'Abstraction' is the process of
generalization by reducing the
information content of a
concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only
information which is relevant for a particular
purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to a
ball retains only the information on general ball
attributes and
behaviour. Similarly, abstracting an
emotional state to
happiness reduces the amount of information conveyed about the emotional state.
Thought process
In
philosophical terminology, ''abstraction'' is the
thought process wherein
ideas are distanced from
objects.
Abstraction uses a
strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective
communication about things in the abstract requires an
intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient.
Cat on Mat ''(picture 1)''
For example, many different things can be
red. Likewise, many things sit on surfaces (as in ''picture 1'', to the right). The property of ''
redness'' and the
relation ''
sitting-on'' are therefore abstractions of those objects. Specifically, the conceptual diagram ''graph 1'' identifies only three boxes, two ellipses, and four arrows (and their nine labels), whereas the ''picture 1'' shows much more pictorial detail, with the scores of implied relationships as implicit in the picture rather than with the nine explicit details in the graph.
''Graph 1'' details some explicit relationships between the objects of the diagram. For example the arrow between the ''agent'' and ''CAT:Elsie'' depicts an example of an ''
is-a'' relationship, as does the arrow between the ''location'' and the ''MAT''. The arrows between the
gerund ''SITTING'' and the
nouns ''agent'' and ''location'' express the
diagram's basic relationship; ''"agent is SITTING on location"''; ''Elsie'' is an instance of ''CAT''.
Although the description ''sitting-on'' (graph 1) is more abstract than the graphic image of a cat sitting on a mat (picture 1), the delineation of abstract things from concrete things is somewhat ambiguous; this ambiguity or vagueness is characteristic of abstraction. Thus something as simple as a newspaper might be specified to six levels, as in
Douglas R. Hofstadter's illustration of that ambiguity, with a progression from abstract to concrete in ''
Gödel, Escher, Bach'' (1979):
(1) a publication
:(2) a newspaper
::(3) ''The San Francisco Chronicle''
:::(4) the May 18 edition of the ''Chronicle''
::::(5) my copy of the May 18 edition of the ''Chronicle''
:::::(6) my copy of the May 18 edition of the ''Chronicle'' as it was when I first picked it up (as contrasted with my copy as it was a few days later: in my fireplace, burning)
An abstraction can thus encapsulate each of these levels of detail with no loss of generality. But perhaps a detective or philosopher/scientist/engineer might seek to learn about some thing, at progressively deeper levels of detail, to solve a crime or a puzzle.
Referents
Abstractions sometimes have ambiguous
referents; for example, "
happiness" (when used as an abstraction) can refer to as many things as there are people and events or
states of being which make them happy. Likewise, "
architecture" refers not only to the design of safe, functional buildings, but also to elements of creation and
innovation which aim at elegant solutions to
construction problems, to the use of space, and at its best, to the attempt to evoke an
emotional response in the builders, owners, viewers and users of the building.
Instantiation
Things that do not exist at any particular place and time are often considered abstract. By contrast, instances, or members, of such an abstract thing might exist in many different places and times. Those abstract things are then said to be ''multiply instantiated'', in the sense of ''picture 1'', ''picture 2'', etc., shown above.
It is not sufficient, however, to define ''abstract'' ideas as those that can be instantiated and to define ''abstraction'' as the movement in the opposite direction to instantiation. Doing so would make the concepts 'cat' and 'telephone' abstract ideas since despite their varying appearances, a particular cat or a particular telephone is an instance of the concept "cat" or the concept "telephone". Although the concepts "cat" and "telephone" are ''abstractions'', they are not ''abstract'' in the sense of the objects in ''graph 1'' above.
We might look at other graphs, in a progression from ''cat'' to ''mammal'' to ''animal'', and see that ''animal'' is more abstract than ''mammal''; but on the other hand ''mammal'' is a harder idea to express, certainly in relation to ''
marsupial''.
Physicality
A physical object (a possible referent of a concept or word) is considered ''concrete'' (not abstract) if it is a ''particular individual'' that occupies a particular place and time.
Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in
reality or exist only as sensory experience, like the color
red. That definition, however, suffers from the difficulty of deciding which things are real (i.e. which things exist in reality). For example, it is difficult to agree to whether concepts like ''God'', ''the number three'', and ''goodness'' are real, abstract, or both.
An approach to resolving such difficulty is to use ''
predicates'' as a general term for whether things are variously real, abstract, concrete, or of a particular property (e.g. ''good''). Questions about the properties of things are then
propositions about predicates, which propositions remain to be evaluated by the investigator. In the ''graph 1'' above, the graphical relationships like the arrows joining boxes and ellipses might denote predicates. Different levels of abstraction might be denoted by a progression of arrows joining boxes or ellipses in multiple rows, where the arrows point from one row to another, in a series of other graphs, say graph 2, etc.
Abstraction used in philosophy
Abstraction in
philosophy is the process (or, to some, the alleged process) in
concept-formation of recognizing some set of common features in
individuals, and on that basis forming a concept of that feature. The notion of abstraction is important to understanding some philosophical controversies surrounding
empiricism and the
problem of universals. It has also recently become popular in formal logic under
predicate abstraction. Another philosophical tool for discussion of abstraction is
Thought space.
Ontological status
The way that physical objects, like rocks and trees, have
being differs from the way that properties of abstract concepts or relations have being, for example the way the
concrete,
particular,
individuals pictured in ''picture 1'' exist differs from the way the concepts illustrated in ''graph 1'' exist. That difference accounts for the
ontological usefulness of the word "abstract". The word applies to properties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, they do not exist in space or time, but that instances of them can exist, potentially in many different places and times.
Perhaps confusingly, some
philosophies refer to ''
tropes'' (instances of properties) as ''
abstract particulars''. E.g., the particular
redness of a particular
apple is an ''abstract particular''.
In linguistics
Reification, also called ''hypostatization'', might be considered a
formal fallacy whenever an abstract concept, such as "society" or "technology" is treated as if it were a concrete object. In
linguistics this is called ''
metonymy'', in which abstract concepts are referred to using the same sorts of
nouns that signify concrete objects. Metonymy is an aspect of the English language and of other languages. It can blur the distinction between abstract and concrete things:
:'1805':
Horatio Nelson (''
Battle of Trafalgar'') - "
England expects that every man will do his duty"
Compression
An abstraction can be seen as a process of 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).
:For example, ''picture 1'' above illustrates the concrete relationship "Cat sits on Mat".
Chains of abstractions can therefore be constructed moving from neural impulses arising from sensory
perception to basic abstractions such as color or
shape to experiential abstractions such as a specific cat to
semantic abstractions such as the "idea" of a CAT to classes of objects such as "mammals" and even categories such as "object" as opposed to "action".
:For example, ''graph 1'' above expresses the abstraction "agent sits on location".
This conceptual scheme entails no specific
hierarchical taxonomy (such as the one mentioned involving cats and mammals), only a progressive
compression of detail.
The neurology of abstraction
Some research into the human
brain suggests that the left and right hemispheres differ in their handling of abstraction. For example, one meta-analysis reviewing human brain lesions has shown a left hemisphere bias during tool usage
[1].
Abstraction in art
Most typically ''abstraction'' is used in the arts as a
synonym for
abstract art in general. Strictly speaking, it refers to art unconcerned with the literal depiction of things from the visible world
[2]--it can, however, refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art. Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory. Later still, abstraction was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freed from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs.
[3]
In music, ''abstraction'' refers to the abandonment of
tonality.
Atonal music has no key signature, and lacking an externally imposed standard, is characterized by its internal relationships.
[4]
Abstraction in psychology
'
Jung's definition of abstraction' broadened its scope beyond the thinking process to include exactly four mutually exclusive, opposing complementary psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. Together they form a structural totality of the differentiating abstraction process. Abstraction operates in one of these opposing functions when it excludes the simultaneous influence of the other functions and other irrelevancies such as emotion. Abstraction requires selective use of this structural split of abilities in the psyche. The opposite of abstraction is
concretism. ''Abstraction'' is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of ''
Psychological Types''.
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, [1921] (1971):par. 678).
Origins
The first symbols of abstract thinking in humans can be traced to fossils dating between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago in Africa.
[5][6]
See also
External links
★
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gottlob Frege
★
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Abstract Objects
★
Discussion at The Well concerning Abstraction hierarchy
Notes
1. James W. Lewis "Cortical Networks Related to Human Use of Tools" '12' (3): 211-231 ''The Neuroscientist'' (June 1, 2006).
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
3. National Gallery of Art: Abstraction.
4. Washington State University: Glossary of Abstraction.
5. Abstract Engravings Show Modern Behavior Emerged Earlier Than Previously Thought
6. Ancient Engravings Push Back Origin of Abstract Thought
References
★ Eugene Raskin, ''Architecturally Speaking, 2nd edition'', a Delta book, Dell (1966), trade paperback, 129 pages
★ ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edition'', Houghton Mifflin (1992), hardcover, 2140 pages, ISBN 0-395-44895-6
★ Jung, C.G. [1921] (1971). ''Psychological Types'', Collected Works, Volume 6, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01813-8.
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