Abstraction

Contents

1 Main article 1
1.1 Abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.3 As used in dierent disciplines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.4 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.6 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.7 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 Supporting articles 8
2.1 Abstract art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.1 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.2 Abstraction in the 21st century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1.3 Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1.4 Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1.5 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1.6 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.7 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.1.8 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2 Abstraction (computer science) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.1 Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.2 Language features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2.3 Control abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2.4 Data abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2.5 Abstraction in object oriented programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2.6 Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.2.7 Levels of abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.2.8 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2.9 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2.10 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2.11 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3 Abstraction (mathematics) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

i
ii CONTENTS

2.3.1 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.2 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.3 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.4 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4 Abstract structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.4.1 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.4.2 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5 Abstract object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5.1 In philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5.2 Concrete and abstract thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.3 Quasi-abstract entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.4 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.6 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.6 Hypostatic abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.6.1 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.6.2 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.6.3 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.7 Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.7.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.7.2 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.7.3 Other ontological topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.7.4 Prominent ontologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.7.5 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.7.6 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.7.7 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.8 Platonic realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.8.1 Universals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.8.2 Particulars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.8.3 Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.8.4 See also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.8.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.8.6 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.8.7 External links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

3 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses 38

3.1 Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.2 Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3 Content license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Chapter 1

Main article

1.1 Abstraction breaking-down of a general idea or abstraction into con-

crete facts. Abstraction can be illustrated with Francis
For specic types of abstraction and other uses of the Bacon's Novum Organum (1620), a book of modern[3]sci-
term, see Abstraction (disambiguation). entic philosophy written in the late Elizabethan era of
England to encourage modern thinkers to collect specic
facts before making any generalizations.
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process by
which general rules and concepts are derived from the us- Bacon used and promoted induction as an abstraction
age and classication of specic examples, literal (real tool, and it countered the ancient deductive-thinking ap-
or "concrete") signiers, rst principles, or other meth- proach that had dominated the intellectual world since the
ods. An abstraction is the product of this processa times of Greek philosophers like Thales, Anaximander,
concept that acts as a super-categorical noun for all sub- and Aristotle. Thales (c. 624546 BCE) believed that ev-
ordinate concepts, and connects any related concepts as erything in the universe comes from one main substance,
a group, eld, or category.[1] water. He deduced or specied from a general idea, ev-
erything is water, to the specic forms of water such as
Conceptual abstractions may be formed by ltering ice, snow, fog, and rivers.
the information content of a concept or an observable
phenomenon, selecting only the aspects which are rele- Modern scientists can also use the opposite approach
vant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting of abstraction, or going from particular facts collected
a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball into one general idea, such as the motion of the plan-
selects only the information on general ball attributes and ets (Newton (16421727)). When determining that the
behavior, eliminating the other characteristics of that par- sun is the center of our solar system (Copernicus (1473
ticular ball.[1] In a typetoken distinction, a type (e.g., a 1543)), scientists had to utilize thousands of measure-
'ball') is more abstract than its tokens (e.g., 'that leather ments to nally conclude that Mars moves in an elliptical
soccer ball'). orbit about the sun (Kepler (15711630)), or to assem-
ble multiple specic facts into the law of falling bodies
Abstraction in its secondary use is a material process,[2] (Galileo (15641642)).
discussed in the themes below.

1.1.2 Themes
1.1.1 Origins
Compression
Thinking in abstractions is considered by anthropologists,
archaeologists, and sociologists to be one of the key traits An abstraction can be seen as a compression process,[4]
in modern human behaviour, which is believed to have mapping multiple dierent pieces of constituent data to
developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. Its de- a single piece of abstract data;[5] based on similarities in
velopment is likely to have been closely connected with the constituent data, for example, many dierent phys-
the development of human language, which (whether ical cats map to the abstraction CAT. This concep-
spoken or written) appears to both involve and facilitate tual scheme emphasizes the inherent equality of both con-
abstract thinking. stituent and abstract data, thus avoiding problems arising
from the distinction between abstract and "concrete".
In this sense the process of abstraction entails the identi-
History cation of similarities between objects, and the process
of associating these objects with an abstraction (which is
Abstraction involves induction of ideas or the synthesis of itself an object).
particular facts into one general theory about something.
It is the opposite of specication, which is the analysis or For example, picture 1 below illustrates the

1
2 CHAPTER 1. MAIN ARTICLE

concrete relationship Cat sits on Mat. as the standing or status of the prince, his visible estates.
At the same time, materially, the 'practice of statehood
Chains of abstractions can be construed, moving from is now constitutively and materially more abstract than at
[6]

neural impulses arising from sensory perception to basic the time when princes ruled as the embodiment of ex-
[7]
abstractions such as color or shape, to experiential ab- tended power'.
stractions such as a specic cat, to semantic abstractions Further information: Power projection and Display
such as the idea of a CAT, to classes of objects such as behavior
mammals and even categories such as "object" as op-
posed to action.

For example, graph 1 below expresses the ab- Ontological status

straction agent sits on location. This con-
ceptual scheme entails no specic hierarchical The way that physical objects, like rocks and trees, have
taxonomy (such as the one mentioned involv- being diers from the way that properties of abstract con-
ing cats and mammals), only a progressive cepts or relations have being, for example the way the
exclusion of detail. concrete, particular, individuals pictured in picture 1 ex-
ist diers from the way the concepts illustrated in graph 1
exist. That dierence accounts for the ontological useful-
Instantiation ness of the word abstract. The word applies to proper-
ties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, they
Things that do not exist at any particular place and time do not exist in space or time, but that instances of them
are often considered abstract. By contrast, instances, or can exist, potentially in many dierent places and times.
members, of such an abstract thing might exist in many
dierent places and times. Those abstract things are then
said to be multiply instantiated, in the sense of picture 1, Physicality
picture 2, etc., shown below. It is not sucient, however,
to dene abstract ideas as those that can be instantiated Further information: History of accounting Ancient
and to dene abstraction as the movement in the opposite history
direction to instantiation. Doing so would make the con-
cepts cat and telephone abstract ideas since despite
their varying appearances, a particular cat or a particular A physical object (a possible referent of a concept or
telephone is an instance of the concept cat or the con- word) is considered concrete (not abstract) if it is a partic-
cept telephone. Although the concepts cat and tele- ular individual that occupies a particular place and time.
phone are abstractions, they are not abstract in the sense However, in the secondary sense of the term 'abstrac-
of the objects in graph 1 below. We might look at other tion', this physical object can carry materially abstract-
graphs, in a progression from cat to mammal to animal, ing processes. For example, record-keeping aids through-
and see that animal is more abstract than mammal; but out the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres,
on the other hand mammal is a harder idea to express, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, prob-
certainly in relation to marsupial or monotreme. ably livestock or grains, sealed in containers. Accord-
ing to Schmandt-Besserat & (1981), these clay contain-
Perhaps confusingly, some philosophies refer to tropes ers contained tokens, the total of which were the count
(instances of properties) as abstract particularse.g., the of objects being transferred. The containers thus served
particular redness of a particular apple is an abstract par- as something of a bill of lading or an accounts book. In
ticular. This is similar to qualia and sumbebekos. order to avoid breaking open the containers for the count,
marks were placed on the outside of the containers. These
physical marks, in other words, acted as material abstrac-
Material process
tions of a materially abstract process of accounting, us-
Still retaining the primary meaning of 'abstrere' or 'to ing conceptual abstractions (numbers) to communicate
[8][9]
draw away from', the abstraction of money, for exam- its meaning.
ple, works by drawing away from the particular value of Abstract things are sometimes dened as those things that
things allowing completely incommensurate objects to be do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experiences,
compared (see the section on 'Physicality' below). Karl like the color red. That denition, however, suers from
Marx's writing on the commodity abstraction recognizes the diculty of deciding which things are real (i.e. which
a parallel process. things exist in reality). For example, it is dicult to agree
The state (polity) as both concept and material practice to whether concepts like God, the number three, and good-
exemplies the two sides of this process of abstraction. ness are real, abstract, or both.
Conceptually, 'the current concept of the state is an ab- An approach to resolving such diculty is to use
straction from the much more concrete early-modern use predicates as a general term for whether things are var-
1.1. ABSTRACTION 3

iously real, abstract, concrete, or of a particular property boxes, two ellipses, and four arrows (and their ve la-
(e.g., good). Questions about the properties of things are bels), whereas the picture 1 shows much more pictorial
then propositions about predicates, which propositions detail, with the scores of implied relationships as implicit
remain to be evaluated by the investigator. In the graph 1 in the picture rather than with the nine explicit details in
below, the graphical relationships like the arrows joining the graph.
boxes and ellipses might denote predicates. Graph 1 details some explicit relationships between the
objects of the diagram. For example, the arrow between
Referencing and referring the agent and CAT:Elsie depicts an example of an is-a
relationship, as does the arrow between the location and
Abstractions sometimes have ambiguous referents; for the MAT. The arrows between the gerund/present partici-
example, "happiness" (when used as an abstraction) can ple SITTING and the nouns agent and location express the
refer to as many things as there are people and events diagram's basic relationship; agent is SITTING on loca-
or states of being which make them happy. Likewise, tion; Elsie is an instance of CAT.[10]
"architecture" refers not only to the design of safe, func- Although the description sitting-on (graph 1) is more ab-
tional buildings, but also to elements of creation and stract than the graphic image of a cat sitting on a mat (pic-
innovation which aim at elegant solutions to construction ture 1), the delineation of abstract things from concrete
problems, to the use of space, and to the attempt to evoke things is somewhat ambiguous; this ambiguity or vague-
an emotional response in the builders, owners, viewers ness is characteristic of abstraction. Thus something as
and users of the building. simple as a newspaper might be specied to six levels,
as in Douglas Hofstadter's illustration of that ambiguity,
Simplication and ordering with a progression from abstract to concrete in Gdel, Es-
cher, Bach (1979):[11]
Abstraction uses a strategy of simplication, wherein for-
merly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or un- (1) a publication
dened; thus eective communication about things in the (2) a newspaper
abstract requires an intuitive or common experience be- (3) The San
tween the communicator and the communication recipi- Francisco
ent. This is true for all verbal/abstract communication. Chronicle
(4) the May
CAT: Elsie Sitting MAT 18 edition of
The San Fran-
cisco Chroni-
agent agent
cle
(5) my
Conceptual graph for A Cat sitting on the Mat (graph 1) copy of the
May 18
edition of
The San
Francisco
Chronicle
(6) my
copy of
the May
18 edi-
tion of
The San
Fran-
cisco
Chron-
icle as
Cat on Mat (picture 1) it was
when
For example, many dierent things can be red. Like- I rst
wise, many things sit on surfaces (as in picture 1, to the picked
right). The property of redness and the relation sitting- it up
on are therefore abstractions of those objects. Speci- (as con-
cally, the conceptual diagram graph 1 identies only three trasted
4 CHAPTER 1. MAIN ARTICLE

with my categories and concepts related to computing problems

copy as from specic instances of implementation. This means
it was a that the program code can be written so that it does not
few days depend on the specic details of supporting applications,
later: operating system software or hardware, but on an abstract
in my concept of the solution to the problem that can then be in-
replace, tegrated with the system with minimal additional work.
burning)

An abstraction can thus encapsulate each of these levels In linguistics

of detail with no loss of generality. But perhaps a detec-
tive or philosopher/scientist/engineer might seek to learn Main article: Abstraction (linguistics)
about something, at progressively deeper levels of detail,
to solve a crime or a puzzle. Abstraction is frequently applied in linguistics so as to
allow phenomena of language to be analyzed at the de-
Thought processes sired level of detail. A commonly considered abstrac-
tion is the phoneme, which abstracts speech sounds in
In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought such a way as to neglect details that cannot serve to
process wherein ideas[12] are distanced from objects. dierentiate meaning. Other analogous kinds of ab-
stractions (sometimes called "emic units") considered by
linguists include morphemes, graphemes, and lexemes.
1.1.3 As used in dierent disciplines Abstraction also arises in the relation between syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics. Pragmatics involves consider-
In art ations that make reference to the user of the language; se-
mantics considers expressions and what they denote (the
Main article: Abstraction (art) designata) abstracted from the language user; and syn-
tax considers only the expressions themselves, abstracted
from the designata.
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
In mathematics
the visible worldit can, however, refer to an object or
image which has been distilled from the real world, or
indeed, another work of art.[13] Artwork that reshapes Main article: Abstraction (mathematics)
the natural world for expressive purposes is called ab-
stract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a rec- Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting
ognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the underlying essence of a mathematical concept, re-
the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided moving any dependence on real world objects with which
with advances in science, technology, and changes in ur- it might originally have been connected, and generaliz-
ban life, eventually reecting an interest in psychoanalytic ing it so that it has wider applications or matching among
theory.[14] Later still, abstraction was manifest in more other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena.
purely formal terms, such as color, freedom from objec-
The advantages of abstraction in mathematics are:
tive context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric
designs.[15]
It reveals deep connections between dierent areas
of mathematics
In computer science

Main article: Abstraction (software engineering) Known results in one area can suggest conjectures in
a related area

Computer scientists use abstraction to make models that
can be used and re-used without having to re-write all the
program code for each new application on every dier-
ent type of computer. They communicate their solutions
with the computer by writing source code in some par-
ticular computer language which can be translated into
machine code for dierent types of computers to exe-
cute. Abstraction allows program designers to separate
Techniques and methods from one area can be ap-
plied to prove results in a related area
The main disadvantage of abstraction is that highly ab-
stract concepts are more dicult to learn, and require a
degree of mathematical maturity and experience before
they can be assimilated.
1.1. ABSTRACTION 5

In music is abstract feeling, sensation and intuition. Ab-

In music, the term abstraction can be used to describe im-
provisatory approaches to interpretation, and may some-
times indicate abandonment of tonality. Atonal music has
no key signature, and is characterized by the exploration
of internal numeric relationships.[16]
In neurology
stract thinking singles out the rational, logical
qualities ... Abstract feeling does the same with
... its feeling-values. ... I put abstract feel-
ings on the same level as abstract thoughts. ...
Abstract sensation would be aesthetic as op-
posed to sensuous sensation and abstract intu-
ition would be symbolic as opposed to fantastic
intuition. (Jung, [1921] (1971): par. 678).

Further information: Intelligence, Mental rotation, and In social theory

Mental operations
In social theory, abstraction is used as both an ideational
A recent meta-analysis suggests that the verbal system has and material process. Alfred Sohn-Rethel, asked [2]
Can
greater engagement for abstract concepts when the per- there be abstraction other than by thought?" He used
ceptual system is more engaged for processing of con- the example of commodity abstraction to show that ab-
crete concepts. This is because abstract concepts elicit straction occurs in practice as people create systems
greater brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and of abstract exchange that extend beyond the immediate
middle temporal gyrus compared to concrete concepts physicality of the object and yet have real and immediate
which elicit greater activity in the posterior cingulate, pre- consequences. This work was extended through the 'Con-
cuneus, fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus.[17] stitutive Abstraction' approach of writers associated with
Other research into the human brain suggests that the left the Journal Arena. Two books that have taken this theme
and right hemispheres dier in their handling of abstrac- of the abstraction of social relations as an organizing pro-
tion. For example, one meta-analysis reviewing human cess in human history are Nation Formation: Towards
brain lesions has shown a left hemisphere bias during tool a Theory of Abstract Community.(1996) and the second
usage.[18] volume of Towards a Theory of Abstract Community,
published in 2006: Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism:
Bringing Theory Back In Volume 2 of Towards a Theory
In philosophy of Abstract Community. These books argue that the na-
tion is an abstract community bringing together strangers
Abstraction in philosophy is the process (or, to some, who will never meet as such; thus constituting materi-
the alleged process) in concept formation of recogniz- ally real and substantial, but abstracted and mediated rela-
ing some set of common features in individuals, and on tions. The books suggest that contemporary processes of
that basis forming a concept of that feature. The no- globalization and mediatization have contributed to ma-
tion of abstraction is important to understanding some terially abstracting relations between people, with major
philosophical controversies surrounding empiricism and consequences for how we live our lives.
the problem of universals. It has also recently become
It can be easily argued that abstraction is an elementary
popular in formal logic under predicate abstraction. An-
methodological tool in several disciplines of social sci-
other philosophical tool for discussion of abstraction is
ence. These disciplines have denite and dierent man
thought space.
concepts that highlight those aspects of man and his be-
haviour by idealization that are relevant for the given hu-
In psychology man science. For example, homo sociologicus is the man
as sociology abstracts and idealizes it, depicting man as
Carl Jung's denition of abstraction broadened its scope a social being. Moreover, we could talk about homo cy-
[19]
beyond the thinking process to include exactly four mu- ber sapiens (the man who can extend his biologically
tually exclusive, dierent complementary psychological determined intelligence thanks to new technologies), or
[20]
functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. To- homo creativus (who is simply creative).
gether they form a structural totality of the dierentiating Abstraction (combined with Weberian idealization) plays
abstraction process. Abstraction operates in one of these a crucial role in economics. Breaking away from directly
functions when it excludes the simultaneous inuence of experienced reality was a common trend in 19th cen-
the other functions and other irrelevancies, such as emo- tury sciences (especially physics), and this was the eort
tion. Abstraction requires selective use of this structural which was fundamentally determined the way economics
split of abilities in the psyche. The opposite of abstraction tried and still tries to approach the economic aspects of
is concretism. Abstraction is one of Jungs 57 denitions social life. It is abstraction we meet in the case of both
in Chapter XI of Psychological Types. Newtons physics and the neoclassical theory, since the
goal was to grasp the unchangeable and timeless essence
There is an abstract thinking, just as there of phenomena. For example, Newton created the concept
6 CHAPTER 1. MAIN ARTICLE
of the material point by following the abstraction method
so that he abstracted from the dimension and shape of any
perceptible object, preserving only inertial and transla-
tional motion. Material point is the ultimate and common
feature of all bodies. Neoclassical economists created the
indenitely abstract notion of homo economicus by fol-
lowing the same procedure. Economists abstract from all
individual and personal qualities in order to get to those
characteristics that embody the essence of economic ac-
tivity. Eventually, it is the substance of the economic man
that they try to grasp. Any characteristic beyond it only
disturbs the functioning of this essential core.[21]
1.1.4 See also
1.1.5 Notes
[1] Suzanne K. Langer (1953), Feeling and Form: a theory
of art developed from Philosophy in a New Key p. 90:
"Sculptural form is a powerful abstraction from actual ob-
jects and the three-dimensional space which we construe
... through touch and sight.
[2] Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and manual labour: A
critique of epistemology, Humanities Press, 1977
[3] Hesse, M. B. (1964), Francis Bacons Philosophy of Sci-
ence, in A Critical History of Western Philosophy, ed.
D. J. O'Connor, New York, pp. 14152.
[4] Chaitin, Gregory (2006), The Limits Of Reason (PDF),
archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-05-09
[5] Murray Gell-Mann (1995) "What is complexity? Re-
marks on simplicity and complexity by the Nobel Prize-
winning author of The Quark and the Jaguar" Complexity
states the 'algorithmic information complexity' (AIC) of
some string of bits is the shortest length computer pro-
gram which can print out that string of bits.
[6] Ross,L. (1987). The Problem of Construal in Social In-
ference and Social Psychology. In N. Grunberg, R.E. Nis-
bett, J. Singer (eds), A Distinctive Approach to psycholog-
ical research: the inuence of Stanley Schacter. Hillsdale,
NJ: Earlbaum.
[7] James, Paul (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism:
Bringing Theory Back In Volume 2 of Towards a Theory
of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications., pp.
31819.
[8] Eventually (Schmandt-Besserat estimates it took 4000
years Archived January 30, 2012, at the Wayback Ma-
chine.) the marks on the outside of the containers were
all that were needed to convey the count, and the clay con-
tainers evolved into clay tablets with marks for the count.
[9] Robson, Eleanor (2008). Mathematics in Ancient Iraq.
ISBN 978-0-691-09182-2.. p. 5: these calculi were in
use in Iraq for primitive accounting systems as early as
32003000 BCE, with commodity-specic counting rep-
resentation systems. Balanced accounting was in use by
30002350 BCE, and a sexagesimal number system was
in use 23502000 BCE.
[10] Sowa, John F. (1984). Conceptual Structures: Information
Processing in Mind and Machine. Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-14472-7.
[11] Douglas Hofstadter (1979) Gdel, Escher, Bach
[12] But an idea can be symbolized. A symbol is any device
whereby we are enabled to make an abstraction. -- p.xi
and chapter 20 of Suzanne K. Langer (1953), Feeling and
Form: a theory of art developed from Philosophy in a New
Key: New York: Charles Scribners Sons. 431 pages, in-
dex.
[13] abstract art. Encyclopdia Britannica.
[14] Catherine de Zegher and Hendel Teicher (eds.), 3 X Ab-
straction. NY/New Haven: The Drawing Center/Yale
University Press. 2005. ISBN 0-300-10826-5
[15] National Gallery of Art: Abstraction. Archived June 8,
2011, at the Wayback Machine.
[16] Washington State University: Glossary of Abstraction.
Archived September 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
[17] Wang, Jing; Conder, Julie A.; Blitzer, David N.;
Shinkareva, Svetlana V. (2010). Neural Representation
of Abstract and Concrete Concepts: A Meta-Analysis
of Neuroimaging Studies. Human Brain Mapping. 31:
14591468. doi:10.1002/hbm.20950.
[18] James W. Lewis Cortical Networks Related to Human
Use of Tools 12 (3): 211231 The Neuroscientist (June
1, 2006).
[19] Steels, Luc (1995). The Homo Cyber Sapiens, the Robot
Homonidus Intelligens, and the Articial Life Approach
to Articial Intelligence. Brussel: Vrije Universiteit, Arti-
cial Intelligence Laboratory.
[20] Inkinen, Sam (2009). Homo Creativus Creativity and
Serendipity Management in Third Generation Science and
Technology Parks. Science and Public Policy. 36 (7):
537548.
[21] Galbcs, Peter (2015). Methodological Principles and
an Epistemological Introduction. The Theory of New
Classical Macroeconomics. A Positive Critique. Heidel-
berg/New York/Dordrecht/London: Springer. pp. 152.
ISBN 978-3-319-17578-2.
1.1.6 References
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, 3rd edition, Houghton Miin (1992),
hardcover, 2140 pages, ISBN 0-395-44895-6
James, Paul (1996). Nation Formation: Towards a
Theory of Abstract Community. London: Sage Pub-
lications.
James, Paul (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Trib-
alism: Bringing Theory Back In - Volume 2 of To-
wards a Theory of Abstract Community. London:
Sage Publications.
1.1. ABSTRACTION 7

Jung, C.G. [1921] (1971). Psychological Types,

Collected Works, Volume 6, Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01813-8.

Sohn-Rethel, Alfred (1977) Intellectual and man-

ual labour: A critique of epistemology, Humanities
Press.
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise (1981). Decipherment
of the Earliest Tablets. Science. 211 (4479):
283285. Bibcode:1981Sci...211..283S. PMID
17748027. doi:10.1126/science.211.4479.283..

1.1.7 External links

Abstraction at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology
Project
Abstraction at PhilPapers

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gottlob Frege

Discussion at The Well concerning Abstraction hi-
erarchy
Chapter 2

Supporting articles

2.1 Abstract art
Wassily Kandinsky, Kandinskys rst abstract watercolor, 1910.
Robert Delaunay, 191213, Le Premier Disque, 134 cm (52.7
in.), Private collection.
to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the
logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illu-
sion of visible reality. The arts of cultures other than the
European had become accessible and showed alternative
ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the
end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a
new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental
changes taking place in technology, science and philoso-
phy. The sources from which individual artists drew their
theoretical arguments were diverse, and reected the so-
cial and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of West-
ern culture at that time.[2]
Abstract art, non-gurative art, non-objective art, and
nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. They
are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning.
Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depic-
tion of imagery in art. This departure from accurate
representation can be slight, partial, or complete. Ab-
straction exists along a continuum. Even art that aims
for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be
abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representa-
tion is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which
takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in
ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially ab-
stract. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference
to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for
instance, one is unlikely to nd references to naturalistic
entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost
mutually exclusive. But gurative and representational
(or realistic) art often contains partial abstraction.
Both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are
often totally abstract. Among the very numerous art
movements that embody partial abstraction would be
for instance fauvism in which color is conspicuously
and deliberately altered vis-a-vis reality, and cubism,
which blatantly alters the forms of the real life entities
depicted.[3][4]

Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color 2.1.1 History
and line to create a composition which may exist with
a degree of independence from visual references in the Main articles: History of painting and Western painting
world.[1] Western art had been, from the Renaissance up

8
2.1. ABSTRACT ART 9

Abstraction in early art and many cultures show heavily misty mountains in which the shapes of the
objects are barely visible and extremely simplied. This
Main articles: Prehistoric art and Eastern art history type of painting was continued by Sesshu Toyo in his later
years.
Much of the art of earlier cultures signs and marks on
pottery, textiles, and inscriptions and paintings on rock
used simple, geometric and linear forms which might
have had a symbolic or decorative purpose.[5] It is at this
level of visual meaning that abstract art communicates.[6]
One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese calligraphy or
Islamic calligraphy without being able to read it.[7]

Mountain market, clearing Mist, Yu Jian, China

Another instance of abstraction in Chinese painting is

seen in Zhu Deruns Cosmic Circle. On the left side
of this painting is a pine tree in rocky soil, its branches
laced with vines that extend in a disorderly manner to the
right side of the painting in which a perfect circle (proba-
bly made with help of a compass[9] ) oats in the void. The
painting is a reection of the Daoist metaphysics in which
chaos and reality are complementary stages of the regular
course of nature. In Tokugawa Japan some zen monk-
painters created Enso, a circle who represents the ab-
solute enlightenment. Usually made in one spontaneous
brush stroke, it became the paradigm of the minimalist
aesthetic that guided part of the zen painting.

19th century

Main articles: Romanticism, Impressionism, Post-

Impressionism, and Expressionism

Patronage from the church diminished and private pa-

tronage from the public became more capable of provid-
ing a livelihood for artists.[10][11]
Three art movements which contributed to the develop-
ment of abstract art were Romanticism, Impressionism
and Expressionism. Artistic independence for artists was
advanced during the 19th century. An objective interest in
Immortal in splashed ink, Liang Kai, China, 12th century what is seen, can be discerned from the paintings of John
Constable, J M W Turner, Camille Corot and from them
In Chinese painting, abstraction can be traced to the Tang to the Impressionists who continued the plein air painting
dynasty painter Wang Mo ( ), who is credited to have of the Barbizon school.
invented the splashed-ink painting style.[8] While none of
his paintings remain, this style is clearly seen in some Early intimations of a new art had been made by James
Song Dynasty Paintings. The Chan buddhist painter McNeill Whistler who, in his painting Nocturne in Black
Liang Kai ( , c.11401210) applied the style to gure and Gold: The falling Rocket, (1872), placed greater em-
painting in his Immortal in splashed ink in which ac- phasis on visual sensation than the depiction of objects.
curate representation is sacriced to enhance spontaneity Expressionist painters explored the bold use of paint
linked to the non-rational mind of the enlightened. A late surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations, and in-
Song painter named Yu Jian, adept to Tiantai buddhism, tense color. Expressionists produced emotionally charged
created a series of splashed ink landscapes that eventu- paintings that were reactions to and perceptions of con-
ally inspired many Japanese zen painters. His paintings temporary experience; and reactions to Impressionism
10
James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The
Falling Rocket (1874), Detroit Institute of Arts. A near abstrac-
tion, in 1877 Whistler sued the art critic John Ruskin for libel af-
ter the critic condemned this painting. Ruskin accused Whistler
of ask[ing] two hundred guineas for throwing a pot of paint in
the publics face.[12][13]
and other more conservative directions of late 19th-
century painting. The Expressionists drastically changed
the emphasis on subject matter in favor of the portrayal
of psychological states of being. Although artists like
Edvard Munch and James Ensor drew inuences princi-
pally from the work of the Post-Impressionists they were
instrumental to the advent of abstraction in the 20th cen-
tury. Paul Czanne had begun as an Impressionist but his
aim to make a logical construction of reality based on
a view from a single point,[14] with modulated colour in
at areas became the basis of a new visual art, later to
be developed into Cubism by Georges Braque and Pablo
Picasso.
Additionally in the late 19th century in Eastern Europe
mysticism and early modernist religious philosophy as
expressed by theosophist Mme. Blavatsky had a pro-
found impact on pioneer geometric artists like Hilma af
Klint and Wassily Kandinsky. The mystical teaching of
Georges Gurdjie and P.D. Ouspensky also had an im-
portant inuence on the early formations of the geometric
abstract styles of Piet Mondrian and his colleagues in the
early 20th century.[15]
CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES
Henri Matisse, The Yellow Curtain, 1915. With his Fauvist color
and drawing Matisse comes very close to pure abstraction.
20th century
Main articles: Western painting, Fauvism, and Cubism
Post Impressionism as practiced by Paul Gauguin,
Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Czanne had
an enormous impact on 20th-century art and led to the ad-
vent of 20th-century abstraction. The heritage of painters
like Van Gogh, Czanne, Gauguin, and Seurat was essen-
tial for the development of modern art. At the begin-
ning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other
young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque,
Andr Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck rev-
olutionized the Paris art world with wild, multi-colored,
expressive landscapes and gure paintings that the critics
called Fauvism. With his expressive use of color and his
free and imaginative drawing Henri Matisse comes very
close to pure abstraction in French Window at Collioure
(1914), View of Notre-Dame (1914), and The Yellow Cur-
tain from 1915. The raw language of color as developed
by the Fauves directly inuenced another pioneer of ab-
straction, Wassily Kandinsky (see illustration).
Although Cubism ultimately depends upon subject mat-
ter, it became, along with Fauvism, the art movement
that directly opened the door to abstraction in the 20th
century. Pablo Picasso made his rst cubist paintings
2.1. ABSTRACT ART 11

based on Czannes idea that all depiction of nature can

be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. With
the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Picasso
dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting
a raw and primitive brothel scene with ve prostitutes,
violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal
masks and his own new Cubist inventions. Analytic cu-
bism was jointly developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges
Braque, from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism,
the rst clear manifestation of cubism, was followed by
Synthetic cubism, practiced by Braque, Picasso, Fernand
Lger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Marcel Duchamp and
others into the 1920s. Synthetic cubism is characterized
by the introduction of dierent textures, surfaces, collage
elements, papier coll and a large variety of merged sub-
ject matter. The collage artists like Kurt Schwitters and
Man Ray and others taking the clue from Cubism were
instrumental to the development of the movement called
Dada.

Robert Delaunay, 1912, Windows Open Simultaneously (First

Part, Third Motif), oil on canvas, 45.7 x 37.5 cm, Tate Modern

extremely active as they strove to create an art form equal

to the high aspirations of modernism. Ideas were able
to cross-fertilize by means of artists books, exhibitions
and manifestos so that many sources were open to ex-
perimentation and discussion, and formed a basis for a
diversity of modes of abstraction. The following extract
from 'The World Backwards gives some impression of
the inter-connectedness of culture at the time: "David
Burliuk's knowledge of modern art movements must have
been extremely up-to-date, for the second Knave of Dia-
monds exhibition, held in January 1912 (in Moscow) in-
cluded not only paintings sent from Munich, but some
Frantiek Kupka, Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in members of the German Die Brcke group, while from
Two Colors), 1912, oil on canvas, 210 x 200 cm, Narodni Ga- Paris came work by Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse and
lerie, Prague. Published in Au Salon d'Automne Les Indpen- Fernand Lger, as well as Picasso. During the Spring
dants 1912, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Paris.
David Burliuk gave two lectures on cubism and planned a
polemical publication, which the Knave of Diamonds was
The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published
to nance. He went abroad in May and came back deter-
the Manifesto of Futurism in 1909, which later inspired mined to rival the almanac Der Blaue Reiter which had
artists such as Carlo Carra in Painting of Sounds, Noises emerged from the printers while he was in Germany.[19]
and Smells and Umberto Boccioni Train in Motion, 1911,
to a further stage of abstraction that would, along with From 1909 to 1913 many experimental works in the
Cubism, profoundly inuenced art movements through- search for this 'pure art' had been created: Francis Pi-
out Europe.[16] cabia painted Caoutchouc, 1909,[20] The Spring, 1912,[21]
Dances at the Spring[22] and The Procession, Seville,
During the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or the poet 1912;[23] Wassily Kandinsky painted Untitled (First Ab-
Guillaume Apollinaire named the work of several artists stract Watercolor), 1910,[24] Improvisation 21A, the Im-
including Robert, Orphism.[17] He dened it as, the art of pression series, and Picture with a Circle (1911);[25]
painting new structures out of elements that have not been Frantiek Kupka had painted the Orphist works, Discs of
borrowed from the visual sphere, but had been created en- Newton (Study for Fugue in Two Colors), 1912[26] and
tirely by the artist...it is a pure art.[18] Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors),
Since the turn of the century, cultural connections be- 1912; Robert Delaunay painted a series entitled Simulta-
tween artists of the major European cities had become neous Windows and Formes Circulaires, Soleil n2 (1912
12 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

13);[27] Lopold Survage created Colored Rhythm (Study context that Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma
for the lm), 1913;[28] Piet Mondrian, painted Tableau af Klint and other artists working towards an 'objectless
No. 1 and Composition No. 11, 1913.[29] state' became interested in the occult as a way of creating
an 'inner' object. The universal and timeless shapes found
in geometry: the circle, square and triangle become the
spatial elements in abstract art; they are, like color, fun-
damental systems underlying visible reality.

Russian avant-garde

Wassily Kandinsky, On White 2, 1923

And the search continued: The Rayist (Luchizm) draw-

ings of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, used
lines like rays of light to make a construction. Kasimir
Malevich completed his rst entirely abstract work, the
Suprematist, 'Black Square', in 1915. Another of the
Suprematist group' Liubov Popova, created the Archi-
tectonic Constructions and Spatial Force Constructions
between 1916 and 1921. Piet Mondrian was evolving
his abstract language, of horizontal and vertical lines
with rectangles of color, between 1915 and 1919, Neo-
Plasticism was the aesthetic which Mondrian, Theo van
Doesburg and other in the group De Stijl intended to re-
shape the environment of the future.
Music
As visual art becomes more abstract, it develops some
characteristics of music: an art form which uses the ab-
stract elements of sound and divisions of time. Wassily
Kandinsky, himself a musician, was inspired by the pos-
sibility of marks and associative color resounding in the
soul. The idea had been put forward by Charles Baude-
laire, that all our senses respond to various stimuli but the
senses are connected at a deeper aesthetic level.
Closely related to this, is the idea that art has The spiri-
tual dimension and can transcend 'every-day' experience,
reaching a spiritual plane. The Theosophical Society pop-
ularized the ancient wisdom of the sacred books of India
and China in the early years of the century. It was in this
Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1923, The Russian Museum
Main articles: Russian avant-garde and Futurism (art)
Many of the abstract artists in Russia became
Constructivists believing that art was no longer some-
thing remote, but life itself. The artist must become
a technician, learning to use the tools and materials of
modern production. Art into life! was Vladimir Tatlin's
slogan, and that of all the future Constructivists. Varvara
Stepanova and Alexandre Exter and others abandoned
easel painting and diverted their energies to theatre
design and graphic works. On the other side stood
Kazimir Malevich, Anton Pevsner and Naum Gabo.
They argued that art was essentially a spiritual activity; to
create the individuals place in the world, not to organize
life in a practical, materialistic sense. Many of those
who were hostile to the materialist production idea of art
left Russia. Anton Pevsner went to France, Gabo went
rst to Berlin, then to England and nally to America.
Kandinsky studied in Moscow then left for the Bauhaus.
By the mid-1920s the revolutionary period (1917 to
1921) when artists had been free to experiment was over;
and by the 1930s only socialist realism was allowed.[30]
2.1. ABSTRACT ART
The Bauhaus
The Bauhaus at Weimar, Germany was founded in 1919
by Walter Gropius.[31] The philosophy underlying the
teaching program was unity of all the visual and plas-
tic arts from architecture and painting to weaving and
stained glass. This philosophy had grown from the ideas
of the Arts and Crafts movement in England and the
Deutscher Werkbund. Among the teachers were Paul
Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers,
Anni Albers, and Lszl Moholy-Nagy. In 1925 the
school was moved to Dessau and, as the Nazi party gained
control in 1932, The Bauhaus was closed. In 1937 an ex-
hibition of degenerate art, 'Entartete Kunst' contained all
types of avant-garde art disapproved of by the Nazi party.
Then the exodus began: not just from the Bauhaus but
from Europe in general; to Paris, London and America.
Paul Klee went to Switzerland but many of the artists at
the Bauhaus went to America.
Abstraction in Paris and London
Kurt Schwitters, Das Undbild, 1919, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
During the 1930s Paris became the host to artists from
Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and other European
countries aected by the rise of totalitarianism. Sophie
Tauber and Jean Arp collaborated on paintings and
sculpture using organic/geometric forms. The Polish
Katarzyna Kobro applied mathematically based ideas to
sculpture. The many types of abstraction now in close
proximity led to attempts by artists to analyse the vari-
ous conceptual and aesthetic groupings. An exhibition
by forty-six members of the Cercle et Carr group or-
13
ganised by Joaquin Torres-Garcia[32] assisted by Michel
Seuphor[33] contained work by the Neo-Plasticists as well
as abstractionists as varied as Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner
and Kurt Schwitters. Criticised by Theo van Doesburg
to be too indenite a collection he published the journal
Art Concret setting out a manifesto dening an abstract
art in which the line, color and surface only, are the con-
crete reality.[34] Abstraction-Cration founded in 1931 as
a more open group, provided a point of reference for ab-
stract artists, as the political situation worsened in 1935,
and artists again regrouped, many in London. The rst
exhibition of British abstract art was held in England in
1935. The following year the more international Abstract
and Concrete exhibition was organised by Nicolete Gray
including work by Piet Mondrian, Joan Mir, Barbara
Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Hepworth, Nicholson and
Gabo moved to the St. Ives group in Cornwall to continue
their 'constructivist' work.[35]
America: mid-century
Main articles: Modernism, Late modernism, American
Modernism, and Surrealism
During the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s many artists
The above is a 193942 oil on canvas painting by Mon-
drian titled Composition No. 10. Responding to it, fel-
low De Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg suggested a link be-
tween non-representational works of art and ideals of peace and
spirituality.[36]
ed Europe to the United States. By the early 1940s
the main movements in modern art, expressionism, cu-
bism, abstraction, surrealism, and dada were represented
in New York: Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Lger, Piet
Mondrian, Jacques Lipchitz, Andr Masson, Max Ernst,
Andr Breton, were just a few of the exiled Europeans
who arrived in New York.[37] The rich cultural inuences
14
brought by the European artists were distilled and built
upon by local New York painters. The climate of freedom
in New York allowed all of these inuences to ourish.
The art galleries that primarily had focused on European
art began to notice the local art community and the work
of younger American artists who had begun to mature.
Certain artists at this time became distinctly abstract in
their mature work. During this period Piet Mondrians
painting Composition No. 10, 19391942, characterized
by primary colors, white ground and black grid lines
clearly dened his radical but classical approach to the
rectangle and abstract art in general. Some artists of the
period deed categorization, such as Georgia O'Keee
who, while a modernist abstractionist, was a pure mav-
erick in that she painted highly abstract forms while not
joining any specic group of the period.
Eventually American artists who were working in a great
diversity of styles began to coalesce into cohesive stylistic
groups. The best known group of American artists be-
came known as the Abstract expressionists and the New
York School. In New York City there was an atmosphere
which encouraged discussion and there was new opportu-
nity for learning and growing. Artists and teachers John
D. Graham and Hans Hofmann became important bridge
gures between the newly arrived European Modernists
and the younger American artists coming of age. Mark
Rothko, born in Russia, began with strongly surrealist im-
agery which later dissolved into his powerful color com-
positions of the early 1950s. The expressionistic ges-
ture and the act of painting itself, became of primary
importance to Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and
Franz Kline. While during the 1940s Arshile Gorky's
and Willem de Kooning's gurative work evolved into
abstraction by the end of the decade. New York City be-
came the center, and artists worldwide gravitated towards
it; from other places in America as well.[38]
2.1.2 Abstraction in the 21st century
Main articles: Abstract expressionism, Color eld,
Lyrical abstraction, Post-painterly abstraction, Sculpture, 2.1.4
and Minimal art
Digital art, hard-edge painting, geometric abstraction,
minimalism, lyrical abstraction, op art, abstract ex-
pressionism, color eld painting, monochrome painting,
assemblage, neo-Dada, shaped canvas painting, are a few
continuing and current directions relating to abstraction
at the beginning of the 21st century.
Into the 21st century abstraction remains very much in
view, its main themes: the transcendental, the contempla-
tive and the timeless are exemplied by Barnett Newman,
John McLaughlin, and Agnes Martin as well as younger
living artists. Art as Object as seen in the Minimalist
sculpture of Donald Judd and the paintings of Frank
Stella are still seen today in newer permutations. The po-
CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES
etic, Lyrical Abstraction and the sensuous use of color
seen in the work of painters as diverse as Robert Moth-
erwell, Patrick Heron, Kenneth Noland, Sam Francis,
Cy Twombly, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler,
Joan Mitchell, among others.
There was a resurgence after the war and into the
1950s of the gurative, as neo-Dada, uxus, happening,
conceptual art, neo-expressionism, installation art,
performance art, video art and pop art have come to
signify the age of consumerism. The distinction between
abstract and gurative art has, over the last twenty years,
become less dened leaving a wider range of ideas for
all artists.
2.1.3 Causation
One socio-historical explanation that has been oered for
the growing prevalence of the abstract in modern art an
explanation linked to the name of Theodor W. Adorno
is that such abstraction is a response to, and a reection
of, the growing abstraction of social relations in industrial
society.[39]
Frederic Jameson similarly sees modernist abstraction as
a function of the abstract power of money, equating all
things equally as exchange-values.[40] The social content
of abstract art is then precisely the abstract nature of so-
cial existence legal formalities, bureaucratic imperson-
alization, information/power in the world of late moder-
nity.[41]
Post-Jungians by contrast would see the quantum theories
with their disintegration of conventional ideas of form
and matter as underlying the divorce of the concrete and
the abstract in modern art.[42]
Gallery
Albert Gleizes, 191012, Les
Arbres (The Trees), oil on canvas, 41 x 27 cm.
Reproduced in Du Cubisme, 1912
2.1. ABSTRACT ART 15

Arthur Dove, 191112, Henri Matisse, 1914,

Based on Leaf Forms and Spaces, pastel on uniden- French Window at Collioure, Centre Georges
tied support. Now lost Pompidou, Paris

Francis Picabia,
1912, Tarentelle, oil on canvas, 73.6 x 92.1 cm,
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Reproduced
in Du Cubisme Joseph Csaky, Deux gures,
1920, relief, limestone, polychrome, 80 cm,
Krller-Mller Museum, Otterlo

Wassily Kandin-
sky, 1912, Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II),
oil on canvas, 120.3 x 140.3 cm, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York. Exhibited at the 1913
Armory Show Albert Gleizes, 1921, Composition
bleu et jaune (Composition jaune), oil on canvas,
200.5 x 110 cm

Pablo Picasso, 191314,

Head (Tte), cut and pasted colored paper, gouache
and charcoal on paperboard, 43.5 x 33 cm, Scottish Paul Klee, Fire in
National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh the Evening, 1929
16 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

Piet Mondrian, Hilma af Klint,

Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Svanen (The Swan), No. 17, Group IX, Series
Gray, 1921, Art Institute of Chicago SUW, October 1914-March 1915. This abstract
work was never exhibited during af Klints lifetime.

2.1.5 See also

Abstract expressionism

Abstraction in art

Action painting

American Abstract Artists

Barnett Newman, Onement 1, Art history
1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Art periods

Asemic writing

Concrete art

De Stijl

Geometric abstraction

Hard-edge

Fernand Lger History of painting

1919, The Railway Crossing, oil on canvas, 53.8 x
64.8 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago Lyrical abstraction

Op Art

Representation (arts)

Spatialism

Western painting

In other media

Abstract animation

Abstract comics
Theo van Does-
burg, Neo-Plasticism: 1917, Composition VII (The Abstract photography
Three Graces)
Experimental lm
2.1. ABSTRACT ART
2.1.6 References
[1] Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking, University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1969, ISBN 0520018710
[2] Mel Gooding, Abstract Art, Tate Publishing, London,
2000
[3] Abstract Art What Is Abstract Art or Abstract Painting,
retrieved January 7, 2009. Painting.about.com. 2011-
06-07. Archived from the original on 7 July 2011. Re-
trieved 2011-06-11.
[4] Themes in American Art Abstraction, retrieved Jan-
uary 7, 2009. Nga.gov. 2000-07-27. Archived from the
original on 8 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-11.
[5] Gyrgy Kepes, Sign, Image and Symbol, Studio Vista,
London, 1966
[6] Derek Hyatt,"Meeting on the Moor, Modern Painters,
Autumn 1995
[7] Simon Leys, 2013. The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Es-
says. New York: New York Review Books. p. 304. ISBN
9781590176207.
[8] Lippit, Y. (2012). Of Modes and Manners in Japanese
Ink Painting: Sessh's Splashed Ink Landscape of 1495.
The Art Bulletin, 94(1), p. 56.
[9] Watt, J. C. (2010). The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese
Art in the Yuan Dynasty. Metropolitan Museum of Art, p.
224
[10] Ernst Gombrich, The Early Medici as Patrons of Art in
Norm and Form, pp 3557, London, 1966
[11] Judith Balfe, ed. Paying the Piper: Causes and Conse-
quences of Art Patronage, Univ. of Illinois Press
[12] Whistler versus Ruskin, Princeton edu. Archived June 16,
2010, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved June 13, 2010
[13] From the Tate, retrieved April 12, 2009
[14] Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Art, Thames
and Hudson
[15] Hilton Kramer, Mondrian & mysticism: My long search
is over, ''New Criterion'', September 1995. Newcrite-
rion.com. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
[16] Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozzolla, Futurism, Thames
and Hudson, 1977
[17] La Section d'or, 1912-1920-1925, Ccile Debray,
Franoise Lucbert, Muses de Chteauroux, Muse
Fabre, exhibition catalogue, ditions Cercle d'art, Paris,
2000
[18] Harrison and Wood, Art in theory, 19002000, Wiley-
Blackwell, 2003, p. 189. ISBN 978-0-631-22708-
3.books.google.com
[19] Susan P Compton, The World Backwards, British mu-
seum Publications, London, 1978
[20] Francis Picabia, Caoutchouc, 1909, MNAM, Paris.
Francispicabia.org. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
17
[21] Museum of Modern Art, New York, Francis Picabia,
''The Spring'', 1912. Moma.org. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
[22] MoMA, New York, Francis Picabia, ''Dances at the
Spring'', 1912. Moma.org. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
[23] National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC., Francis Pi-
cabia, The Procession, Seville, 1912. Nga.gov. Re-
trieved 2013-09-29.
[24] Stan Rummel (2007-12-13). Wassily Kandinsky,
''Untitled'' (First Abstract Watercolor), 1910. Fac-
ulty.txwes.edu. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
[25] The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum,
Kandinsky Retrospective, Guggenheim Museum, New
York, 2009 (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on
2012-07-18. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
[26] Philadelphia Museum of Art, Disks of Newton (Study for
Fugue in Two Colors) 1912. Philamuseum.org. Re-
trieved 2013-09-29.
[27] Muse National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pom-
pidou, Paris, Robert Delaunay, ''Formes Circulaires,
Soleil n2'' (191213)" (in French). Centrepompidou.fr.
Archived from the original on September 7, 2012. Re-
trieved 2013-09-29.
[28] Museum of Modern Art, New York, Lopold Survage,
Colored Rhythm (Study for the lm) 1913. Moma.org.
1914-07-15. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
[29] Rijksmuseum Krller-Mller, Otterlo, Netherlands, Piet
Mondrian, 1913. Kmm.nl. Archived from the original
on October 2, 2013. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
[30] Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, 18631922,
Thames and Hudson, 1962
[31] Walter Gropius et al., Bauhaus 19191928Herbert Bayer
ed., Museum of Modern Art,publ. Charles T Ban-
ford,Boston,1959
[32] Seuphor, Michel (1972). Geometric Abstraccion 1926-
1949. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.
[33] Michel Seuphor, Abstract Painting
[34] Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, p.104, Thames and Hud-
son, 1990
[35] Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson,
1990
[36] Utopian Reality: Reconstructing Culture in Revolution-
ary Russia and Beyond; Christina Lodder, Maria Kokkori,
Maria Mileeva; BRILL, Oct 24, 2013 Van Doesburg
stated that the purpose of art was to imbue man with those
positive spiritual qualities that were needed in order to over-
come the dominance of the physical and create the con-
ditions for putting an end to wars. In an enthusiastic es-
say on Wassily Kandinsky he had written about the dia-
logue between the artist and the viewer, and the role of
art as 'the educator of our inner life, the educator of our
hearts and minds. Van Doesburg subsequently adopted the
view that the spiritual in man is nurtured specically by ab-
stract art, which he later described as 'pure thought, which
18 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

more complex details below the current level. The pro-

does not signify a concept derived from natural phenom-
ena but which is contained in numbers, measures, relation-
grammer works with an idealized interface (usually well
ships, and abstract lines. In his response to Piet Mondrians
dened) and can add additional levels of functionality that
Composition 10, Van Doesburg linked peace and the spir-
would otherwise be too complex to handle. For an ex-
itual to a non-representational work of art, asserting that
ample, a programmer writing code that involves numeri-
'it produces a most spiritual impressionthe impression of
cal operations may not be interested in the way numbers
repose: the repose of the soul'.
are represented in the underlying hardware (e.g. whether
[37] Gillian Naylor, The Bauhaus, Studio Vista, 1968 they're 16 bit or 32 bit integers), and where those details
have been suppressed it can be said that they were ab-
[38] Henry Geldzahler, New York Painting and Sculpture: stracted away, leaving simply numbers with which the
19401970, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, 1969 programmer can work. In addition, a task of sending

[39] David Cunningham, 'Asceticism Against Colour', in New an email message across continents would be extremely
Formations 55 (2005) p. 110 complex if the programmer had to start with a piece of
ber optic cable and basic hardware components. By us-
[40] M. Hardt/K. Weeks eds., The Jameson Reader (2000) p. ing layers of complexity that have been created to abstract
272 away the physical cables and network layout, and present-
[41] Cunningham, p. 114 ing the programmer with a virtual data channel, this task
is manageable.
[42] Aniela Ja, in C. G. Jung ed., Man and his Symbols
Abstraction can apply to control or to data: Control ab-
(1978) p. 303 and p. 288-9
straction is the abstraction of actions while data ab-
straction is that of data structures.
2.1.7 Sources
Control abstraction involves the use of subroutines
1. ^ Compton, Susan (1978). The World Backwards: and control ow abstractions
Russian Futurist Books 191216. The British Li-
brary. ISBN 0-7141-0396-9. Data abstraction allows handling pieces of data in
2. ^ Stangos, Nikos (editor) (1981). Concepts of Mod- meaningful ways. For example, it is the basic moti-
ern Art. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-20186- vation behind the datatype.
2.
The notion of an object in object-oriented programming
3. ^ Gooding, Mel (2001). Abstract Art (Movements
can be viewed as a way to combine abstractions of data
in Modern Art series). Tate Publishing. ISBN 1-
and code.
85437-302-1.
The same abstract denition can be used as a common
interface for a family of objects with dierent implemen-
2.1.8 External links tations and behaviors but which share the same meaning.
The inheritance mechanism in object-oriented program-
The term Abstraction spoken about at Museum of ming can be used to dene an abstract class as the com-
Modern Art by Nelson Goodman of Grove Art On- mon interface.
line
The recommendation that programmers use abstractions
American Abstract Artists whenever suitable in order to avoid duplication (usually
of code) is known as the abstraction principle. The re-
Non Figurative Art explained quirement that a programming language provide suitable
abstractions is also called the abstraction principle.

2.2 Abstraction (computer science)

2.2.1 Rationale
The essence of abstractions is preserving information
that is relevant in a given context, and forgetting infor- Computing mostly operates independently of the con-
mation that is irrelevant in that context. crete world: The hardware implements a model of com-
putation that is interchangeable with others. The software
is structured in architectures to enable humans to create
John V. Guttag[1] the enormous systems by concentrating on a few issues at
In software engineering and computer science, abstrac- a time. These architectures are made of specic choices
tion is a technique for arranging complexity of computer of abstractions. Greenspuns Tenth Rule is an aphorism
systems. It works by establishing a level of complexity on on how such an architecture is both inevitable and com-
which a person interacts with the system, suppressing the plex.
2.2. ABSTRACTION (COMPUTER SCIENCE) 19

A central form of abstraction in computing is language
abstraction: new articial languages are developed to ex-
press specic aspects of a system. Modeling languages
help in planning. Computer languages can be processed
with a computer. An example of this abstraction pro-
cess is the generational development of programming lan-
guages from the machine language to the assembly lan-
guage and the high-level language. Each stage can be
used as a stepping stone for the next stage. The language
abstraction continues for example in scripting languages
and domain-specic programming languages.
Within a programming language, some features let the
programmer create new abstractions. These include
subroutines, modules, polymorphism, and software com-
ponents. Some other abstractions such as software de-
sign patterns and architectural styles remain invisible to a
translator and operate only in the design of a system.
Some abstractions try to limit the range of concepts a pro-
grammer needs to be aware of, by completely hiding the
abstractions that they in turn are built on. The software
engineer and writer Joel Spolsky has criticised these ef-
forts by claiming that all abstractions are leaky that Specication methods
they can never completely hide the details below;[2] how-
ever, this does not negate the usefulness of abstraction.
syntactic abstraction. Other programming lan-
guages such as Scala also have macros, or very
similar metaprogramming features (for example,
Haskell has Template Haskell, and OCaml has
MetaOCaml). These can allow a programmer to
eliminate boilerplate code, abstract away tedious
function call sequences, implement new control
ow structures, and implement Domain Specic
Languages (DSLs), which allow domain-specic
concepts to be expressed in concise and elegant
ways. All of these, when used correctly, improve
both the programmers eciency and the clarity
of the code by making the intended purpose more
explicit. A consequence of syntactic abstraction
is also that any Lisp dialect and in fact almost
any programming language can, in principle, be
implemented in any modern Lisp with signicantly
reduced (but still non-trivial in some cases) eort
when compared to more traditional programming
languages such as Python, C or Java.
Main article: Formal specication

Some abstractions are designed to interoperate with other

abstractions - for example, a programming language may Analysts have developed various methods to formally
contain a foreign function interface for making calls to the specify software systems. Some known methods include:
lower-level language.
Abstract-model based method (VDM, Z);
Algebraic techniques (Larch, CLEAR, OBJ, ACT
2.2.2 Language features ONE, CASL);
Programming languages Process-based techniques (LOTOS, SDL, Estelle);

Main article: Programming language Trace-based techniques (SPECIAL, TAM);

Knowledge-based techniques (Rene, Gist).
Dierent programming languages provide dierent types
of abstraction, depending on the intended applications for Specication languages
the language. For example:
Main article: Specication language
In object-oriented programming languages such as
C++, Object Pascal, or Java, the concept of abstrac-
Specication languages generally rely on abstractions of
tion has itself become a declarative statement us-
one kind or another, since specications are typically de-
ing the keywords virtual (in C++) or abstract [3] and
ned earlier in a project, (and at a more abstract level)
interface[4] (in Java). After such a declaration, it is
than an eventual implementation. The UML specication
the responsibility of the programmer to implement
language, for example, allows the denition of abstract
a class to instantiate the object of the declaration.
classes, which in a waterfall project, remain abstract dur-
Functional programming languages commonly ex- ing the architecture and specication phase of the project.
hibit abstractions related to functions, such as
lambda abstractions (making a term into a function 2.2.3 Control abstraction
of some variable) and higher-order functions (pa-
rameters are functions). Main article: Control ow
Modern members of the Lisp programming
language family such as Clojure, Scheme and Programming languages oer control abstraction as one
Common Lisp support macro systems to allow of the main purposes of their use. Computer machines
20 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

understand operations at the very low level such as mov-
ing some bits from one location of the memory to an-
other location and producing the sum of two sequences
of bits. Programming languages allow this to be done
in the higher level. For example, consider this statement
written in a Pascal-like fashion:
The uppermost level may feature a menu of typical
end-user operations.
Within that could be standalone executables or li-
braries for tasks such as signing on and o employ-
ees or printing checks.

a := (1 + 2) * 5 Within each of those standalone components there

could be many dierent source les, each contain-
ing the program code to handle a part of the prob-
To a human, this seems a fairly simple and obvious calcu- lem, with only selected interfaces available to other
lation (one plus two is three, times ve is fteen). How- parts of the program. A sign on program could
ever, the low-level steps necessary to carry out this evalu- have source les for each data entry screen and the
ation, and return the value 15, and then assign that value database interface (which may itself be a standalone
to the variable a, are actually quite subtle and complex. third party library or a statically linked set of library
The values need to be converted to binary representa- routines).
tion (often a much more complicated task than one would
think) and the calculations decomposed (by the compiler Either the database or the payroll application also
or interpreter) into assembly instructions (again, which has to initiate the process of exchanging data with
are much less intuitive to the programmer: operations between ship and shore, and that data transfer task
such as shifting a binary register left, or adding the bi- will often contain many other components.
nary complement of the contents of one register to an-
other, are simply not how humans think about the ab-
stract arithmetical operations of addition or multiplica- These layers produce the eect of isolating the imple-
tion). Finally, assigning the resulting value of 15 to the mentation details of one component and its assorted inter-
variable labeled a, so that a can be used later, involves nal methods from the others. Object-oriented program-
additional 'behind-the-scenes steps of looking up a vari- ming embraces and extends this concept.
ables label and the resultant location in physical or virtual
memory, storing the binary representation of 15 to that
memory location, etc. 2.2.4 Data abstraction
Without control abstraction, a programmer would need to
Main article: Abstract data type
specify all the register/binary-level steps each time they
simply wanted to add or multiply a couple of numbers and
assign the result to a variable. Such duplication of eort Data abstraction enforces a clear separation between the
has two serious negative consequences: abstract properties of a data type and the concrete details
of its implementation. The abstract properties are those
1. it forces the programmer to constantly repeat fairly that are visible to client code that makes use of the data
common tasks every time a similar operation is typethe interface to the data typewhile the concrete
needed implementation is kept entirely private, and indeed can
change, for example to incorporate eciency improve-
2. it forces the programmer to program for the partic- ments over time. The idea is that such changes are not
ular hardware and instruction set supposed to have any impact on client code, since they
involve no dierence in the abstract behaviour.
Structured programming For example, one could dene an abstract data type called
lookup table which uniquely associates keys with values,
Main article: Structured programming and in which values may be retrieved by specifying their
corresponding keys. Such a lookup table may be imple-
mented in various ways: as a hash table, a binary search
Structured programming involves the splitting of complex tree, or even a simple linear list of (key:value) pairs. As
program tasks into smaller pieces with clear ow-control far as client code is concerned, the abstract properties of
and interfaces between components, with reduction of the the type are the same in each case.
complexity potential for side-eects.
Of course, this all relies on getting the details of the in-
In a simple program, this may aim to ensure that loops terface right in the rst place, since any changes there
have single or obvious exit points and (where possible) to can have major impacts on client code. As one way to
have single exit points from functions and procedures. look at this: the interface forms a contract on agreed be-
In a larger system, it may involve breaking down complex haviour between the data type and client code; anything
tasks into many dierent modules. Consider a system not spelled out in the contract is subject to change without
which handles payroll on ships and at shore oces: notice.
2.2. ABSTRACTION (COMPUTER SCIENCE) 21

Languages that implement data abstraction include Ada
and Modula-2. Object-oriented languages are com-
monly claimed to oer data abstraction; however, their
inheritance concept tends to put information in the in-
terface that more properly belongs in the implementa-
tion; thus, changes to such information ends up impacting
client code, leading directly to the Fragile binary interface
problem.
feeding. It denes an Animal class to represent both the
state of the animal and its functions:
public class Animal extends LivingThing { private Loca-
tion loc; private double energyReserves; public boolean
isHungry() { return energyReserves < 2.5; } public
void eat(Food food) { // Consume food energyReserves
+= food.getCalories(); } public void moveTo(Location
location) { // Move to new location this.loc = location; } }

2.2.5 Abstraction in object oriented pro- With the above denition, one could create objects of type
gramming Animal and call their methods like this:
thePig = new Animal(); theCow = new Animal();
Main article: Object (computer science) if (thePig.isHungry()) { thePig.eat(tableScraps); }
if (theCow.isHungry()) { theCow.eat(grass); } the-
In object-oriented programming theory, abstraction in- Cow.moveTo(theBarn);
volves the facility to dene objects that represent abstract
actors that can perform work, report on and change In the above example, the class Animal is an abstraction
their state, and communicate with other objects in the used in place of an actual animal, LivingThing is a further
system. The term encapsulation refers to the hiding abstraction (in this case a generalisation) of Animal.
of state details, but extending the concept of data type
from earlier programming languages to associate behav- If one requires a more dierentiated hierarchy of animals
ior most strongly with the data, and standardizing the way to dierentiate, say, those who provide milk from
that dierent data types interact, is the beginning of ab- those who provide nothing except meat at the end of their
straction. When abstraction proceeds into the operations lives that is an intermediary level of abstraction, prob-
dened, enabling objects of dierent types to be substi- ably DairyAnimal (cows, goats) who would eat foods suit-
tuted, it is called polymorphism. When it proceeds in the able to giving good milk, and MeatAnimal (pigs, steers)
opposite direction, inside the types or classes, structur- who would eat foods to give the best meat-quality.
ing them to simplify a complex set of relationships, it is Such an abstraction could remove the need for the appli-
called delegation or inheritance. cation coder to specify the type of food, so s/he could
Various object-oriented programming languages oer concentrate instead on the feeding schedule. The two
similar facilities for abstraction, all to support a general classes could be related using inheritance or stand alone,
strategy of polymorphism in object-oriented program- and the programmer could dene varying degrees of
ming, which includes the substitution of one type for an- polymorphism between the two types. These facilities
other in the same or similar role. Although not as gener- tend to vary drastically between languages, but in gen-
ally supported, a conguration or image or package may eral each can achieve anything that is possible with any of
predetermine a great many of these bindings at compile- the others. A great many operation overloads, data type
time, link-time, or loadtime. This would leave only a min- by data type, can have the same eect at compile-time as
imum of such bindings to change at run-time. any degree of inheritance or other means to achieve poly-
morphism. The class notation is simply a coders conve-
Common Lisp Object System or Self, for example, fea- nience.
ture less of a class-instance distinction and more use
of delegation for polymorphism. Individual objects and
functions are abstracted more exibly to better t with a Object-oriented design
shared functional heritage from Lisp.
C++ exemplies another extreme: it relies heavily on Main article: Object-oriented design
templates and overloading and other static bindings at
compile-time, which in turn has certain exibility prob- Decisions regarding what to abstract and what to keep un-
lems. der the control of the coder become the major concern
Although these examples oer alternate strategies for of object-oriented design and domain analysisactually
achieving the same abstraction, they do not fundamen- determining the relevant relationships in the real world is
tally alter the need to support abstract nouns in code - all the concern of object-oriented analysis or legacy analysis.
programming relies on an ability to abstract verbs as func- In general, to determine appropriate abstraction, one
tions, nouns as data structures, and either as processes. must make many small decisions about scope (domain
Consider for example a sample Java fragment to repre- analysis), determine what other systems one must cooper-
sent some common farm animals to a level of abstrac- ate with (legacy analysis), then perform a detailed object-
tion suitable to model simple aspects of their hunger and oriented analysis which is expressed within project time
22 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

and budget constraints as an object-oriented design. In
our simple example, the domain is the barnyard, the live
pigs and cows and their eating habits are the legacy con-
straints, the detailed analysis is that coders must have the
exibility to feed the animals what is available and thus
there is no reason to code the type of food into the class
itself, and the design is a single simple Animal class of
which pigs and cows are instances with the same func-
tions. A decision to dierentiate DairyAnimal would
change the detailed analysis but the domain and legacy
analysis would be unchangedthus it is entirely under the
control of the programmer, and we refer to abstraction in
object-oriented programming as distinct from abstraction
in domain or legacy analysis.
riving information on the behavior of computer programs
either have to drop termination (on some occasions, they
may fail, crash or never yield out a result), soundness (they
may provide false information), or precision (they may
answer I don't know to some questions).
Abstraction is the core concept of abstract interpretation.
Model checking generally takes place on abstract versions
of the studied systems.
2.2.7 Levels of abstraction
Main article: Abstraction layer

Computer science commonly presents levels (or, less

2.2.6 Considerations commonly, layers) of abstraction, wherein each level rep-
resents a dierent model of the same information and
When discussing formal semantics of programming lan- processes, but with varying amounts of detail. Each level
guages, formal methods or abstract interpretation, ab- uses a system of expression involving a unique set of ob-
straction refers to the act of considering a less detailed, jects and compositions that apply only to a particular do-
but safe, denition of the observed program behaviors. main. [5] Each relatively abstract, higher level builds on
For instance, one may observe only the nal result of a relatively concrete, lower level, which tends to pro-
program executions instead of considering all the inter- vide an increasingly granular representation. For ex-
mediate steps of executions. Abstraction is dened to a ample, gates build on electronic circuits, binary on gates,
concrete (more precise) model of execution. machine language on binary, programming language on
Abstraction may be exact or faithful with respect to a machine language, applications and operating systems on
property if one can answer a question about the property programming languages. Each level is embodied, but not
equally well on the concrete or abstract model. For in- determined, by the level beneath it, making it a language
stance, if we wish to know what the result of the evalua- of description that is somewhat self-contained.
tion of a mathematical expression involving only integers
+, -, , is worth modulo n, we need only perform all op-
erations modulo n (a familiar form of this abstraction is Database systems
casting out nines).
Main article: Database management system
Abstractions, however, though not necessarily exact,
should be sound. That is, it should be possible to get
sound answers from themeven though the abstraction Since many users of database systems lack in-depth fa-
may simply yield a result of undecidability. For instance, miliarity with computer data-structures, database devel-
we may abstract the students in a class by their minimal opers often hide complexity through the following levels:
and maximal ages; if one asks whether a certain person
belongs to that class, one may simply compare that per-
sons age with the minimal and maximal ages; if his age
lies outside the range, one may safely answer that the per-
son does not belong to the class; if it does not, one may
only answer I don't know.
The level of abstraction included in a programming lan-
guage can inuence its overall usability. The Cognitive
dimensions framework includes the concept of abstrac-
tion gradient in a formalism. This framework allows the
designer of a programming language to study the trade-
os between abstraction and other characteristics of the
design, and how changes in abstraction inuence the lan-
guage usability. Data abstraction levels of a database system
Abstractions can prove useful when dealing with com-
puter programs, because non-trivial properties of com- Physical level: The lowest level of abstraction describes
puter programs are essentially undecidable (see Rices how a system actually stores data. The physical level de-
theorem). As a consequence, automatic methods for de- scribes complex low-level data structures in detail.
2.2. ABSTRACTION (COMPUTER SCIENCE)
Logical level: The next higher level of abstraction de-
scribes what data the database stores, and what relation-
ships exist among those data. The logical level thus de-
scribes an entire database in terms of a small number of
relatively simple structures. Although implementation of
the simple structures at the logical level may involve com-
plex physical level structures, the user of the logical level
does not need to be aware of this complexity. This re-
ferred to as physical data independence. Database ad-
ministrators, who must decide what information to keep
in a database, use the logical level of abstraction.
View level: The highest level of abstraction describes
only part of the entire database. Even though the logical
level uses simpler structures, complexity remains because
of the variety of information stored in a large database.
Many users of a database system do not need all this in-
formation; instead, they need to access only a part of the
database. The view level of abstraction exists to simplify
their interaction with the system. The system may pro-
vide many views for the same database.
Layered architecture
Main article: Abstraction layer
The ability to provide a design of dierent levels of ab-
straction can
simplify the design considerably
enable dierent role players to eectively work at
various levels of abstraction
support the portability of software artifacts (model-
based ideally)
Systems design and business process design can both use This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line
this. Some design processes specically generate designs Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incor-
that contain various levels of abstraction. porated under the relicensing terms of the GFDL, version 1.3
Layered architecture partitions the concerns of the appli-
cation into stacked groups (layers). It is a technique used
in designing computer software, hardware, and commu- 2.2.10 Further reading
nications in which system or network components are iso-
lated in layers so that changes can be made in one layer
without aecting the others.
2.2.8 See also
Abstraction principle (computer programming)
Abstraction inversion for an anti-pattern of one dan-
ger in abstraction
Abstract data type for an abstract description of a
set of data
Algorithm for an abstract description of a computa-
tional procedure
23
Bracket abstraction for making a term into a func-
tion of a variable
Data modeling for structuring data independent of
the processes that use it
Encapsulation for abstractions that hide implemen-
tation details
Greenspuns Tenth Rule for an aphorism about an
(the?) optimum point in the space of abstractions
Higher-order function for abstraction where func-
tions produce or consume other functions
Lambda abstraction for making a term into a func-
tion of some variable
List of abstractions (computer science)
Renement for the opposite of abstraction in com-
puting
2.2.9 References
[1] Guttag, John V. (2013-01-18). Introduction to Com-
putation and Programming Using Python (Spring 2013
ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN
9780262519632.
[2] Spolsky, Joel. The Law of Leaky Abstractions.
[3] Abstract Methods and Classes. The Java Tutorials.
Oracle. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
[4] Using an Interface as a Type. The Java Tutorials. Or-
acle. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
[5] Luciano Floridi, Levellism and the Method of Abstraction
IEG Research Report 22.11.04
or later.
Harold Abelson; Gerald Jay Sussman; Julie Suss-
man (25 July 1996). Structure and Interpretation of
Computer Programs (2 ed.). MIT Press. ISBN 978-
0-262-01153-2. Retrieved 22 June 2012.
Spolsky, Joel (11 November 2002). The Law of
Leaky Abstractions. Joel on Software.
Abstraction/information hiding - CS211 course,
Cornell University.
Eric S. Roberts (1997). Programming Abstractions
in C A Second Course in Computer Science.
Palermo, Jerey (29 July 2008). The Onion Ar-
chitecture. Jerey Palermo.
24 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

2.2.11 External links Techniques and methods from one area can be ap-
plied to prove results in a related area.
SimArch example of layered architecture for dis-
tributed simulation systems. One disadvantage of abstraction is that highly ab-
stract concepts can be dicult to learn.[5] A degree of
mathematical maturity and experience may be needed for
2.3 Abstraction (mathematics) conceptual assimilation of abstractions. One of the un-
derlying principles of the Montessori approach to math-
ematics education is encouraging children to move from
Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extract-
concrete examples to abstract thinking.[6]
ing the underlying essence of a mathematical concept,
removing any dependence on real world objects with Bertrand Russell, in The Scientic Outlook (1931), writes
which it might originally have been connected, and gen- that Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing
eralizing it so that it has wider applications or match- what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday
ing among other abstract descriptions of equivalent life are not suciently abstract. Only mathematics and
phenomena.[1][2][3] Two of the most highly abstract areas mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means
of modern mathematics are category theory and model to say.
theory.

2.3.2 See also

2.3.1 Description
Abstract detail
Many areas of mathematics began with the study of real Generalization
world problems, before the underlying rules and concepts
were identied and dened as abstract structures. For ex- Abstract thinking
ample, geometry has its origins in the calculation of dis-
tances and areas in the real world; algebra started with Abstract logic
methods of solving problems in arithmetic. Abstract algebraic logic
Abstraction is an ongoing process in mathematics and
Abstract model theory
the historical development of many mathematical top-
ics exhibits a progression from the concrete to the ab- Abstract nonsense
stract. Take the historical development of geometry as
an example; the rst steps in the abstraction of geome-
try were made by the ancient Greeks, with Euclids El- 2.3.3 References
ements being the earliest extant documentation of the
axioms of plane geometrythough Proclus tells of an [1] Bertrand Russell, in The Principles of Mathematics Vol-
earlier axiomatisation by Hippocrates of Chios.[4] In the ume 1 (pg 219), refers to the principle of abstraction".
17th century Descartes introduced Cartesian co-ordinates [2] Robert B. Ash. A Primer of Abstract Mathematics. Cam-
which allowed the development of analytic geometry. bridge University Press, Jan 1, 1998
Further steps in abstraction were taken by Lobachevsky,
Bolyai, Riemann, and Gauss who generalised the con- [3] The New American Encyclopedic Dictionary. Edited by
cepts of geometry to develop non-Euclidean geometries. Edward Thomas Roe, Le Roy Hooker, Thomas W. Hand-
Later in the 19th century mathematicians generalised ge- ford. Pg 34
ometry even further, developing such areas as geome- [4] Proclus Summary
try in n dimensions, projective geometry, ane geometry
and nite geometry. Finally Felix Klein's "Erlangen pro- [5] "... introducing pupils to abstract mathematics is not an
gram" identied the underlying theme of all of these ge- easy task and requires a long-term eort that must take
into account the variety of the contexts in which mathe-
ometries, dening each of them as the study of properties
matics is used, P.L. Ferrari, Abstraction in Mathematics,
invariant under a given group of symmetries. This level of
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 29 July 2003 vol. 358 no.
abstraction revealed connections between geometry and 1435 1225-1230
abstract algebra.
[6] Montessori Philosophy: Moving from Concrete to Ab-
The advantages of abstraction are :
stract, North American Montessori Center

It reveals deep connections between dierent areas

of mathematics. 2.3.4 Further reading
Known results in one area can suggest conjectures in Bajnok, Bla (2013). An Invitation to Abstract Math-
a related area. ematics. Springer. ISBN 978-1-4614-6635-2.
2.5. ABSTRACT OBJECT 25

2.4 Abstract structure Deductive apparatus

Formal sciences
An abstract structure in mathematics is a formal object
that is dened by a set of laws, properties, and relation- Mathematical structure
ships in a way that is logically if not always historically
independent of the structure of contingent experiences,
for example, those involving physical objects. Abstract
structures are studied not only in logic and mathematics
2.5 Abstract object
but in the elds that apply them, as computer science,
and in the studies that reect on them, such as philosophy Abstract entity redirects here. For the album by Kiana,
and especially the philosophy of mathematics. Indeed, see Abstract Entity.
modern mathematics has been dened in a very general
sense as the study of abstract structures (by the Bourbaki Abstract and concrete (German: abstrakt; konkret)[1] are
group: see discussion there, at algebraic structure and also classications that denote whether a term describes an
structure). object with a physical referent or one with no physical
An abstract structure may be represented (perhaps with referents. They are most commonly used in philosophy
some degree of approximation) by one or more physical and semantics. Abstract objects are sometimes called
objects this is called an implementation or instantiation abstracta (sing. abstractum) and concrete objects are
of the abstract structure. But the abstract structure itself sometimes called concreta (sing. concretum). An ab-
is dened in a way that is not dependent on the properties stract object is an object which does not exist at any par-
of any particular implementation. ticular time or place, but rather exists as a type of thing,
i.e., an idea, or abstraction.[2] The term 'abstract object' is
An abstract structure has a richer structure than a concept said to have been coined by Willard Van Orman Quine.[3]
or an idea. An abstract structure must include pre- The study of abstract objects is called abstract object the-
cise rules of behaviour which can be used to determine ory.
whether a candidate implementation actually matches
the abstract structure in question. Thus we may de-
bate how well a particular government ts the concept of 2.5.1 In philosophy
democracy, but there is no room for debate over whether
a given sequence of moves is or is not a valid game of The typetoken distinction identies physical objects that
chess. are tokens of a particular type of thing.[4] The type that
it is a part of, is in itself an abstract object. The abstract-
concrete distinction is often introduced and initially un-
2.4.1 Examples derstood in terms of paradigmatic examples of objects of
each kind:
A sorting algorithm is an abstract structure, but a recipe
is not, because it depends on the properties and quantities Abstract objects have often garnered the interest of
of its ingredients. philosophers because they raise problems for popu-
lar theories. In ontology, abstract objects are consid-
A simple melody is an abstract structure, but an ered problematic for physicalism and some forms of
orchestration is not, because it depends on the properties naturalism. Historically, the most important ontological
of particular instruments. dispute about abstract objects has been the problem of
Euclidean geometry is an abstract structure, but the the- universals. In epistemology, abstract objects are consid-
ory of continental drift is not, because it depends on the ered problematic for empiricism. If abstracta lack causal
geology of the Earth. powers or spatial location, how do we know about them?
It is hard to say how they can aect our sensory experi-
A formal language is an abstract structure, but a natural ences, and yet we seem to agree on a wide range of claims
language is not, because its rules of grammar and syntax about them.
are open to debate and interpretation.
Some, such as Edward Zalta and arguably, Plato in his
Theory of Forms, have held that abstract objects consti-
2.4.2 See also tute the dening subject matter of metaphysics or philo-
sophical inquiry more broadly. To the extent that phi-
Abstraction in computer science losophy is independent of empirical research, and to the
extent that empirical questions do not inform questions
Abstraction in general about abstracta, philosophy would seem especially suited
to answering these latter questions.
Abstraction in mathematics
In modern philosophy, the distinction between abstract
Abstract object and concrete was explored by Immanuel Kant[5] and G.
26
W. F. Hegel.[6]
Gottlob Frege said that abstract objects, such as numbers,
were members of a third realm (German: Drittes Re-
ich),[7] dierent from the external world or from internal
consciousness.[8]
Abstract objects and causality
Another popular proposal for drawing the abstract-
concrete distinction contends that an object is abstract if it
lacks any causal powers. A causal power has the ability to
aect something causally. Thus, the empty set is abstract
because it cannot act on other objects. One problem for
this view is that it is not clear exactly what it is to have 2.5.5 References
a causal power. For a more detailed exploration of the
abstract-concrete distinction, follow the link below to the
Stanford Encyclopedia article.[9]
2.5.2 Concrete and abstract thinking
Jean Piaget uses the terms concrete and formal to de-
scribe the dierent types of learning. Concrete thinking
involves facts and descriptions about everyday, tangible
objects, while abstract (formal operational) thinking in-
volves a mental process.
2.5.3 Quasi-abstract entities
Recently, there has been some philosophical interest in
the development of a third category of objects known
as the quasi-abstract. Quasi-abstract objects have drawn
particular attention in the area of social ontology and
documentality. It has been argued that the over-
adherence to the platonist duality of the concrete and the
abstract has led to a large category of social objects hav-
ing been overlooked or rejected as nonexisting because
they exhibit characteristics which the traditional duality
between the concrete and the abstract has regarded as
incompatible.[10] Specially, the ability to have temporal
location, but not spatial location, and have causal agency
(if only by acting through representatives).[11] These char-
acteristics are exhibited by a number of social objects,
including states of the international legal system.[12]
2.5.4 See also
Abstraction
Abstract object theory
Abstract particulars
Abstract structure
Conceptual framework
Nominalism
CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES
Non-physical entity
Object (philosophy)
Object of the mind
Incorporeality
Philosophy of mathematics
Platonic form
Platonism
Universal (metaphysics)
[1] Glenn Alexander Magee, The Hegel Dictionary, Contin-
uum, 2010, p. 30.
[2] Abrams, Meyer Howard; Harpham, Georey Galt
(2011). A Glossary of Literary Terms. ISBN
0495898023. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
[3] Armstrong, D. M. (2010). Sketch for a systematic meta-
physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN
9780199655915.
[4] Carr, Philip (2012) The Philosophy of Phonology in
Philosophy of Linguistics (ed. Kemp, Fernando, Asher),
Elsevier, p. 404
[5] KrV A51/B756. See also: Edward Willatt, Kant, Deleuze
and Architectonics, Continuum, 2010 p. 17: Kant argues
that cognition can only come about as a result of the union
of the abstract work of the understanding and the concrete
input of sensation.
[6] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic,
Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 609. See also:
Richard Dien Wineld, Hegels Science of Logic: A Crit-
ical Rethinking in Thirty Lectures, Rowman & Littleeld
Publishers, 2012, p. 265.
[7] Gottlob Frege, Der Gedanke. Eine logische Unter-
suchung, in: Beitrge zur Philosophie des deutschen Ide-
alismus 1 (1918/19), pp. 5877; esp. p. 69.
[8] Rosen, Gideon (1 January 2014). Abstract Objects.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics
Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 1 January
2017.
[9] Rosen, Gideon. Abstract Objects. Stanford Encyclope-
dia of Philosophy.
[10] B. Smith (2008), Searle and De Soto: The New Ontology
of the Social World. In The Mystery of Capital and the
Construction of Social Reality. Open Court.
[11] E. H. Robinson, A Theory of Social Agentivity and Its In-
tegration into the Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and
Cognitive Engineering, International Journal on Seman-
tic Web and Information Systems 7(4) (2011) pp. 6286.
[12] E. H. Robinson (2014), A Documentary Theory of States
and Their Existence as Quasi-Abstract Entities, Geopol-
itics 19 (3), pp. 129.
2.7. ONTOLOGY 27

2.5.6 External links

Abstract and concrete at PhilPapers

Nominalism, Realism, Conceptualism,Interface,

from The Catholic Encyclopedia

Abstract vs. Concrete in Writing, from Writing for

Results
The grammatical trace of this hypostatic transformation
is a process that extracts the adjective sweet from the
predicate is sweet, replacing it by a new, increased-arity
predicate possesses, and as a by-product of the reaction,
as it were, precipitating out the substantive sweetness as
a second subject of the new predicate.
The abstraction of hypostasis takes the concrete physi-
2.6 Hypostatic abstraction cal sense of taste found in honey is sweet and gives it
formal metaphysical characteristics in honey has sweet-
ness.
Hypostatic abstraction in mathematical logic, also
known as hypostasis or subjectal abstraction, is a 2.6.1 See also
formal operation that transforms a predicate into a
relation; for example Honey is sweet is transformed into
Honey has sweetness. The relation is created between
2.6.2 References
the original subject and a new term that represents the
Peirce, C.S., Collected Papers of Charles Sanders
property expressed by the original predicate.
Peirce, vols. 16 (19311935), Charles Hartshorne
Hypostasis changes a propositional formula of the form and Paul Weiss, eds., vols. 78 (1958), Arthur W.
X is Y to another one of the form X has the property of Burks, ed., Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
being Y or X has Y-ness. The logical functioning of the MA.
second object Y-ness consists solely in the truth-values of
those propositions that have the corresponding abstract
property Y as the predicate. The object of thought intro- 2.6.3 External links
duced in this way may be called a hypostatic object and in
some senses an abstract object and a formal object. J. Jay Zeman, Peirce on Abstraction
The above denition is adapted from the one given by
Charles Sanders Peirce (CP 4.235, The Simplest Math-
ematics (1902), in Collected Papers, CP 4.227323). As 2.7 Ontology
Peirce describes it, the main point about the formal op-
eration of hypostatic abstraction, insofar as it operates on
This article is about ontology in philosophy. For the con-
formal linguistic expressions, is that it converts an adjec-
cept in information science, see Ontology (information
tive or predicate into an extra subject, thus increasing by
science).
one the number of subject slots -- called the arity orNot to be confused with oncology, odontology, ontogeny,
adicity -- of the main predicate. or deontology.
The transformation of honey is sweet into honey pos- Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of
sesses sweetness can be viewed in several ways: being, becoming, existence and/or reality, as well as the
28
Parmenides was among the rst to propose an ontological char-
acterization of the fundamental nature of reality.
basic categories of being and their relations.[1] Tradition-
ally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy
known as metaphysics, ontology often deals with ques-
tions concerning what entities exist or may be said to ex-
ist and how such entities may be grouped, related within
a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and
dierences. Although ontology as a philosophical en-
terprise is highly hypothetical, it also has practical ap- Further examples of ontological questions include:
plication in information science and technology, such as
ontology engineering. A very simple denition of on-
tology is that it is the examination of what is meant, in
context, by the word 'thing'.
2.7.1 Overview
Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, con-
tend that all nouns (including abstract nouns) refer to ex-
istent entities. Other philosophers contend that nouns do
not always name entities, but that some provide a kind of
shorthand for reference to a collection of either objects
or events. In this latter view, mind, instead of referring
to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experi-
enced by a person; society refers to a collection of persons
with some shared characteristics, and geometry refers to
a collection of a specic kind of intellectual activity.[2]
Between these poles of realism and nominalism, stand a
variety of other positions. An ontology may give an ac-
count of which words refer to entities, which do not, why,
and what categories result.
CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES
Some fundamental questions
Principal questions of ontology include:
What can be said to exist?"
What is a thing?"[3]
Into what categories, if any, can we sort existing
things?"
What are the meanings of being?"
What are the various modes of being of entities?"
Various philosophers have provided dierent answers to
these questions. One common approach involves di-
viding the extant subjects and predicates into groups
called categories. Of course, such lists of categories dif-
fer widely from one another, and it is through the co-
ordination of dierent categorical schemes that ontology
relates to such elds as library science and articial intel-
ligence. Such an understanding of ontological categories,
however, is merely taxonomic, classicatory. Aristotles
categories are the ways in which a being may be addressed
simply as a being, such as:
what it is (its 'whatness, quiddity, haecceity or
essence)
how it is (its 'howness or qualitativeness)
how much it is (quantitativeness)
where it is, its relatedness to other beings[4]
What is existence, i.e. what does it mean for a being
to be?
Is existence a property?
Is existence a genus or general class that is simply
divided up by specic dierences?
Which entities, if any, are fundamental?
Are all entities objects?
How do the properties of an object relate to the ob-
ject itself?
Do physical properties actually exist?
What features are the essential, as opposed to merely
accidental attributes of a given object?
How many levels of existence or ontological levels
are there? And what constitutes a level"?
What is a physical object?
2.7. ONTOLOGY 29

Can one give an account of what it means to say that 2.7.2 History
a physical object exists?
Can one give an account of what it means to say that
a non-physical entity exists?
What constitutes the identity of an object?
When does an object go out of existence, as opposed
to merely changing?
Do beings exist other than in the modes of objectiv- the word itself, the New Latin form ontologia, appeared
ity and subjectivity, i.e. is the subject/object split of in 1606 in the work Ogdoas Scholastica by Jacob Lorhard
modern philosophy inevitable?
Concepts
Essential ontological dichotomies include:
universals and particulars
substance and accident
abstract and concrete objects
essence and existence
Etymology
The compound word ontology combines onto-, from the
Greek , on (gen. , ontos), i.e. being; that which
is, which is the present participle of the verb , eim,
i.e. to be, I am, and -, -logia, i.e. logical dis-
course, see classical compounds for this type of word
formation..[6][7]
While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant record of
(Lorhardus) and in 1613 in the Lexicon philosophicum by
Rudolf Gckel (Goclenius).
The rst occurrence in English of ontology as recorded
by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, online edition,
2008) came in a work by Gideon Harvey (1636/71702):
Archelogia philosophica nova; or, New principles of Phi-
losophy. Containing Philosophy in general, Metaphysicks
or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, Reli-
gio Philosophi or Natural Theology, Physicks or Natural
philosophy, London, Thomson, 1663. The word was rst
used in its Latin form by philosophers based on the Latin
roots, which themselves are based on the Greek.
Leibniz is the only one of the great philosophers of the
17th century to have used the term ontology.[8]

determinism and indeterminism Origins

monism and dualism Ontology was referred to as Tattva Mimamsa by ancient

Indian philosophers going back as early as Vedas.. On-
idealism and materialism tology is an aspect of the Samkhya school of philoso-
phy from the rst millenium B.C.E.[9] The concept of
Guna which describes the three properties (sattva, rajas
and tamas) present in diering proportions in all existing
Types
things, is a notable concept of this school.
Philosophers can classify ontologies in various ways us-
ing criteria such as the degree of abstraction and eld of Parmenides and monism Parmenides was among
application:[5] the rst in the Greek tradition to propose an ontologi-
cal characterization of the fundamental nature of exis-
tence. In his prologue or proem he describes two views of
1. Upper ontology: concepts supporting development
existence; initially that nothing comes from nothing, and
of an ontology, meta-ontology
therefore existence is eternal. Consequently, our opin-
ions about truth must often be false and deceitful. Most
2. Domain ontology: concepts relevant to a particu- of western philosophy including the fundamental con-
lar topic or area of interest, for example, informa- cepts of falsiability have emerged from this view.
tion technology or computer languages, or particular This posits that existence is what may be conceived of by
branches of science thought, created, or possessed. Hence, there may be nei-
ther void nor vacuum; and true reality neither may come
3. Interface ontology: concepts relevant to the juncture into being nor vanish from existence. Rather, the entirety
of two disciplines of creation is eternal, uniform, and immutable, though
not innite (he characterized its shape as that of a perfect
4. Process ontology: inputs, outputs, constraints, se- sphere). Parmenides thus posits that change, as perceived
quencing information, involved in business or engi- in everyday experience, is illusory. Everything that may
neering processes be apprehended is but one part of a single entity. This
30 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

idea somewhat anticipates the modern concept of an ulti- 1. according to the various categories or ways of ad-
mate grand unication theory that nally describes all of dressing a being as such
existence in terms of one inter-related sub-atomic reality
which applies to everything. 2. according to its truth or falsity (e.g. fake gold, coun-
terfeit money)
3. whether it exists in and of itself or simply 'comes
Ontological pluralism Main article: Ontological
along' by accident
pluralism
4. according to its potency, movement (energy) or n-
The opposite of eleatic monism is the pluralistic concep- ished presence (Metaphysics Book Theta).
tion of Being. In the 5th century BC, Anaxagoras and
Leucippus replaced[10] the reality of Being (unique and According to Avicenna, and in an interpretation of Greek
unchanging) with that of Becoming and therefore by a Aristotelian and Platonist ontological doctrines in me-
more fundamental and elementary ontic plurality. This dieval metaphysics, being is either necessary, contingent
thesis originated in the Hellenic world, stated in two dif- qua possible, or impossible. Necessary being is that
ferent ways by Anaxagoras and by Leucippus. The rst which cannot but be, since its non-being entails a con-
theory dealt with seeds (which Aristotle referred to as tradiction. Contingent qua possible being is neither nec-
homeomeries) of the various substances. The second essary nor impossible for it to be or not to be. It is on-
was the atomistic theory,[11] which dealt with reality as tologically neutral, and is brought from potential existing
based on the vacuum, the atoms and their intrinsic move- into actual existence by way of a cause that is external to
ment in it. its essence. Its being is borrowed unlike the necessary ex-
istent, which is self-subsisting and is impossible for it not
The materialist atomism proposed by Leucippus was to be. As for the impossible, it necessarily does not exist,
indeterminist, but then developed by Democritus in a and the armation of its being is a contradiction.[14]
deterministic way. It was later (4th century BC) that
the original atomism was taken again as indeterminis-
tic by Epicurus. He conrmed the reality as composed 2.7.3 Other ontological topics
of an innity of indivisible, unchangeable corpuscles or
atoms (atomon, lit. 'uncuttable'), but he gives weight to Ontological formations
characterize atoms while for Leucippus they are charac-
terized by a gure, an order and a position in the The concept of 'ontological formations refers to forma-
cosmos.[12] They are, besides, creating the whole with tions of social relations understood as dominant ways of
the intrinsic movement in the vacuum, producing the di- living. Temporal, spatial, corporeal, epistemological and
verse ux of being. Their movement is inuenced by the performative relations are taken to be central to under-
parenklisis (Lucretius names it clinamen) and that is de- standing a dominant formation. That is, a particular on-
termined by the chance. These ideas foreshadowed our tological formation is based on how ontological categories
understanding of traditional physics until the nature of of time, space, embodiment, knowing and performing
atoms was discovered in the 20th century.[13] are livedobjectively and subjectively. Dierent onto-
logical formations include the customary (including the
tribal), the traditional, the modern and the postmodern.
Plato Plato developed this distinction between true
The concept was rst introduced by Paul James Global-
reality and illusion, in arguing that what is real are
ism, Nationalism, Tribalism[15] together with a series of
eternal and unchanging Forms or Ideas (a precursor to
writers including Damian Grenfell and Manfred Steger.
universals), of which things experienced in sensation are
at best merely copies, and real only in so far as they In the engaged theory approach, ontological formations
copy ('partake of') such Forms. In general, Plato pre- are seen as layered and intersecting rather than singu-
sumes that all nouns (e.g., 'Beauty') refer to real entities, lar formations. They are 'formations of being'. This ap-
whether sensible bodies or insensible Forms. Hence, in proach avoids the usual problems of a Great Divide being
The Sophist Plato argues that Being is a Form in which all posited between the modern and the pre-modern.
existent things participate and which they have in com-
mon (though it is unclear whether 'Being' is intended in
Ontological and epistemological certainty
the sense of existence, copula, or identity); and argues,
against Parmenides, that Forms must exist not only of Ren Descartes, with je pense donc je suis or "cogito
Being, but also of Negation and of non-Being (or Dif- ergo sum" or I think, therefore I am, argued that
ference). the self is something that we can know exists with
In his Categories, Aristotle identies ten possible kinds of epistemological certainty. Descartes argued further that
things that may be the subject or the predicate of a propo- this knowledge could lead to a proof of the certainty of
sition. For Aristotle there are four dierent ontological the existence of God, using the ontological argument that
dimensions: had been formulated rst by Anselm of Canterbury.
2.7. ONTOLOGY 31

Certainty about the existence of the self and the Ontology and language
other, however, came under increasing criticism in
the 20th century. Sociological theorists, most notably
Some philosophers suggest that the question of What
George Herbert Mead and Erving Goman, saw the
is?" is (at least in part) an issue of usage rather than a
Cartesian Other as a Generalized Other, the imaginary
question about facts.[21] This perspective is conveyed by
audience that individuals use when thinking about the
an analogy made by Donald Davidson: Suppose a person
self. According to Mead, we do not assume there is
refers to a 'cup' as a 'chair' and makes some comments
a self to begin with. Self is not presupposed as a stu
pertinent to a cup, but uses the word 'chair' consistently
out of which the world arises. Rather, the self arises in
throughout instead of 'cup'. One might readily catch on
the world.[16][17] The Cartesian Other was also used by
that this person simply calls a 'cup' a 'chair' and the oddity
Sigmund Freud, who saw the superego as an abstract reg-
is explained.[22] Analogously, if we nd people asserting
ulatory force, and mile Durkheim who viewed this as a
'there are' such-and-such, and we do not ourselves think
psychologically manifested entity which represented God
that 'such-and-such' exist, we might conclude that these
in society at large.
people are not nuts (Davidson calls this assumption 'char-
ity'), they simply use 'there are' dierently than we do.
The question of What is? is at least partially a topic in
the philosophy of language, and is not entirely about on-
tology itself.[23] This viewpoint has been expressed by Eli
Body and environment, questioning the meaning of Hirsch.[24][25]
being
Hirsch interprets Hilary Putnam as asserting that dif-
ferent concepts of the existence of something can be
[25]
Schools of subjectivism, objectivism and relativism ex- correct. This position does not contradict the view
isted at various times in the 20th century, and the that some things do exist, but points out that dierent
postmodernists and body philosophers tried to reframe 'languages will have dierent rules about assigning this
[25][26]
all these questions in terms of bodies taking some specic property. How to determine the 'tness of a 'lan-
action in an environment. This relied to a great degree on guage' to the world then becomes a subject for investiga-
insights derived from scientic research into animals tak- tion.
ing instinctive action in natural and articial settingsas Common to all Indo-European copula languages is the
studied by biology, ecology,[18] and cognitive science. double use of the verb to be in both stating that entity X
The processes by which bodies related to environments exists (X is.) as well as stating that X has a property (X
became of great concern, and the idea of being itself be- is P). It is sometimes argued that a third use is also dis-
came dicult to really dene. What did people mean tinct, stating that X is a member of a class (X is a C). In
when they said A is B, A must be B, A was B...? other language families these roles may have completely
Some linguists advocated dropping the verb to be from dierent verbs and are less likely to be confused with one
the English language, leaving "E Prime", supposedly less another. For example they might say something like the
prone to bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, car has redness rather than the car is red. Hence any
tried to dig into the word and its usage. Heidegger dis- discussion of being in Indo-European language philoso-
tinguished human being as existence from the being of phy may need to make distinctions between these senses.
things in the world. Heidegger proposes that our way
of being human and the way the world is for us are cast
historically through a fundamental ontological question-
ing. These fundamental ontological categories provide
the basis for communication in an age: a horizon of un-
Ontology and human geography
spoken and seemingly unquestionable background mean-
ings, such as human beings understood unquestioningly as
subjects and other entities understood unquestioningly as In human geography there are two types of ontology:
objects. Because these basic ontological meanings both small o which accounts for the practical orientation, de-
generate and are regenerated in everyday interactions, the scribing functions of being a part of the group, thought to
locus of our way of being in a historical epoch is the com- oversimplify and ignore key activities. The other o, or
municative event of language in use.[16] For Heidegger, big O, systematically, logically, and rationally describes
however, communication in the rst place is not among the essential characteristics and universal traits. This con-
human beings, but language itself shapes up in response cept relates closely to Platos view that the human mind
to questioning (the inexhaustible meaning of) being.[19] can only perceive a bigger world if they continue to live
Even the focus of traditional ontology on the 'whatness within the connes of their caves. However, in spite
or 'quidditas of beings in their substantial, standing pres- of the dierences, ontology relies on the symbolic agree-
ence can be shifted to pose the question of the 'whoness ments among members. That said, ontology is crucial for
of human being itself.[20] the axiomatic language frameworks.[27]
32 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

Reality and actuality to dierent aspects of an occasion of experience, and in

no way do they exclude each other.[28]
According to A.N. Whitehead, for ontology, it is useful
Examples of other philosophical proposals or candidates
to distinguish the terms 'reality' and 'actuality'.
as actual entities, in this view, are Aristotles 'substances,
In this view, an 'actual entity' has a philosophical status Leibniz' monads, and Descartes res verae' , and the more
of fundamental ontological priority, while a 'real entity' modern 'states of aairs. Aristotles substances, such as
is one which may be actual, or may derive its reality from Socrates, have behind them as more fundamental the 'pri-
its logical relation to some actual entity or entities. For mary substances, and in this sense do not satisfy White-
example, an occasion in the life of Socrates is an actual heads criteria. Whitehead is not happy with Leibniz'
entity. But Socrates being a man does not make 'man' an monads as actual entities because they are windowless
actual entity, because it refers indeterminately to many and do not cause each other. 'States of aairs are of-
actual entities, such as several occasions in the life of ten not closely dened, often without specic mention of
Socrates, and also to several occasions in the lives of Al- extension in physical Minkowski space; they are there-
cibiades, and of others. But the notion of man is real; it fore not necessarily processes of becoming, but may be
derives its reality from its reference to those many actual as their name suggests, simply static states in some sense.
occasions, each of which is an actual entity. An actual States of aairs are contingent on particulars, and there-
occasion is a concrete entity, while terms such as 'man' fore have something behind them.[29] One summary of
are abstractions from many concrete relevant entities. the Whiteheadian actual entity is that it is a process of be-
According to Whitehead, an actual entity must earn its coming. Another summary, referring to its causal linkage
philosophical status of fundamental ontological priority to other actual entities, is that it is all window, in con-
by satisfying several philosophical criteria, as follows. trast with Leibniz' windowless monads.
This view allows philosophical entities other than actual
There is no going behind an actual entity, to nd entities to really exist, but not as fundamentally and pri-
something more fundamental in fact or in ecacy. marily factual or causally ecacious; they have existence
This criterion is to be regarded as expressing an ax- as abstractions, with reality only derived from their refer-
iom, or postulated distinguished doctrine. ence to actual entities. A Whiteheadian actual entity has
a unique and completely denite place and time. White-
An actual entity must be completely determinate in headian abstractions are not so tightly dened in time and
the sense that there may be no confusion about its place, and in the extreme, some are timeless and place-
identity that would allow it to be confounded with less, or 'eternal' entities. All abstractions have logical or
another actual entity. In this sense an actual entity conceptual rather than ecacious existence; their lack of
is completely concrete, with no potential to be some- denite time does not make them unreal if they refer to
thing other than itself. It is what it is. It is of course a
actual entities. Whitehead calls this 'the ontological prin-
source of potentiality for the creation of other actual ciple'.
entities, of which it may be said to be a part cause.
Likewise it is the concretion or realization of poten-
tialities of other actual entities which are its partial Microcosmic ontology
causes.

Causation between actual entities is essential to their
actuality. Consequently, for Whitehead, each actual
entity has its distinct and denite extension in physi-
cal Minkowski space, and so is uniquely identiable.
A description in Minkowski space supports descrip-
tions in time and space for particular observers.
It is part of the aim of the philosophy of such an on-
tology as Whiteheads that the actual entities should
be all alike, qua actual entities; they should all sat-
isfy a single denite set of well stated ontological
criteria of actuality.
Whitehead proposed that his notion of an occasion of ex-
perience satises the criteria for its status as the philo-
sophically preferred denition of an actual entity. From
a purely logical point of view, each occasion of experi-
ence has in full measure the characters of both objective
and subjective reality. Subjectivity and objectivity refer
There is an established and long philosophical history
of the concept of atoms as microscopic physical ob-
jects.They are far too small to be visible to the naked eye.
It was as recent as the nineteenth century that precise es-
timates of the sizes of putative physical atoms began to
become plausible. Almost direct empirical observation
of atomic eects was due to the theoretical investiga-
tion of Brownian motion by Albert Einstein in the very
early twentieth century. But even then, the real existence
of atoms was debated by some. Such debate might be
labeled 'microcosmic ontology'. Here the word 'micro-
cosm' is used to indicate a physical world of small enti-
ties, such as for example atoms.
Subatomic particles are usually considered to be much
smaller than atoms. Their real or actual existence may be
very dicult to demonstrate empirically.[30] A distinction
is sometimes drawn between actual and virtual subatomic
particles. Reasonably, one may ask, in what sense, if any,
do virtual particles exist as physical entities? For atomic
2.7. ONTOLOGY 33

and subatomic particles, dicult questions arise, such as Martin Heidegger

do they possess a precise position, or a precise momen-
tum? A question that continues to be controversial is 'to Heraclitus of Ephesus
what kind of physical thing, if any, does the quantum me- Edmund Husserl
chanical wave function refer?'.[3]
Roman Ingarden

Ontological argument Immanuel Kant

Main article: Ontological argument Leszek Koakowski

Julia Kristeva
Can ontology prove the existence, nature and attributes
Susanne Langer
of God? The Ontological argument rst formulated by
Anslem deals with the foundations of ontology. Louis Lavelle
Gottfried Leibniz
2.7.4 Prominent ontologists
Douglas Lenat
Anselm of Canterbury Stanisaw Leniewski
Thomas Aquinas Leucippus
Aristotle David Kellogg Lewis
Avicenna Emmanuel Levinas
David Malet Armstrong John Locke
Alain Badiou E. J. Lowe
Gustav Bergmann Madhvacharya
Roy Bhaskar Alexius Meinong
Bernard Bolzano Nagarjuna
Franz Brentano Friedrich Nietzsche
Mario Bunge Keiji Nishitani
Rudolf Carnap Parmenides
Ernst Cassirer Charles Sanders Peirce
Gilles Deleuze Plato
Daniel Dennett Plotinus
Jacques Derrida Karl Popper
Ren Descartes Proclus Lycaeus
Fyodor Dostoevsky W. V. O. Quine
Michel Foucault Bertrand Russell
Richard Foreman Gilbert Ryle
Hans-Georg Gadamer Mulla Sadra
Al-Ghazali Jean-Paul Sartre
tienne Gilson Jonathan Schaer
Nicolai Hartmann Arthur Schopenhauer
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Duns Scotus
34 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

John Searle Porphyrian tree

Adi Shankaracharya Quantum ontology
Theodore Sider Solipsism
Peter Simons Speculative realism
Barry Smith Structure and agency
Baruch Spinoza Subjectobject problem
Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi Ontological argument
Peter van Inwagen
Achille Varzi 2.7.6 References
Gianni Vattimo [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ontology

Swami Vivekananda [2] Griswold, Charles L. (2001). Platonic Writings/Platonic

Readings. Penn State Press. p. 237. ISBN 978-0-271-
Alfred North Whitehead 02137-9.

William of Ockham [3] Isham, C.J. (1995). Lectures on Quantum Theory: Math-
ematical and Structural Foundations, Imperial College
Ludwig Wittgenstein Press, London, ISBN 1-86094-000-5, pp. 6367.
Edward N. Zalta [4] Aristotle Categories Vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library, transl.
H.P. Cooke, Harvard U.P. 1983
Dean Zimmerman
[5] Vesselin Petrov (2011). Chapter VI: Process ontology in
Slavoj iek the context of applied philosophy. In Vesselin Petrov, ed.
Ontological Landscapes: Recent Thought on Conceptual
Interfaces Between Science and Philosophy. Ontos Verlag.
2.7.5 See also pp. 137 . ISBN 3-86838-107-4.

Abhidharma [6] ontology. Online Etymology Dictionary.

Applied ontology [7] . Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek

English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
Foundation ontology
[8] Michal Devaux and Marco Lamanna, The Rise and
Geopolitical ontology Early History of the Term Ontology (16061730)",
Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics, 9,
Guerrilla ontology 2009, pp. 173-208 (on Leibniz pp. 197-198).
Holism [9] GJ Larson, RS Bhattacharya and K Potter (2014), The En-
cyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Volume 4, Princeton
Living educational theory
University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-60441-1, pages 3-11
Mereology [10] Sample Chapter for Graham, D. W.: Explaining the
Metamodeling Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientic Philosophy.
Press.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2010-02-21.
Modal logic
[11] Ancient Atomism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philoso-
Monadology phy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2010-02-21.

Nihilism [12] Aristotle, Metaphysics, I , 4, 985

Ontological paradox
Philosophy of mathematics
Philosophy of science
[13] Lawson, C., Latsis, J. S., & Martins, N. (Eds.). (2013).
Contributions to social ontology. Routledge
[14] Nader El-Bizri, 'Avicenna and Essentialism, Review of
Metaphysics, Vol. 54 (2001), pp. 753-778.

Philosophy of space and time [15] James, Paul (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism:
Bringing Theory Back In Volume 2 of Towards a Theory
Physical ontology of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications.
2.8. PLATONIC REALISM 35

[16] Hyde, R. Bruce. Listening Authentically: A Heidegge- [30] Kaiser, D. (1994). Niels Bohrs legacy in contemporary
rian Perspective on Interpersonal Communication. In particle physics, pp. 257268 of Niels Bohr and Contem-
Interpretive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication, porary Philosophy, edited by J. Faye, H.J. Folse, Springer,
edited by Kathryn Carter and Mick Presnell. State Uni- Dordrecht, ISBN 978-90-481-4299-6, Section 4, Ques-
versity of New York Press, 1994. ISBN 0-7914-1847-2 tions of ontology and particle physics phenomenology, pp.
262264.
[17] Mead, G. H. The individual and the social self: Unpub-
lished work of George Herbert Mead (D. L. Miller, Ed.).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. (p. 107). 2.7.7 External links
ISBN 0-226-51673-3
Hofwebwer, Thomas. Logic and Ontology.
[18] Barry Smith: Objects and Their Environments: From
Aristotle to Ecological Ontology The Life and Motion of
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
SocioEconomic Units (GISDATA 8), London: Taylor and
Jacob, Pierre. Intentionality. Stanford Encyclope-
Francis, 2001, 79-97.
dia of Philosophy.
[19] Heidegger, Martin, On the Way to Language Harper &
Row, New York 1971. German edition: Unterwegs zur International Ontology Congress
Sprache Neske, Pfullingen 1959.
A short lm with a general introduction to ontology
[20] Eldred, Michael, Social Ontology: Recasting Political Phi-
losophy Through a Phenomenology of Whoness ontos,
Frankfurt 2008 xiv + 688 pp. ISBN 978-3-938793-78- 2.8 Platonic realism
7

[21] Carvalko, Joseph (Summer 2005). Introduction to an On- Platonic realism is a philosophical term usually used to
tology of Intellectual Property. The Scitech Lawyer, ABA. refer to the idea of realism regarding the existence of
universals or abstract objects after the Greek philosopher
[22] Davidson refers to a 'ketch' and a 'yawl'; see p. 18 in Don- Plato (c. 427c. 347 BC), a student of Socrates. As
ald Davidson (1974). On the very idea of a conceptual universals were considered by Plato to be ideal forms,
scheme (PDF). Proceedings and Address of the American this stance is ambiguously also called Platonic idealism.
Philosophical Association. 47: 520.
This should not be confused with idealism as presented
[23] Uriah Krieger (2011). Two defenses of common-
by philosophers such as George Berkeley: as Platonic
sense ontology (PDF). Dialectica. 65. pp. 177204. abstractions are not spatial, temporal, or mental, they are
doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2011.01262.x. not compatible with the later idealisms emphasis on men-
tal existence. Platos Forms include numbers and geo-
[24] Hirsch, Eli (2011). Chapter 9: Physical-object ontology, metrical gures, making them a theory of mathematical
verbal disputes and common sense. Quantier Variance realism; they also include the Form of the Good, making
and Realism: Essays in Metaontology. Oxford University them in addition a theory of ethical realism.
Press. pp. 144177. ISBN 978-0-19-973211-1. First
published as Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, Plato expounded his own articulation of realism regarding
and Common Sense the existence of universals in his dialogue The Republic
and elsewhere, notably in the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, the
[25] Hirsch, Eli (2011). Chapter 5: Quantier variance and Meno and the Parmenides.
realism. Quantier Variance and Realism: Essays in
Metaontology. Oxford University Press. pp. 6895.
ISBN 978-0-19-973211-1. First published as Quantier 2.8.1 Universals
variance and realism
In Platonic realism, universals do not exist in the way
[26] Hirsch, E. (2004). Sosas Existential Relativism. In
that ordinary physical objects exist, even though Plato
John Greco, ed. Ernest Sosa and His Critics. Blackwell.
pp. 224232. ISBN 0-470-75547-4.
metaphorically referred to such objects in order to explain
his concepts. More modern versions of the theory seek to
[27] Harvey, F. (2006). Ontology. In B. Warf (Ed.), Encyclo- avoid applying potentially misleading descriptions to uni-
pedia of Human Geography. (pp. 341-343). Thousand versals. Instead, such versions maintain that it is mean-
Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc ingless (or a category mistake) to apply the categories of
space and time to universals.
[28] Whitehead, A.N. (1929). Process and Reality, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge UK, passim. Regardless of their description, Platonic realism holds
that universals do exist in a broad, abstract sense, although
[29] Armstrong, D.M. (1997). A World of States of Af- not at any spatial or temporal distance from peoples bod-
fairs, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge UK, ISBN ies. Thus, people cannot see or otherwise come into sen-
0-521-58064-1, p. 1. sory contact with universals, but in order to conceive of
36 CHAPTER 2. SUPPORTING ARTICLES

universals, one must be able to conceive of these abstract Some versions of Platonic realism, like that of Proclus,
forms. regard Platos forms as thoughts in the mind of God. Most
consider forms not to be mental entities at all.

Theories of universals
2.8.2 Particulars
Theories of universals, including Platonic realism, are
challenged to satisfy certain constraints on theories of In Platonic realism, forms are related to particulars (in-
universals. stances of objects and properties) in that a particular is
Platonic realism satises one of those constraints, in that regarded as a copy of its form. For example, a particu-
it is a theory of what general terms refer to. Forms are lar apple is said to be a copy of the form of applehood
ideal in supplying meaning to referents for general terms. and the apples redness is an instance of the form of Red-
That is, to understand terms such as wikt:Applehood and ness. Participation is another relationship between forms
redness, Platonic realism says that they refer to forms. and particulars. Particulars are said to participate in the
Indeed, Platonism gets much of its plausibility because forms, and the forms are said to inhere in the particulars.
mentioning redness, for example, could be assumed to be According to Plato, there are some forms that are not in-
referring to something that is apart from space and time, stantiated at all, but, he contends, that does not imply that
but which has lots of specic instances. the forms could not be instantiated. Forms are capable of
Some contemporary linguistic philosophers construe being instantiated by many dierent particulars, which
Platonism to mean the proposition that universals ex- would result in the forms having many copies, or inher-
ist independently of particulars (a universal is anything ing many particulars.
that can be predicated of a particular). Similarly, a
form of modern Platonism is found in the predomi-
nant philosophy of mathematics, especially regarding the 2.8.3 Criticism
foundations of mathematics. The Platonic interpretation
of this philosophy includes the thesis that mathematics is Two main criticisms with Platonic realism relate to
discovered rather than created. inherence and diculty of creating concepts without
sense perception. Despite these criticisms, realism has
strong defenders. Its popularity through the centuries has
Forms been variable.

Main article: Theory of Forms

Criticism of inherence
Platos interpretation of universals is linked to his Theory
of Forms in which he uses both the terms (eidos: Critics claim that the terms instantiation and copy are
form) and (idea: characteristic) to describe his not further dened and that participation and inherence
theory. Forms are mind independent abstract objects or are similarly mysterious and unenlightening. They ques-
paradigms (: patterns in nature) of which tion what it means to say that the form of applehood in-
particular objects and the properties and relations present heres a particular apple or that the apple is a copy of the
in them are copies. Form is inherent in the particulars and form of applehood. To the critic, it seems that the forms,
these are said to participate in the form. Classically idea not being spatial, cannot have a shape, so it cannot be
has been translated (or transliterated) as idea, but sec- that the apple is the same shape as the form. Likewise,
ondary literature now typically employs the term form the critic claims it is unclear what it means to say that an
(or occasionally kind, usually in discussion of Platos apple participates in applehood.
Sophist and Statesman) to avoid confusion with the En- Arguments refuting the inherence criticism, however,
glish word connoting thought. claim that a form of something spatial can lack a concrete
Platonic form can be illustrated by contrasting a mate- (spatial) location and yet have in abstracto spatial quali-
rial triangle with an ideal triangle. The Platonic form is ties. An apple, then, can have the same shape as its form.
the ideal triangle a gure with perfectly drawn lines Such arguments typically claim that the relationship be-
whose angles add to 180 degrees. Any form of triangle tween a particular and its form is very intelligible and eas-
that we experience will be an imperfect representation of ily grasped; that people unproblematically apply Platonic
the ideal triangle. Regardless of how precise your mea- theory in everyday life; and that the inherence criticism is
suring and drawing tools you will never be able to recre- only created by the articial demand to explain the nor-
ate this perfect shape. Even drawn to the point where our mal understanding of inherence as if it were highly prob-
senses cannot perceive a defect, in its essence the shape lematic. That is, the supporting argument claims that the
will still be imperfect; forever unable to match the ideal criticism is with the mere illusion of a problem and thus
triangle. could render suspect any philosophical concept.
2.8. PLATONIC REALISM 37

Criticism of concepts without sense-perception 2.8.5 Notes

A criticism of forms relates to the origin of concepts with- 2.8.6 References

out the benet of sense-perception. For example, to think
of redness in general, according to Plato, is to think of the Francis A. Grabowski III (2008), Plato, Metaphysics
form of redness. Critics, however, question how one can and the Forms. Continuum Studies in Ancient Phi-
have the concept of a form existing in a special realm of losophy. Continuum.
the universe, apart from space and time, since such a con-
cept cannot come from sense-perception. Although one Daniel B. Gallagher (2010), Review of Grabowskis
can see an apple and its redness, the critic argues, those Plato, Metaphysics and the Forms, Journal of the
things merely participate in, or are copies of, the forms. History of Philosophy, Vol 48:2.
Thus, they claim, to conceive of a particular apple and Bharath Sriraman. (2004). The inuence of Platon-
its redness is not to conceive of applehood or redness-in- ism on mathematics research and theological beliefs.
general, so they question the source of the concept. Theology and Science, vol. 2, no.1, pp. 131147
Platos doctrine of recollection, however, addresses such
criticism by saying that souls are born with the concepts
of the forms, and just have to be reminded of those con- 2.8.7 External links
cepts from back before birth, when the souls were in close
Silverman, Allan. Platos Middle Period Meta-
contact with the forms in the Platonic heaven. Plato is
physics and Epistemology. Stanford Encyclopedia
thus known as one of the very rst rationalists, believing
of Philosophy.
as he did that humans are born with a fund of a priori
knowledge, to which they have access through a process Balaguer, Mark. Platonism in Metaphysics.
of reason or intellection a process that critics nd to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
be rather mysterious.
A more modern response to this criticism of concepts
without sense-perception is the claim that the universality
of its qualities is an unavoidable given because one only
experiences an object by means of general concepts. So,
since the critic already grasps the relation between the
abstract and the concrete, he is invited to stop thinking
that it implies a contradiction. The response reconciles
Platonism with empiricism by contending that an abstract
(i.e., not concrete) object is real and knowable by its in-
stantiation. Since the critic has, after all, naturally under-
stood the abstract, the response suggests merely to aban-
don prejudice and accept it.

2.8.4 See also

Essentialism

Idea

Inherence

Philosophy of mathematics

Substance theory

Theory of Forms

Truth

Universal (metaphysics)
Chapter 3

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imus Rex, Banno, Robbot, Zandperl, Altenmann, Dessimoz, Gandalf61, Kagredon, GreatWhiteNortherner, Adhib, Ancheta Wis, Giftlite,
Kenny sh, Bensaccount, Siroxo, Eequor, Solipsist, Edcolins, Golbez, OldakQuill, Andycjp, Antandrus, Szajd, Brianjd, Rich Farmbrough,
Cacycle, LindsayH, Bender235, Sietse Snel, Cacophony, Triona, Thuresson, Nortexoid, Maurreen, Treborbassett, Melah Hashamaim, Red
Winged Duck, Alansohn, Ceyockey, Ott, Uncle G, SeventyThree, Palica, Magister Mathematicae, BD2412, NeoUrfahraner, Rjwilmsi,
Mayumashu, Dpark, MZMcBride, 25~enwiki, Haya shiloh, FlavrSavr, Margosbot~enwiki, Jrtayloriv, Cactus.man, The Rambling Man,
YurikBot, Wavelength, NTBot~enwiki, Rodasmith, Manop, Ziddy, Gaius Cornelius, Chaos, KSchutte, Wimt, Muntuwandi, Spike Wilbury,
Deskana, Howcheng, Jpbowen, Tony1, BOT-Superzerocool, Action potential, Rwalker, Black Falcon, Tanet, RDF, Oyvind, Curpsbot-
unicodify, GrinBot~enwiki, FritzSolms, TuukkaH, Sardanaphalus, Planemad, SmackBot, Artexc, Lestrade, Reedy, Xaosux, Ohnoits-
jamie, Oneismany, Bluebot, Jprg1966, Go for it!, Epastore, Mladilozof, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Chlewbot, OrphanBot, Pwjb,
LoveMonkey, Jon Awbrey, Drunken Pirate, TenPoundHammer, Byelf2007, SashatoBot, Vildricianus, Aquilina, Grumpyyoungman01,
Special-T, RichardF, Levineps, White Ash, Iridescent, Dreftymac, Courcelles, Floridi~enwiki, Hukkinen, Ternto333, Sdorrance, Pen-
bat, Gregbard, Bardak, Chrislk02, Shubh123, Letranova, Thijs!bot, Qwyrxian, Kilva, Headbomb, Missvain, Wai Wai, Transhumanist,
Good Vibrations, Katewill, QuiteUnusual, Modernist, Crissidancer88, JAnDbot, The Transhumanist, Jmd2121, Albany NY, Freshacconci,
VoABot II, JNW, Jay Gatsby, Edzhandle, DerHexer, JaGa, Gwern, MartinBot, R'n'B, Nono64, Trusilver, Rivereld, Numbo3, Maurice
Carbonaro, Reedy Bot, Ncmvocalist, Samuel William~enwiki, (jarbarf), Belovedfreak, Grossdj, Sanscrit1234, CardinalDan, Fimbulfamb,
Pasixxxx, Jmrowland, AlnoktaBOT, Philip Trueman, TXiKiBoT, Rei-bot, Ask123, Ocolon, The Tetrast, Ripepette, Cnilep, Cowlinator,
SieBot, YonaBot, Soler97, Davidlewisbaker, Phral, Yotex9, Denisarona, Faithlessthewonderboy, ClueBot, GorillaWarfare, Fyyer, The
Thing That Should Not Be, Rocker453, BmastonLJ, Excirial, Cenarium, Hans Adler, Warrior4321, Muro Bot, SoxBot III, Bodhisattv-
aBot, Libcub, SilvonenBot, Addbot, American Eagle, Some jerk on the Internet, Fgnievinski, Grandscribe, Jncraton, Cst17, Download,
CarsracBot, Jarble, Amirobot, South Bay, Auawise, AnomieBOT, Piano non troppo, ArthurBot, Gondwanabanana, Sputink, Srich32977,
Nasa-verve, GrouchoBot, Omnipaedista, SassoBot, Shadowjams, Aaron Kauppi, GliderMaven, LucienBOT, Paine Ellsworth, Haeinous,
Winterst, Jthechemist, RedBot, TobeBot, Philocentric, Standardfact, Callanecc, Dinamik-bot, LilyKitty, Miracle Pen, C9cute2wall, TjBot,
Me6620, Jowa fan, Timtempleton, Slawekb, Werieth, ZroBot, Doddy Wuid, Wikiloop, Dineshkumar Ponnusamy, G Man Unit, ClueBot
NG, Shahircool, Chetanpan, Millermk, SaintGeorgeIV, Widr, Ramaksoud2000, Jeraphine Gryphon, Ingotian, ChristineAlicia, Wingro-
ras, Cleopeter36579, Marcocapelle, Leon gillingham, Yousefarbash, Victor Yus, Cyberbot II, ChrisGualtieri, Pwdent, Onepebble, Dexbot,
Mjduniverse, Kilternom, William2001, Yamaha5, Nigellwh, Sam Sailor, Raychostanev, Heloiseabelard, 0xF8E8, KasparBot, Pgalbacs,
Norvoid, Baking Soda, GreenC bot, WikiBaes, Boyamh8, WoyWoy, Hyperbolick, Magic links bot and Anonymous: 203
Abstract art Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_art?oldid=789289557 Contributors: Mav, Andre Engels, Hotlorp, Camem-
bert, Paul Barlow, Jahsonic, TakuyaMurata, Skysmith, Ilyanep, Raven in Orbit, Hyacinth, Nv8200pa, Fvw, Raul654, Francs2000, Robbot,
Pibwl, Academic Challenger, Ojigiri~enwiki, Tea2min, Acm, Matt Gies, Alerante, Alan W, Jason Quinn, Solipsist, Utcursch, Geni, Antan-
drus, OverlordQ, Demiurge, Zondor, Discospinster, Rich Farmbrough, Vsmith, Carptrash, Bender235, MBisanz, Thuresson, Bobo192,
Alansohn, Mduvekot, Ricky81682, Sciurin, Computerjoe, Spot, Brookie, Feezo, Angr, Woohookitty, Etacar11, Webdinger, Flam-
ingspinach, Waldir, Gimboid13, Tokek, Mandarax, Sparkit, Magister Mathematicae, BD2412, Kbdank71, FreplySpang, Island,
, Jake Wartenberg, Feydey, DoubleBlue, FlaBot, RobertG, Nihiltres, RexNL, Gurch, Skierpage, Bgwhite, Roboto de Ajvol,
Kummi, YurikBot, Wavelength, Alma Pater, Hede2000, Stephenb, Fnorp, Wiki alf, NaminatoR, Janke, Pgehr, Jpbowen, Zwobot, Dead-
EyeArrow, 1717, FF2010, Scorpiusdiamond, Miblo, Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, Esprit15d, Tyrenius, Fpenteado, Katieh5584,
TLSuda, Sardanaphalus, Curmudgeon99, SmackBot, Derek Andrews, KnowledgeOfSelf, Alksub, Eskimbot, BiT, The Phantom Trogdor,
Sebesta, Excelsior~enwiki, Chris the speller, Bluebot, Kurykh, Deli nk, Mona, Paula Clare, Colonies Chris, Gracenotes, Suicidalhamster,
Nonky, Claudiaprinstein, Slimejs, OrphanBot, Cobalt2020, Whpq, SundarBot, Salamurai, Ligulembot, Vina-iwbot~enwiki, SashatoBot,
Michael Bednarek, Dumelow, Aleenf1, TastyPoutine, BranStark, Iridescent, Dekaels~enwiki, Wjejskenewr, Ewulp, Courcelles, Linkspam-
remover, Tawkerbot2, MarylandArtLover, Daniel5127, Declic~enwiki, J Milburn, JForget, Ninetyone, KyraVixen, Dgw, ShelfSkewed,
Neelix, Winstainforth, Lile, Kribbeh, Gogo Dodo, Gnfnrf, FrancoGG, Epbr123, D4g0thur, Marek69, Mafmafmaf, Son of Somebody,
Dr. Zaret, Dark Devil, AntiVandalBot, Ggbroad, Luna Santin, Seaphoto, Modernist, Doktor Who, Wahabijaz, ClassicSC, Sluzzelin, Ar-
senikk, DuncanHill, Gcm, Epeeeche, Matthew Fennell, Evrenosogullari, Seddon, Xeno, Freshacconci, Bobmcfred, Magioladitis, VoABot
II, Curtbarnes, JNW, Sarahj2107, Sf67, Ronster14, Catgut, Craftsinindia, Allstarecho, David Eppstein, Artreseachart, JaGa, Paula clare,

38
3.1. TEXT 39

WriterArtistDC, S3000, Leaderofearth, MartinBot, B33R, Emperor Bohe, Rettetast, Bus stop, CommonsDelinker, J.delanoy, Trusilver, Cu-
ratormoca, Uncle Dick, Stuedgar, Good-afternun!, Gurchzilla, AntiSpamBot, Chiswick Chap, Absinthe88, Althepal, Ultra two, KylieTas-
tic, Ssault, Andrewsey, Useight, CardinalDan, Idioma-bot, Wikieditor06, LLcopp, VolkovBot, Jmrowland, Kakoui, Garraisgood, Philip
Trueman, TXiKiBoT, John Ellsworth, JhsBot, Leafyplant, Sirkad, Sanfranman59, Jackfork, Reyrey53, Memeticmedia, Isis4563, World-
sofdiscovery, Verbist, Goldburg, Df747jet, Adilrasheed, Chenzw, Logan, Demize, SieBot, Tiddly Tom, Moonriddengirl, Dawn Bard,
Poliisi pate, RJaguar3, Smsarmad, Yintan, Keilana, Radon210, Mimihitam, Melokuu, Necaru, Claudia7788, KathrynLybarger, Hobar-
timus, Davidlewisbaker, Comtemporaryaxa, Coldcreation, Prof saxx, HerbertSmith, ImageRemovalBot, Martarius, ClueBot, Kai-Hendrik,
Podzemnik, Accesstheworld, Hurleydog3, Dlabtot, Boing! said Zebedee, Jfmjr, Lcwujc, Excirial, Jusdafax, PFRSC87, Lartoven, Artery
Gallery, Willeglinton, Arjayay, M.O.X, Dekisugi, Jamestochter, Cowboy456, La Pianista, ALoveSupreme, Subash.chandran007, Hundred-
ManSlayer, SoxBot III, Jimmyjam1234, XLinkBot, Josevayalil, Thestarreporter21, Kwork2, WikHead, Ejosse1, Thatguyint, Thebesto-
fall007, Historyprof65, Addbot, Willking1979, Landon1980, Captain-tucker, Hda3ku, Theleftorium, Moosehadley, Mentisock, Melbel03,
Dankany, Tide rolls, Lightbot, Queenralph, Legobot, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Pink!Teen, Artgor, MarcoAurelio, Taxisfolder, QueenCake,
Abstract8, AnakngAraw, AnomieBOT, Neptune5000, Piano non troppo, ArtDMaster~enwiki, Kingpin13, Materialscientist, A123a, Ci-
tation bot, Arctic Fox, DynamoDegsy, ArthurBot, Colorsontrial, Obersachsebot, Xqbot, Research Method, XIntenseDrummerX, Moxili-
cious, Tomwsulcer, Natcheznme, Petropoxy (Lithoderm Proxy), Fountainhead82, Omnipaedista, Smallman12q, Astatine-210, Givesource,
Thehelpfulbot, Jearbear34, FrescoBot, Liquidlayers, Mostafameraji, ElijahBosley, Tetraedycal, OgreBot, Mulliganbeal, I dream of horses,
HRoestBot, Dum92dum, Sctechlaw, Tomcat7, BRUTE, RedBot, Serols, Piandcompany, Lineslarge, Reconsider the static, Anim8ed317,
Lotje, Fox002, Vrenator, Lapskingwiki, MA3ARG, Reach Out to the Truth, Zumbooruk2, DARTH SIDIOUS 2, Jassyfaye, DASH-
Bot, John of Reading, Jordanynn, Solarra, Dcirovic, AvicBot, Bollyje, Traxs7, Cprzybyl, Rocksaid82, Tolly4bolly, Jacobisq, L Kens-
ington, Orange Suede Sofa, ChuispastonBot, Peter Karlsen, Smpadte, Orionandhsu, ClueBot NG, Carlosgoytia, Pinaforemom, Widr,
Sasakubo1717, Pokefan199, Charlied156, Theopolisme, Secret of success, Helpful Pixie Bot, , BG19bot, Btsux, Macqueen
on the blob, SchubertTruch, Mark Arsten, Casa5tavira, Heatherawalls, Klilidiplomus, BattyBot, BigDaddyRell, Cyberbot II, Ewan910,
Khazar2, Jkidner, Armaghanje, Raymond1922A, Coldcreation2, Mercy benita, Ferdinando Castaldo, Paddocosmo, Me, Myself, and I are
Here, Diekos995, HDPIXEL9, ThomasMikael, Sharkworld78, Asdfkla, Itc editor2, FotoDutch, Wikifan115, Swordre9, SwansonGallery,
Gowara57, Krelveratik, KH-1, Art.npf, Loraof, Fatbone17, Gladamas, Archive Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Basicallyyes, Fede mina, Sro23,
Sullydude21, King muh, Wiltor 1, HkSV, Michelleisatwin, Baking Soda, InternetArchiveBot, GreenC bot, Xandi 89, Milsanna, Xvonkho,
Chezshayz, Regards to David, Magic links bot, Paulaclarewilliams and Anonymous: 634
Abstraction (computer science) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_(software_engineering)?oldid=790964448 Contrib-
utors: The Anome, Andre Engels, Torfason, Ellmist, Mjb, TeunSpaans, Michael Hardy, Pnm, TakuyaMurata, Minesweeper, Ahoerste-
meier, Mwoolf, Dysprosia, Greenrd, Wik, Zoicon5, RRM, Jamesday, David.Monniaux, Mordomo, Robbot, MikeSchinkel, RedWolf, Benc,
Tea2min, Thv, Esap, Dawidl, JRR Trollkien, Gadum, Dnas, Andreas Kaufmann, Snukin~enwiki, KeyStroke, Rich Farmbrough, Can-
isRufus, Causa sui, Scott Ritchie, Diego Moya, Oleg Alexandrov, Woohookitty, Bluemoose, CharlesC, Tlroche, MZMcBride, Vonkje,
Chobot, Shervinafshar, Hede2000, Ru.spider, CarlHewitt, Jpbowen, Montalvo, Tachs, Slaggart, K.Nevelsteen, Shimei, LeonardoRob0t,
FritzSolms, TuukkaH, SmackBot, Sam Pointon, Lighthill, Nbarth, JonHarder, Allan McInnes, Treygdor, Klimov, Cybercobra, Acdx,
Doug Bell, Rigadoun, Atoll, Spiel496, Jimpoz, Aeons, Mblumber, Maria Vargas, Sam Staton, O, Pjvpjv, Michael A. White, AntiVan-
dalBot, Shawn wiki, VictorAnyakin, Martinkunev, Abednigo, Monural plural, Gwern, Hans Dunkelberg, Maurice Carbonaro, VolkovBot,
Maghnus, Oshwah, Rei-bot, Leafyplant, Wiae, Jamelan, Synthebot, Luciole2013, ClueBot, InYOUen0, SchreiberBike, Libcub, Addbot,
Ramu50, Non-dropframe, Fgnievinski, Mohamed Magdy, Download, Teles, Legobot, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Ptbotgourou, TaBOT-zerem,
Pcap, Vanished user rt41as76lk, GateKeeper, Nallimbot, Vroo, Jim1138, FrescoBot, Mark Renier, Dacly, RedBot, Lotje, Bluest, Jesse
V., EmausBot, Kiwi128, Healis, ClueBot NG, Gilderien, A520, Sereine52, Widr, Wbm1058, BG19bot, Node42, Brad7777, Abstract-
Truth, BattyBot, Shahid nx, Codename Lisa, Makecat-bot, C5st4wr6ch, Franois Robere, Wamiq, Paulo Jorge Tom, Ithinkicahn, Mad-
ScientistX11, Kuroi2014, Richard Yin, Idahoprogrammer, Francis Waje, Norvoid, Thecakeisaratt, RobbieIanMorrison, Amit.narula and
Anonymous: 145
Abstraction (mathematics) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_(mathematics)?oldid=776891294 Contributors: Michael
Hardy, Ahoerstemeier, Schneelocke, Reddi, Dysprosia, Robbot, Gandalf61, Giftlite, Oleg Alexandrov, Linas, Juan Marquez, Jrtayloriv,
YurikBot, SmackBot, Well, girl, look at you!, GK tramrunner, Octahedron80, Jon Awbrey, Oliver202, Mhaitham.shammaa, Chill doubt,
MartinBot, Maurice Carbonaro, Athaenara, Blizzarddog, Stormin' Foreman, Everyheads, Lenary, XLinkBot, Addbot, Legobot, Reindra,
Philscott2, Lkd85, Paine Ellsworth, Orhanghazi, John of Reading, Acapbest, ClueBot NG, Brad7777, Param Mudgal, Bender the Bot and
Anonymous: 19
Abstract structure Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_structure?oldid=668554454 Contributors: Michael Hardy, Glenn,
Schneelocke, Charles Matthews, Dysprosia, Jni, Gandalf61, Ruakh, Giftlite, Gubbubu, Antandrus, Karl-Henner, Diego Moya, Oleg Alexan-
drov, Ruud Koot, Troj10, Jrtayloriv, DevastatorIIC, Jittat~enwiki, Anomalocaris, Jpbowen, A Doon, Bradtcordeiro, Bluebot, Jon Awbrey,
TenPoundHammer, Floridi~enwiki, Gregbard, AntiVandalBot, LibLord, David Eppstein, Addbot, Pcap, Erik9bot, Cforrester101, SJ De-
fender and Anonymous: 16
Abstract object Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_and_concrete?oldid=784755503 Contributors: TakuyaMurata, Glenn,
Andres, Jph, Bender235, Jfraser, Srleer, Dell Adams, Roboto de Ajvol, Wavelength, KSchutte, Trovatore, Jpbowen, Aldux, Tomisti,
Tevildo, Stevouk, Tom Morris, SmackBot, Allixpeeke, Neo-Jay, RichardHudson, EPM, LoveMonkey, AstroChemist, JHunterJ, Drefty-
mac, Vaughan Pratt, Rob Parkinson, Rorshacma, Neelix, Gregbard, Peterdjones, Rocket000, Thijs!bot, Settembrini~enwiki, Andyjsmith,
Kaobear, PraetorDrew, Mikael Hggstrm, Iolasov, Lova Falk, Mercenario97, ClueBot, Dimitrakopulos, Rhododendrites, ZuluPapa5,
Ps07swt, Addbot, Fgnievinski, Delta 51, Yobot, Denispir, Yotaloop, AnomieBOT, Materialscientist, Alistair.Sathi, Gilo1969, Omni-
paedista, BM09ig6FsQ, T of Locri, Paine Ellsworth, Adam9389, ZRPerry, Primefac, Solomonfromnland, PBS-AWB, ClueBot NG,
Jeraphine Gryphon, Pacerier, Furkaocean, OCCullens, Pirhayati, Mark viking, Kilternom, Quaerite, Kbeduhn, Burgundyhistory, 7Sidz,
Captain8track, NeverEatRiceAhh, BjrnF, Fmadd, Wonkapedlia, KPU0 and Anonymous: 60
Hypostatic abstraction Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypostatic_abstraction?oldid=692525468 Contributors: Bevo, MistToys,
El C, Diego Moya, Versageek, Jerey O. Gustafson, Magister Mathematicae, DoubleBlue, TeaDrinker, Brandmeister (old), Closedmouth,
C.Fred, Rajah9, JasonMR, Jon Awbrey, Inhahe, JzG, Slakr, CBM, Gogo Dodo, Hut 8.5, Brigit Zilwaukee, Yolanda Zilwaukee, Karrade,
Mike V, The Tetrast, Rjd0060, Wolf of the Steppes, Doubtentry, Icharus Ixion, Hans Adler, Buchanans Navy Sec, Mr. Peabodys Boy,
Overstay, Marsboat, Unco Guid, Viva La Information Revolution!, Autocratic Uzbek, Poke Salat Annie, Flower Mound Belle, Navy Pierre,
Mrs. Lovetts Meat Puppets, Chester County Dude, Southeast Penna Poppa, Delaware Valley Girl, Denispir, AnomieBOT, Paine Ellsworth,
Gamewizard71, PhnomPencil and Anonymous: 3
Ontology Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology?oldid=792965192 Contributors: AxelBoldt, Mav, The Anome, Larry Sanger,
Andre Engels, Mirwin, William Avery, Hirzel, Stevertigo, Edward, Nealmcb, JohnOwens, Michael Hardy, Nixdorf, Gabbe, Karada,
40 CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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bot, Wblakesx, Peak, Tim Ivorson, Rursus, Sunray, DataSurfer, Seth Ilys, Ancheta Wis, Matthew Stannard, Giftlite, DocWatson42, Co-
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sophist, Fixuture, Levinas 25, SJBennett41, Mike2085, Sigehelmus, VanishedUser sdu9aya9fs654654, Howardlhoman, Narky Blert, Man-
god1984, Qsr03, Joseph2302, Blaise d'Estais, Whenthedaycomes, PrathipaSnega, KasparBot, Thepeoplesaccount, Ergo Sum, PacWalker,
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Platonic realism Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_realism?oldid=759932916 Contributors: Bryan Derksen, Jahsonic, Pe-
ter Damian (original account), Ed Cormany, Hyacinth, Ojl, JimWae, Herschelkrustofsky, Rich Farmbrough, Silence, Longhair, Irrbloss,
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3.2 Images
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3.2. IMAGES 41

Albert Gleizes, Catalogue Raisonn, volume 1, Paris, SOMOGY ditions d'art/Fondation Albert Gleizes, 1998, ISBN 2-85056-286-6, no.
889, p. 299, Original artist:
Albert Gleizes
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42 CHAPTER 3. TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

File:Newman-Onement_1.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Newman-Onement_1.jpg License: Fair use

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