analogy and metaphor

"Analogies prove nothing, that is quite true, but they can make one feel more at home."
Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1913)

The central premise of this web resource is that biological concepts have resonances and parallels with everyday experience. This is by no means a new idea - analogy, metaphor and modelling have long played a useful part in the development of biological and other scientific ideas, and teachers regularly draw on analogies to help students understand more readily. Our approach will be to build on this approach and seek out useful analogies that hopefully will make the initial learning of biological concepts a more natural process.