#abstraction

Reflective abstraction, however, is based not on individual actions but on coordinated actions. ↗

— Jean Piaget

#actions #based #coordinated #however #individual

Abstraction is everybody's zero but nobody's nought. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#everybody #nobody #nought #zero

Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it. ↗

— William James

#intellect #spirituality #intelligence

The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with peril, since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation. To correct it partially - for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence - we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities; and when we have done so to the utmost of our power, we must still remember that from the very nature of things our ideas fall immeasurably short of the reality. ↗

— James George Frazer

#generalisation #knowledge #science #art

All religions are good 'in principle' - but unfortunately this abstract Good has only rarely prevented their practitioners from behaving like bastards. ↗

— Paul Karl Feyerabend

#goodness #religion #religion

By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction. ↗

— John Dewey

#complex #defined #distinction #element #meant