In blending theory, a kind of compression in which a vital relation holding between input spaces (an outer-space relation ) gives rise to reduced complexity in the blended space. Specifically, scaling gives rise to a reduced scale, thereby forming an inner-space relation.

For instance, the professor who presents the events which have taken place over the 4.6 billion years of evolutionary time in terms of a 24-hour day for the sake of undergraduate students during a lecture on evolution is performing scaling.