Abstraction
Abstraction is a cognitive process that simplifies complex ideas by reducing them to their most fundamental elements, discarding specifics in favor of general concepts. Originating from Latin, the term conveys the notion of drawing away from particular details to focus on broader attributes and ideas. For example, when observing an elephant, concrete thinking may concern itself with details like the species or the amount of water it drinks, while abstract thought encompasses the general concept of elephants or the idea of thirst itself. The ability to think abstractly typically develops during adolescence and is often viewed as a hallmark of human intelligence compared to other species.
In philosophy, abstraction is associated with concepts that exist beyond the physical world, such as emotions or numbers. In art, it refers to works that do not represent the structured reality of nature. Additionally, abstract thinking allows individuals to use metaphors and analogies to compare disparate objects, facilitating deeper understanding. This cognitive skill is also fundamental in scientific reasoning, where abstraction plays a critical role in forming hypotheses and analyzing data. Overall, abstraction is key to understanding relationships between different concepts and enhances our capacity for complex reasoning.
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Abstraction
Abstraction is a process of simplifying cognitive thought, discarding specifics, and reducing information to its generalized form. The term is derived from the Latin ab, "away from," and the verb trahere, "to draw." It describes thinking that helps the mind identify a more complex idea by examining its most basic elements. Abstract thought typically focuses on attributes and ideas associated with a particular object, rather than the object itself. For example, a person may see an elephant drinking water at a zoo. Concrete thinking would try to determine the species of elephant or the amount of water the animal consumes. Abstract thought would focus on elephants in general, the concept of being thirsty, or why people go to zoos.
The ability to think in abstract terms generally develops during adolescence. Some researchers see abstraction as a means of measuring intelligence and one of the defining cognitive traits that sets humans apart from other animals. In philosophy, abstract concepts are sometimes seen as existing outside the boundaries of physical reality and include such things as emotions or numbers. In art, abstraction can be defined as a work that does not reflect the ordered structure of the natural world. Abstract mathematics refers to the conceptual processes involved in formulas and calculations.
Background
The first recorded theories on abstract thinking were developed by the ancient Greeks. In the fourth century BCE, the philosopher Plato wrote that all things existed as part of a higher realm in unchanging states called "forms." Humans, for example, displayed the form of a human, or "humanness." While individual humans lived, they took part in this form. When they died, they stopped participating in the form; however, the abstract form, or concept, of being human, existed outside the natural world and was timeless. Thirteenth-century philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas believed that humans had a natural ability to gain knowledge of specific things by abstraction from divine, universal concepts. For instance, a person may see a man named Arthur, but the perception of Arthur as a human comes from the eternal idea of being human.
By the twentieth century, the study of the human mind became associated less with the metaphysical realm of philosophy and more with the science-based field of psychology. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung divided the conscious mind into four interrelated ways of perceiving reality: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. These were further broken down into diametrically opposite pairs. Thinking was the opposite of feeling, and intuition was the opposite of sensation. To Jung, a person who had a strong thinking function would be weak in feeling; a strong sensation function would mean weak intuition. Abstraction occurred when a person relied exclusively on one of these four functions to process experiences and ignored input from the others.
Overview
In cognitive thought, abstraction either disregards the literal view of reality or paints it in ambiguous terms. The literal form of thinking focusing strictly on the physical world is known as concrete thought. This form is the first to develop in humans. Infants perceive the world solely in concrete terms. To them, objects that they cannot physically experience have ceased to exist. As they grow, children eventually learn object permanence but are slow to understand abstract thinking. Young children who see another child playing with a toy will often grab it for themselves. The concrete idea of the physical toy is all they understand; the abstract concepts of sharing and ownership take time to appear. Research indicates that abstract thinking develops during later stages of childhood, usually between the ages of eleven and sixteen.
The same concept may take on different forms depending on a person's age. To a young child unfamiliar with abstract thinking, the idea of "Sunday" is a foreign concept, a vague future event with little meaning in the physical present. An adult, however, can comprehend Sunday as the day that follows Saturday and comes before Monday.
Abstraction allows people to compare objects and experiences using non-literal means, such as metaphors and analogies. These methods permit dissimilar objects to be compared in a way that would aid understanding. An example of this would be explaining the sizes of the Earth and the Sun by comparing them to a grape and a large beach ball, respectively. Without abstraction, figures of speech and idioms would retain only their literal meaning. Hearing something "straight from the horse's mouth" would involve a real talking animal rather than hearing something from a definitive source. Abstract thinking also allows people to grasp relationships between language-based verbal concepts and more visually-oriented, nonverbal concepts. This helps people understand that saying the word "goodbye" and waving a hand back and forth can equate to the same thing.
Many intelligence tests and college entrance examinations use abstract thinking to measure a person's ability to understand spatial reasoning and to mentally manipulate and rotate objects. An example of spatial reasoning is a test that requires a person to observe an unfolded cube with various shapes on its sides and choose the correct cube it would make when folded. Abstraction is also a main factor used in complex reasoning, such as that used by scientists to test and verify theories. In the scientific method, a problem begins as a hypothesis, a proposed explanation based on limited factual evidence. The hypothesis is tested with experimentation, and the data are critically analyzed until a result is reached. The process begins with an absence of concrete facts and relies on abstraction to determine a starting point.
Bibliography
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