For those interested, Douglas Hofstadter (of the famous Gödel, Escher, Bach) wrote recently a book called Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking which develops the thesis that analogy is the core and fuel of thinking, and does it quite brilliantly.

I'm only half-way through the book yet, but so far I liked it very much, the first part on language for example develops somewhat similar ideas, but with a quite different viewpoint, than the "Humans Guide to Words" Sequence on Less Wrong, and both complement each other well.