1997: Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 67, The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)Words and things were united in their resemblance. Renaissance man thought in terms of similitudes: the theatre of life, the mirror of nature. There were four ranges of resemblance. Aemulation was similitude within distance: the sky resembled a face because it had “eyes†— the sun and moon. Convenientia connected things near to one another, e.g. animal and plant, making a great “chain†of being. Analogy: a wider range based less on likeness than on similar relations. Sympathy likened anything to anything else in universal attraction, e.g. the fate of men to the course of the planets. A “signature†was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane knowledge. Knowing was guessing and interpreting, not observing or demonstrating.
That which resembles, or is similar; a representation; a likeness.
