A Quote by Tony Hoare
In the development of the understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from the recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world and the decision to concentrate on these similarities and to ignore, for the time being, their differences.
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This extravagant dwelling, as domineering as it was distant, brought home to me the intimateconnection between tyranny and abstraction, and put me in mind of John Berger's observation that "abstraction's capacity to ignore what is real is undoubtedly where most evil begins."
The first type of abstraction from objects I shall refer to as simple abstraction, but the second type I shall call reflective abstraction, using this term in a double sense.
Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience.
Only since the turn of the century has abstraction again become recognized as an artistic means of representation. It was then that one returned to the recognition of the immense role abstraction plays in the human mind by its power of concentration upon absolute essentials.
If I wrote about "being [abstraction]" I would be ignoring existential issues (such as death, limited-time, the arbitrary nature of the universe, the mystery of consciousness) that I feel affect me most in my life and think about most of the time. Another reason is that it doesn't seem specific or accurate, to me, to write about "being [abstraction]." I think there are some other reasons.
It would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true, or the rational in complete abstraction from the way in which these items figure in the motivationally active parts of the human psyche, and particularly in abstraction from the way in which they impinge, even if indirectly, on human action.
To criticize mathematics for its abstraction is to miss the point entirely. Abstraction is what makes mathematics work. If you concentrate too closely on too limited an application of a mathematical idea, you rob the mathematician of his most important tools: analogy, generality, and simplicity. Mathematics is the ultimate in technology transfer.
Remember that every science is based upon an abstraction. An abstraction is taking a point of view or looking at things under a certain aspect or from a particular angle.
I'm fascinated by the similarities and differences between comedians and magicians.
Every cancer looks different. Every cancer has similarities to other cancers. And we're trying to milk those differences and similarities to do a better job of predicting how things are going to work out and making new drugs.
The power of understanding symbols, i.e. of regarding everything about a sense-datum as irrelevant except a certain form that it embodies, is the most characteristic mental trait of mankind. It issues in an unconscious, spontaneous process of abstraction, which goes on all the time in the human mind: a process of recognizing the concept in any configuration given to experience, and forming a conception accordingly. That is the real sense of Aristotle's definition of Man as "the rational animal".
Ethnic music the world 'round is quite fascinating," "There are an enormous number of similarities there, and it's the similarities that are so appealing. ... I haven't even scratched the surface of that kind of thing.
Every cancer looks different. Every cancer has similarities to other cancers. And were trying to milk those differences and similarities to do a better job of predicting how things are going to work out and making new drugs.
When I get asked, 'what are the differences between Twilight and THG' I'm like, 'Erm, what are the similarities?'
We ignore the similarities between the religious extremism and ethno-nationalism at our peril.
Embryology reveals surprising similarities between early embryos of seemingly quite different animals. And it also shows that some structures that may look very different later on have fundamental similarities in the way they form.
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