the external world are to him always a stage to be overcome.

You have suggested a sort of detente through compatibility or complementariness. What appears contradictory should not be considered exclusive if we allow the point of view. The the strictures of the logical mode of thought--especially the principle of non-contradiction--may block us from considering the integrated, but disparate categories or levels of phenomena which in and of themselves still exhibit analogical relations.

Suggesting a complementariness is but the beginning of a long and arduous task toward understanding it. You know how the Greeks pushed to find the underlying principle. I am willing to pony up my cautionary conjecture. The nature of the kinds of compatibility is likely to be multitudinous.

I'll add a second in the form of a question. Our noetic ability to acknowledge disparate relations as being simultaneous--can that faculty be mistaken as the principle of complementariness? I think an answer to that is important, especially when we have had Logos to be a running candidate.