Search results for "Analogy"
showing 10 items of 84 documents
The Search for Common Origin: Homology Revisited
2018
Understanding the evolution of biodiversity on Earth is a central aim in biology. Currently, various disciplines of science contribute to unravel evolution at all levels of life, from individual organisms to species and higher ranks, using different approaches and specific terminologies. The search for common origin, traditionally called homology, is a connecting paradigm of all studies related to evolution. However, it is not always sufficiently taken into account that defining homology depends on the hierarchical level studied (organism, population, and species), which can cause confusion. Therefore, we propose a framework to define homologies making use of existing terms, which refer to …
The flourishing diversity of models in theoretical morphology: from current practices to future macroevolutionary and bioenvironmental challenges.
2008
17 pages; International audience; For decades, theoretical morphological studies of different groups of organisms have been successfully pursued in biological, paleontological, and computational contexts, often with distinct modeling approaches and research questions. A regular influx of new perspectives and varied expertise has contributed to the emergence of a veritable multidisciplinary outlook for theoretical morphology. The broadening of this discipline is reflected in a substantial increase in the number of models, leading to a bewildering diversity that has yet to be scrutinized. In this work, we tackle this issue in a synthetic fashion, with a quantitativemeta-analysis that allows a…
Defining sensory descriptors: towards writing rules based on terminology
2007
International audience; Descriptive analysis relies upon the use of sensory descriptors. They are words generally associated to a definition aimed at helping their understanding. However, the writing rules for such definitions remain implicit. The present work is a collaborative attempt from sensory analysts and linguists to get further insight into how definitions are elaborated.Definition formulations were analyzed according to linguistic criteria, syntactic (type and number of nouns, verbs and adjectives) as well as semantic ones (relations of synonymy, metaphor or analogy between the descriptors and their definitions). Such a linguistic analysis was performed on one hundred descriptor d…
Drift and evolutionary forces
2016
This arride analyzes the view of evolutionary theory as a theory of forces. The analogy with Newtonian mechanics has been challenged due to the alleged mismatch between drift and the other evolutionary forces. Since genetic drifr has no direction severa! authors tried to protect its status as a force: denying its lack of directionality, extending the notion of force and looking for a force in physics which also lacks of direction. I analyse these approaches, and although this strategy finally succeeds, this discussion overlooks the crucial point on the debate between causalists and statisticalists: the causal status of evolutionary theoty.; El presente artículo analiza la visión de la teorí…
2017
Children’s improved performance with age in analogy tasks has been explained by an increase in semantic knowledge of the items and the relations between them or by the development of an increased ability to inhibit irrelevant information. We tested the so-called "unbalanced attentional focus hypothesis" that claims that a failure to choose the "analogical" match can be the result of a difficulty to focus on all the relevant information available. Previous eye-tracking research has suggested, in analogies of the A:B::C:D format, that 5-6 year-olds organize their search around the C item. They focused significantly less than adults on the A:B pair, thereby hindering their discovering the rela…
Some considerations on Hydra groups and a new bound for the length of words
2014
Abstract After a survey on some recent results of Riley and others on Ackermann functions and Hydra groups, we make an analogy between DNA sequences, whose growth is the same of that of Hydra groups, and a musical piece, written with the same algorithmic criterion. This is mainly an aesthetic observation, which emphasizes the importance of the combinatorics of words in two different contexts. A result of specific mathematical interest is placed at the end, where we sharpen some previous bounds on deterministic finite automata in which there are languages with hairpins.
Analogical reasoning and aging: the processing speed and inhibition hypothesis.
2014
This study was designed to investigate the effect of aging on analogical reasoning by manipulating the strength of semantic association (LowAssoc or HighAssoc) and the number of distracters' semantic analogies of the A:B::C:D type and to determine which factors might be responsible for the age-related differences on analogical reasoning by testing two different theoretical frameworks: the inhibition hypothesis and the speed mediation hypothesis. We compared young adults and two groups of aging people (old and old-old) with word analogies of the A:B::C:D format. Results indicate an age-related effect on analogical reasoning, this effect being greatest with LowAssoc analogies. It was not asso…
The popularization of plate tectonics: presenting the concepts of dynamics and time
1996
There have been many attempts to describe and represent the theory of plate tectonics to laypeople. In the context of a study conducted at the request of a museum, we have tried to determine how the concepts of both geological time and the movements of the plates have been reformulated. After having systematically studied in detail publications aimed at more or less educated readers, we have selected a corpus of twelve articles from nine different magazines or journals. Among the different means of expression used by the popularizers, rhetorical figures constitute a significant resource. Procedures based on analogy (metaphor, comparison, analogical reasoning) were brought together in a sing…
Application of analogy in the teaching of french in China
2014
The analogy refers to a non-coincidental similarity between two things or two ideas of different nature. It is a cognitive process whereby information attached to a specific element is transferred to another specific element, and plays an important role in the process of memorization, communication and problem solving. It is used as a method in many disciplines, it also has its own definition in different areas. In linguistic research, the analogy is also a very interesting topic. According to our research, we find that the analogy has an important influence on the creation and the evolution of a language, when we learn a language, the correct analogy also plays a positive role, it is possi…
The subtlety of sameness: a theory and computer model of analogy-making
1995
International audience; The research described in this book is based on the premise that human analogy-making is an extension of our constant background process of perceiving - in other words, that analogy-making and the perception of sameness are two sides of the same coin. At the heart of the author's theory and computer model of analogy-making is the idea that the building-up and the manipulation of representations are inseparable aspects of mental functioning, in contrast to traditional AI models of high-level cognitive processes, which have almost always depended on a clean separation. A computer program called Tabletop forms analogies in a microdomain consisting of everyday objects on…