Quotes About Abstraction

Can you measure it? Can you express it in figures? Can you make a model of it? If not, your theory is apt to be based more upon imagination than upon knowledge.

We do not wish to copy nature. We do not want to reproduce, we want to produce. We want to produce as a plant produces a fruit and does not itself reproduce. We want to produce directly and without meditation. As there is not the least trace of abstraction in this art, we will call it concrete art.

Une des clés évidentes et secrètes de ce monde où nous vivons est qu'il passe son temps dans un éternel présent toujours en train de s'évanouir. Entre un avenir qui n'existe pas encore et un passé qui n'existe déjà plus se glisse une pure abstraction, une sorte de rêve impossible. C'est cette absence haletante que nous appelons le présent. Personne n'a jamais vécu ailleurs que sur cette frontière vacillante entre le passé et l'avenir.

so each day brought a further descent into the depths of concrete existence and a further ascent toward the heights of abstraction.

All great art is abstract.

It is in man that God must be loved, because the love of God goes through the love of man. Whoever loves God exclusively, namely excluding man, reduces his love and his God to the level of abstraction. Beshtian Hasidism denies all abstraction.

Books don't take time away from us," she said. "They give it back. In this age of abstraction, of multitasking, of speed for speed's sake, they reintroduce us to the elegance—and the relief!—of real, tick-tock time.

And while I was not an admirer of people in the specific, I liked them in the abstract. It is only the execution of the idea that disappoints.

I could not bear the deep freeze settling around my bones at the thought that yet another attempt to get out of my life alive would end in disappointment. Time became palpable and viscous. Every minute, every second, every nanosecond, wrapped around my spine so that my nerves tightened and ached. I faded into abstraction. A self-generated narcosis created a painful blank where my mind used to be.

I faded into abstraction. A self-generated narcosis created a painful blank where my mind used to be.

And how much more do we need Korzybski's consciousness of abstracting at a time when so much of our lives are spent absorbed in the highly abstracted and mediated maps rendered by our digital technologies, new media, and online communications?

Another very serious mechanism of identification is found in language. A) Thus we have only one name, say 'apple' for the: (a)un-speakable, un-eatable event or scientific process; (b) the un-speakable but eatable abstraction of low order, the object; (c) the un-speakable and un-eatable 'mental' picture, or higher order abstraction, on semantic levels; (d) and for a definition on verbal levels.

An ideal map would contain the map of the map, the map of the map of the map.,endlessly. This characteristic was first discovered by Royce. We may call it self-reflexiveness.

Beware the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.

Connectedness is of the essence of all things of all types. It is of the essence of types, that they be connected. Abstraction from connectedness involves the omission of an essential factor in the fact considered. No fact is merely itself. The penetration of literature and art at their height arises from our dumb sense that we have passed beyond mythology; namely, beyond the myth of isolation.

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.

it is presupposed that no entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe, and that it is the business of speculative philosophy to exhibit this truth. This character is its coherence.

The certainty of mathematics depends on its complete abstract generality.

The world is not merely physical, nor is it merely mental. Nor is it merely one with many subordinate phases. Nor is it merely a complete fact, in its essence static with the illusion of change. Wherever a vicious dualism appears, it is by reason of mistaking an abstraction for a final concrete fact.

It is the ideal of speculative philosophy that its fundamental notions shall not seem capable of abstraction from each other. In other words, it is presupposed that no entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe, and that it is the business of speculative philosophy to exhibit this truth. This character is its coherence.

A tale is born from an image, and the image extends and creates a network of meanings that are always equivocal.

Geometric diagrams are to geometers what board and pieces are to chessmasters: visual aids, helpful but not indispensable.

It appears then that the essence of chess is its abstract structure. Names and shapes of pieces, colors of squares, whether the "squares" are in fact square, even the physical existence of board and pieces, are all irrelevant. What is relevant is the number and geometric arrangement of the "squares", the number of types of piece and the number of pieces of each type, the quantitative-geometric power of each piece, etc. Everything else is a visual aid or a fairy tale.