Mapmaking, analogies and creativity
In the book White Holes, Carlo Rovelli dives deeply into the question of what happens inside of a black hole. In the course of his discussion, he has a slight detour where he discusses the nature of creativity.
He began by telling the story of Anaximander, the first person to create a map. Today we do not think much of maps, but as Rovelli highlighted, if you have never looked down upon the earth from a height, it is actually a novel concept to consider drawing the world in such a way.
How then did Anaximander develop the insight to look at the world that way?
Rovelli postulates that creative insights like that are the result of analogous thinking. The ability to think using analogy allows us to assume new points of view that may not occur directly in our day to day lives.
When encountering new problems - considering what it may be similar to can be helpful.
Rovelli's point is why reading is so important. For those who are not reading regularly, they are not priming their minds with enough raw material to help produce analogies. Reading offers encounters with ever larger worlds, peoples, ways of thinking. This combines to fertilize the mind with seeds ready to sprout analogies.
Moreover, analogous thinking is further enriched by broad curiosity. Even if we are deeply passionate about a single topic, learning in across disciplines can be a powerful force - despite not immediately appearing as relevant.
Of course, analogies are just a tool. A sober assessment must counter-balance our confidence in the strength of the analogy. It may be worth laying out where / how the circumstance and the analogy are clearly not the same.
As well, for greater robustness consider which analogies you utilize and how they are easily susceptible to recency bias. Analogies that come most readily to mind you may use most frequently or have just encountered. Developing a toolbox of analogous models ready to deploy is worthwhile, and helps to avoid “the man with the hammer problem.”