Complex sentence: Dowling geometries have a role in matroid theory as universal objects (Kahn and Kung, 1982); in that respect they are analogous to projective geometries, but based on groups instead of fields like the latter.
Split into simpler sentences: Dowling geometries have a role in matroid theory as universal objects (Kahn and Kung, 1982). In that they are analogous to projective geometries but based on groups instead of fields like the latter.