Evaluate each of the following passages and indicate whether it contains (a) an
argument by analogy, (b) a literary analogy, or (c) an enumerative induction. If
the passage contains an argument by analogy, indicate the total number of things
(instances) being compared, the relevant similarities mentioned or implied, the
conclusion, and whether the argument is strong or weak.
1. "The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas." [Alfred Noyes].
*2. "Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the
universe together." [Carl Zwanzig]
3. Girls are smarter than boys. Girls in the debate club always argue better
than boys. And the mean grade-point average of the girls in the glee club
is higher than that of the boys in the club.
4. "Howard Hughes was able to afford the luxury of madness, like a man
who not only thinks he is Napoleon but hires an army to prove it."
[Ted Morgan]
5. "Look around the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you
will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite
number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree
beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these
various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each
other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men who have
ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, through-
out all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the production of
human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.
Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all
the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of
Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of men; though possessed of much
larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has
executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we
prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind
and intelligence." [David Hume]
