The use of analogies

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Bill Glasheen
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The use of analogies

Post by Bill Glasheen »

The best I have to offer to martial arts isn't my ability to be a knuckle-dragging warrior (of doom). Rather it is my ability to see patterns in movement, and find interpretations that others miss.

The biggest disadvantage and greatest advantage I had was not being near the center of Uechi Ryu activity. Rather I started with another martial art, moved to another university, got 1.5 years of direct instruction in Uechi, and then was thrown on my own to work it out with a small group of faithful while my teacher went off to grad school. I ended up having to teach in short order, and found myself making multiple pilgrimages to various dojos. I also freely cross-trained, as nobody ever told me I HAD to study JUST ONE art. As I often tell my students, I did MMA (literally) before MMA was cool. So did many of the gifted people I ran across. And they came from all walks of life.

Doing all this while in undergraduate engineering and graduate biomedical engineering certainly didn't hurt, nor did my interest in music and my prior experience playing baseball. How did I make it all work? By seeing the patterns, and in doing so finding ways to hook lots of detail onto relatively simple, coherent mental structures. And when I found analogies and patterns that worked in MA, physiology, math, and music, well it really solidified the lessons. And I learned how to make more from less. Over time I started seeing applications that nobody ever told me. They just revealed themselves to me. These off-the-script applications became more and more obvious over time. Soon, I was well off the script. It's like going from learning a language to thinking in that language and the culture(s) that use it.

I ran across this article today in The Wall Street Journal, and realized that this explains how my brain works. I hope it inspires other similar thinkers to walk the paths that their seniors walked rather than seizing on their words and their dogma.

- Bill
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Bill Glasheen
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Re: The use of analogies

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WSJ.com wrote:Four Ways to Innovate through Analogies
Many of history’s most important breakthroughs were made by seeing analogies—for example, how a plane is like a bike

By JOHN POLLACK
Nov. 7, 2014 11:01 a.m. ET

Thomas Edison famously said that genius requires “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Edison’s third criterion for would-be innovators is less well-known but perhaps even more vital: “a logical mind that sees analogies.”

Edison, father of the light bulb, recorded sound and moving pictures, was right. Many of the most important breakthroughs in history—including the printing press, the theory of evolution, the airplane, the assembly line and the computer desktop—were developed through the use of key conceptual analogies.

That’s because analogy is much more than a linguistic device; it’s a fundamental way of thinking. To make an analogy is to make a comparison that suggests parallels between two distinct things, explicitly or implicitly. And those who are most nimble at seeing parallels and connections, rather than just obvious differences, compete best.

Here are four rules for innovating through analogy.
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Bill Glasheen
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Re: The use of analogies

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WSJ.com wrote: Question conventional analogies

Always kick the tires on the analogies you encounter or consider. Some analogies ring true at first but fall apart on closer examination. For example, centuries of would-be aviators modeled their machines after birds in an attempt to flap their way aloft. But flapping had nothing to do with the intrinsic aerodynamics of flight; rather, it reflected challenges of propulsion unique to birds.

The Wright Brothers, by contrast, saw an analogy to the machine that they already designed, manufactured and repaired for a living—the bicycle. Both were unstable vehicles requiring nuanced balance and control in three dimensions; both fell if they lost too much forward momentum. The design decisions this analogy inspired enabled them to make history at Kitty Hawk.

..... Picture of First Flight at Kitty Hawk

The first flight: Orville Wright takes off on Dec. 17, 1903. The Wright Brothers saw an analogy
to the machine that they already designed, manufactured and repaired for a living—the bicycle.
GETTY IMAGES
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Bill Glasheen
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Re: The use of analogies

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WSJ.com wrote: Explore multiple analogies

No matter how seductive an analogy may be, be sure to examine several others before deciding which one might be most useful. Usually, more than one analogy can shed light on a given situation.

Charles Darwin, for example, developed his theory of evolution based on two fundamental analogies. The first analogy drew a parallel between geology and biology. Darwin reasoned that if a modest, meandering stream could erode grains of sand one by one to carve a mighty canyon, perhaps small, random changes in a plant or animal could influence its relative survival and reproductive rates over generations, gradually altering both form and function to yield new species.

Darwin’s second insight was to draw an analogy between breeding in agriculture and “natural selection” in the wild. Melding both analogies, he offered a revolutionary theory that not only explained biological evolution but also equipped people with a systematic approach for understanding gradual change in virtually any complex system.
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Re: The use of analogies

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WSJ.com wrote: Look to diverse sources

The art of analogy flows from creative re-categorization and the information that we extract from surprising sources. Take the invention of the moving assembly line. Credit for this breakthrough typically goes to Henry Ford, but it was actually the brainchild of a young Ford mechanic named Bill Klann. After watching butchers at a meatpacking plant disassemble carcasses moving past them along an overhead trolley, Klann thought that auto workers could assemble cars through a similar process by adding pieces to a chassis moving along rails.

Overcoming significant management skepticism, Klann and his cohorts built a moving assembly line. Within four months, Ford’s line had cut the time it took to build a Model T from 12 hours per vehicle to just 90 minutes. In short order, the moving assembly line revolutionized manufacturing and unlocked trillions of dollars in economic potential. And while in retrospect this innovation may seem like a simple, obvious step forward, it wasn’t; the underlying analogy between moving disassembly and moving assembly had eluded everyone until Klann grasped its potential.
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Re: The use of analogies

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Simplify

Similarly, Steve Jobs recognized that the digital “desktop,” first developed but unappreciated at Xerox PARC, was an analogy with the potential to make computers accessible to millions of people—an insight he put to work when he launched the first Mac. That breakthrough machine (and the imitators that followed) quickly democratized computing and ushered in today’s information age.

Jobs always pushed for simplicity in design because, as he used to say, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” That’s how analogies work, too: They make complicated things easier for people to grasp by stripping them to their essence. The very best analogies make things as simple as possible—but no simpler.
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Re: The use of analogies

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WSJ.com wrote: Mr. Pollack's latest book is "Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas," from which this essay is adapted. He is a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton.
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Van Canna
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Re: The use of analogies

Post by Van Canna »

Great stuff Bill. :)
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Re: The use of analogies

Post by Stryke »

I'm with you Bill , even when I has access to some of the best folk with the purest :roll: Lineage I found cross comparison and reverse engineering the way to go.

There is real opportunity in isolation , and in cross training .

the real stuff , principles and attributes transcend the ornamentation , develop the ability to see that and past the window dressing and rhetoric , well the world is yours.

Tradition is excellent , and there's so much to learn , but it's not the answer so much as the work/experience finding it that develops true skill.
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Re: The use of analogies

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Miyamoto Musashi's book on sword strategy (Go Rin No Sho or Book of Five Rings) is so profound that it is required reading in some Japanese business schools. Musashi obviously was a master at reducing principles down to their fundamental building blocks, and conveying them in a way that was meaningful across arts and disciplines.

Image

I found this in Wikipedia.
Wikipedia wrote:Musashi spent many years studying Buddhism and swordsmanship. He was an accomplished artist, sculptor, and calligrapher. Records also show that he had architectural skills. Also, he seems to have had a rather straightforward approach to combat, with no additional frills or aesthetic considerations. This was probably due to his real-life combat experience; although in his later life, Musashi followed the more artistic side of bushidō. He made various Zen brush paintings, calligraphy, and sculpted wood and metal. Even in The Book of Five Rings he emphasizes that samurai should understand other professions as well.
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Re: The use of analogies

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I can say from experience that analogies that connect to students are useful in college (and other levels I imagine) teaching as well. Conceptually associating something new or unknown to students to something with which they are familiar can have its cognitive rewards. There are some caveats however. One is for the teacher to stay up to date on what is known by the students that may be useful to use as analogies...analogies that worked 20 years ago may go right over the heads of today's students and only confuse them further. Unfortunately my PhD advisor fails on this regularly. Because of my age I get the analogies he makes, many of which I am certain he has been using since at least the 1980s, but they leave the younger students at a loss. The second is that the analogy has to be appropriate...inappropriate analogies (i.e. the analogy does not really equate with the concept teacher is trying to impart) can also mislead or confuse students.
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Re: The use of analogies

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Glenn wrote: One is for the teacher to stay up to date on what is known by the students that may be useful to use as analogies...analogies that worked 20 years ago may go right over the heads of today's students and only confuse them further.
A really good one is "Uechi Ryu fighting is like fighting in a phone booth." It's a great analogy... if you were born in the right era. When has a teenager or twenty-something seen a phone booth?

This picture comes from "Anachronisms in a Digital Age" - a title that is self-explanatory.

..... Phone booth

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Van Canna
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Re: The use of analogies

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The best way to win a 'phone booth fight' is to hit the opponent with a bowling ball.
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Re: The use of analogies

Post by Van Canna »

Marcus
Tradition is excellent , and there's so much to learn , but it's not the answer so much as the work/experience finding it that develops true skill.
I agree...the way to look at tradition is that it is the 'seed'...same way good Uechi people look at Sanchin as the 'seed' that blossoms into the rest of the katas that ingrain technique, explosive power, tenshin concepts, evasion and redirection, balance and almost infinite angles of force and directions.

Then it is up to the student to practice those concepts against the more common habitual acts of violence, creating useful scenarios from base bunkais...

But the student must remain in practice with a-pplications congruent with his chosen system and the effects of the fight or flight reflex.

A student that practices a million styles will get bogged down by Hick's Law.

The KISS principle is the key, as Rabesa sensei also points out on his site.
Van
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Re: The use of analogies

Post by Glenn »

Bill Glasheen wrote: A really good one is "Uechi Ryu fighting is like fighting in a phone booth." It's a great analogy... if you were born in the right era. When has a teenager or twenty-something seen a phone booth?
Yep, that is a perfect example Bill. And even if youngsters have seen a phone booth somewhere in their surroundings, how many have actually been in one? That is the only way to truly appreciate how confined a space it is.

Heck nowadays when they see or think of something like this

Image

they probably think it is like this on the inside!

Image

:D
Glenn
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