Education, at its most basic, is about communicating concepts. This is true across disciplines and subjects. Whether you are a science student or a humanities student, or are interested in commerce and the economy, without a solid understanding of the concepts on which these subjects are built, it will be difficult to grasp its scope and importance in the larger scheme of things.
Let us take the basic ideas of science. The concept of matter and its building blocks in atoms and molecules, living beings and the cellular structure on which their entire existence is based, are difficult things to imagine without the help of analogies.
As professor Devendra Kumar Saini so eloquently puts, quoting his favourite chemistry teacher from school, the scientific imagination often requires a greater suspension of belief than any fantastic imagination of a poet or story teller.
So how are these difficult to conceptualize ideas to be communicated to learners. This is where analogies come in.
Analogies are literary motifs of comparison where one thing is imagined through something else. For instance, the simple definition of molecules as has been taught for ages is to refer to them as the building blocks of matter. In this description we find ourselves drawn back to the images of bricks and legos that are connected in certain capacities to construct larger structures. Because of the physical impossibility of seeing the structure of a molecule, the imagination of a construction site helps belay the concept to students.