Argument
Abstraction
Overview
Abstraction is the process of generalizing rules and concepts from specific examples, literal (real or concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. The result of the process, an abstraction, is a concept that acts as a common noun for all subordinate concepts and connects any related concepts as a group, field or category.
Abstractions and levels of abstraction play an important role in the theory of general semantics originated by Alfred Korzybski. Anatol Rapoport wrote, "Abstracting is a mechanism by which an infinite variety of experiences can be mapped on short noises (words)." An abstraction can be constructed by filtering the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, selecting only those aspects that are relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball selects only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, excluding but not eliminating the other phenomenal and cognitive characteristics of that particular ball. In a type–token distinction, a type (e.g., a 'ball') is more abstract than its tokens (e.g., 'that leather soccer ball').
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Abstraction is discussed.
We have then said more about α. Thus, with a high grade of complexity we gain in approach to the full concreteness of α, and with a low grade we lose in this approach. Accordingly the simple eternal objects represent the extreme of abstraction from an actual occasion; whereas simple eternal objects represent the minimum of abstraction from the realm of possibility. It will, I think, be found that, when a high degree…
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
This mode of abstraction is realized on a very wide scale, because the elements of the world in which we find ourselves appear, as a matter of fact, here, there, and everywhere, and are changing their concomitants all the while. But on the other hand the abstraction is, so to speak, never complete, the analysis of a compound never perfect, because no element is ever given to us absolutely alone, and we can never…
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Looked at functionally, not structurally and statically, abstraction means that something has been released from one experience for transfer to another. Abstraction is liberation.
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
On the other hand an event-particle is defined so as to exhibit this character of being a route of approximation marked out by entities posited in sense-awareness. A definite event-particle is defined in reference to a definite punct in the following manner: Let the condition {sigma} mean the property of covering all the abstractive elements which are members of that punct; so that an abstractive set which satisfies…
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph
The difference between these two abstractions consists in the fact that in the abstraction of the universal from the particular, that from which the abstraction is made does not remain; for when the difference of rationality is removed from man, the man no longer remains in the intellect, but animal alone remains. But in the abstraction of the form from the matter, both the form and the matter remain in the…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
names the idea; states what it is
Philosophers who discussed Abstraction
- Anaximander
- George Berkeley
- Lev Shestov
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Michel de Montaigne
- Charles Sanders Peirce
- Alain Badiou
- Alfred Korzybski
- Edmund Husserl
- Jean Piaget
- Hannes Leitgeb
- Jin Yuelin
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Emotion
- History
- Francis Fukuyama
- Francis Bacon
- Anaximander
- Grapheme
- Philosophy
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- Isaac Newton
- Type–token distinction
- Intuition
- Johannes Kepler
- John Locke
- Idea
- Novum Organum
- Happiness
- Language
- Predicate (grammar)
- Mathematics
- Morpheme
- Information
- Referent
- Murray Gell-Mann
Place in the tradition
Part of Anaximander.