Editing Analogy (section)

===Shared abstraction===

[[Image:Crepuscular rays8 - NOAA.jpg|thumb|300px|In several [[culture]]s,{{which|date=December 2012}} the [[Sun]] is the source of an analogy to [[God]].]]
Greek philosophers such as [[Plato]] and [[Aristotle]] used a wider notion of analogy. They saw analogy as a shared abstraction.<ref name="Shelley">Shelley 2003</ref> Analogous objects did not share necessarily a relation, but also an idea, a pattern, a regularity, an attribute, an effect or a philosophy. These authors also accepted that comparisons, metaphors and "images" (allegories) could be used as [[argument]]s, and sometimes they called them ''analogies''. Analogies should also make those abstractions easier to understand and give confidence to those who use them.

[[James Francis Ross]] in ''Portraying Analogy'' (1982), the first substantive examination of the topic since Cajetan's ''De Nominum Analogia'',{{Dubious|date=June 2023}} demonstrated that analogy is a systematic and universal feature of natural languages, with identifiable and law-like characteristics which explain how the meanings of words in a sentence are interdependent.