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Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process by which general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" is the product of this process—a concept that acts as a super-categorical noun for all subordinate concepts, and connects any related concepts as a ''group, field,'' or ''category''.〔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 objects and the three-dimensional space which we construe ... through touch and sight."〕 Conceptual abstractions may be formed by filtering the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, selecting only the aspects which are relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball selects only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, eliminating the other characteristics of that particular ball.〔 In a type–token distinction, a type (e.g., a 'ball') is more abstract than its tokens (e.g., 'that leather soccer ball'). Abstraction in its secondary use is a material process,〔Alfred Sohn-Rethel, ''Intellectual and manual labour: A critique of epistemology'', Humanities Press, 1977〕 discussed in the themes below. ==Origins== Thinking in abstractions is considered by anthropologists, archaeologists, and sociologists to be one of the key traits in modern human behaviour, which is believed to have developed between 50 000 and 100 000 years ago. Its development is likely to have been closely connected with the development of human language, which (whether spoken or written) appears to both involve and facilitate abstract thinking. ''Abstraction'' involves induction of ideas or the synthesis of particular facts into one general theory about something. It is the opposite of ''specification'', which is the analysis or breaking-down of a general idea or abstraction into concrete facts. Abstraction can be illustrated with Francis Bacon's ''Novum Organum'' (1620), a book of modern scientific philosophy written in the late Elizabethan era〔Hesse, M. B. (1964), "Francis Bacon's Philosophy of Science", in A Critical History of Western Philosophy, ed. D. J. O'Connor, New York, pp. 141—52.〕 of England to encourage modern thinkers to collect specific facts before making any generalizations. Bacon used and promoted induction as an abstraction tool, and it countered the ancient deductive-thinking approach that had dominated the intellectual world since the times of Greek philosophers like Thales, Anaximander, and Aristotle. Thales (c. 624 BC – c. 546 BCE) believed that everything in the universe comes from one main substance, water. He deduced or specified from a general idea, "everything is water", to the specific forms of water such as ice, snow, fog, and rivers. Modern scientists can also use the opposite approach of abstraction, or going from particular facts collected into one general idea, such as the motion of the planets (Newton (1642-1727)). When determining that the sun is the center of our solar system (Copernicus (1473-1543)), scientists had to utilize thousands of measurements to finally conclude that Mars moves in an elliptical orbit about the sun (Kepler (1571-1630)), or to assemble multiple specific facts into the law of falling bodies (Galileo (1564-1642)). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「abstraction」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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