What is an abstraction?

What is an abstraction? Everyone at least once in his life has heard this term, but not everyone knows what he means. In modern science, it is commonly believed that abstraction is a kind of process of cognition of the external world, during which there is a distraction from any non-essential properties and aspects of the phenomenon (or object) in order to be able to identify significant and regular features.

As a result of this diversion, facts are generalized and important regularities are identified.

What is an abstraction? A Brief Historical Essay

The very word "abstraction" in Latin means "distraction". For the first time this term was proposed by Aristotle. So what is abstraction? Aristotle believed that this is a subjective device of thinking, one-sided cognition and study of reality. By the way, this philosopher argued that it is abstraction that creates science. After all, science and philosophy are generalized concepts that are impossible without abstract thinking. Unfortunately, the theory of the famous philosopher has not been recognized.

In the next few centuries, philosophers and scientists believed that abstraction is the so-called universal. After the replacement of religion and theology with real science, relying only on the results of research, this concept has acquired a different meaning. It was believed that abstraction - it's just a psychic feature of a man whose mind could not otherwise know the undivided nature of things.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the opinions of scientists at the expense of abstract thinking diverged. Some consider this to be only a feature of consciousness, while others maintain that this form of cognition is of great importance in the life of every person.

Abstract concepts and abstraction

It is believed that the abstract concept is the highest form of generalized thinking. To begin with, consciousness separates the sensory properties of the object, and then slowly proceeds to the definition and analysis of its non-sensible forms. Thus, the abstract properties of any objects are determined after an analysis of the relationship between them, a certain connection. It is believed that the higher form of generalization helps to isolate increasingly important and significant signs of any things.

Abstraction refers to the mental selection of certain characteristics of elements of the same set. Thus, consciousness not only can determine some important, fundamental properties, but also predict some other unknown patterns.

Forms of abstract thinking

For several thousand years of studying such a form of human knowledge, some types of abstraction have been singled out. For example, if we talk about the goal of generalized perception, then we can distinguish the following types:

• Formal abstraction is a process of thinking, during which human consciousness identifies such characteristics of an object that in themselves can not exist. An example is the shape or color of the element. It is interesting that this is how little children learn. Formal abstraction is the basis of theoretical thinking.
• Substantial abstraction - during the study of the subject are relatively independent properties. For example, isolated cells of the body (which exist in themselves) as its structural parts.

There are other types of abstract knowledge:

• Sensual, or primitive, abstraction - in the process of cognition, a person distinguishes some one properties of the object, while not paying attention to all the others. For example, a person selects a color, but does not take into account the shape.
• Generalizing abstraction - during study, attention is drawn only to the general properties of objects, with this, some individual features are discarded.

In fact, it is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to the question of what an abstraction is. After all, the processes of generalizing thinking can be very diverse and versatile.