Abstraction

Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process where general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ('real' or 'concrete') signifiers, first principles, or other methods. There is an abstract thinking, just as there is abstract feeling, sensation and intuition. Abstract thinking singles out the rational, logical qualities ... Abstract feeling does the same with ... its feeling-values. ... I put abstract feelings on the same level as abstract thoughts. ... Abstract sensation would be aesthetic as opposed to sensuous sensation and abstract intuition would be symbolic as opposed to fantastic intuition. (Jung, (1971): par. 678). Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process where general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ('real' or 'concrete') signifiers, first principles, or other methods. 'An abstraction' is the outcome of this process—a concept that acts as a common noun for all subordinate concepts, and connects any related concepts as a group, field, or category. Conceptual abstractions may be formed by filtering the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, selecting only the aspects which are relevant for a particular subjectively valued 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'). Abstraction in its secondary use is a material process, discussed in the themes below. Thinking in abstractions is considered by anthropologists, archaeologists, and sociologists to be one of the key traits in modern human behaviour, which is believed to have developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. Its development is likely to have been closely connected with the development of human language, which (whether spoken or written) appears to both involve and facilitate abstract thinking. Abstraction involves induction of ideas or the synthesis of particular facts into one general theory about something. It is the opposite of specification, which is the analysis or breaking-down of a general idea or abstraction into concrete facts. Abstraction can be illustrated with Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620), a book of modern scientific philosophy written in the late Jacobean era of England to encourage modern thinkers to collect specific facts before making any generalizations. Bacon used and promoted induction as an abstraction tool, and it countered the ancient deductive-thinking approach that had dominated the intellectual world since the times of Greek philosophers like Thales, Anaximander, and Aristotle. Thales (c. 624–546 BCE) believed that everything in the universe comes from one main substance, water. He deduced or specified from a general idea, 'everything is water', to the specific forms of water such as ice, snow, fog, and rivers. Modern scientists can also use the opposite approach of abstraction, or going from particular facts collected into one general idea, such as the motion of the planets (Newton (1642–1727)). When determining that the sun is the center of our solar system (Copernicus (1473–1543)), scientists had to utilize thousands of measurements to finally conclude that Mars moves in an elliptical orbit about the sun (Kepler (1571–1630)), or to assemble multiple specific facts into the law of falling bodies (Galileo (1564–1642)). An abstraction can be seen as a compression process, mapping multiple different pieces of constituent data to a single piece of abstract data; based on similarities in the constituent data, for example, many different physical cats map to the abstraction 'CAT'. This conceptual scheme emphasizes the inherent equality of both constituent and abstract data, thus avoiding problems arising from the distinction between 'abstract' and 'concrete'. In this sense the process of abstraction entails the identification of similarities between objects, and the process of associating these objects with an abstraction (which is itself an object).