Structural Mapping
topic
Structural mapping is the specific analogical process of aligning the relational systems of a source domain with those of a target domain — not merely noticing that two things are alike but systematically identifying which elements of the source correspond to which elements of the target, which relationships between source elements correspond to which relationships between target elements, and which aspects of the source's causal or logical structure can be validly imported into the target domain.
Role
Structural mapping is what distinguishes the productive scientific analogy from the superficially compelling but structurally invalid metaphor — with the history of science demonstrating that the most enduring theoretical advances came from analogies whose structural correspondences held under rigorous examination rather than merely suggested by surface similarity. The creative practitioner who develops the habit of structural mapping — asking 'which elements in this source domain correspond to which elements in my problem, and does the relationship structure hold?' — filters the large set of suggested analogies that the analogizing mind generates down to the small set that will actually yield productive insight.