kidzsearch.com > wiki   Explore:web images videos games  


KidzSearch Safe Wikipedia for Kids.
Jump to: navigation, search

An Abstraction keeps only the most important information about something in order to make it easier to reuse.

Abstraction concerns the ways by which higher, less real concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal ("real" or "concrete") data or other information.

Abstractions may be formed by reducing the information content of a concept or a phenomenon as viewed, often to keep only the information which is needed for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball will keep only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, leaving out the traits of that particular ball. Compare with word: generalizing. The opposite of the adjective "abstract" is commonly the word "concrete".


The first symbols of abstract thinking in humans can be traced to fossil objects dating between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago in Africa.[1][2]

Thought process

In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas[3] are distanced from objects.

Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, where formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient.

Cat on Mat (picture 1)

For example, many different things can be the color red. Likewise, many things sit on surfaces (as in picture 1, to the right). The property of redness and the relation sitting-on are therefore abstractions of those objects. Specifically, the conceptual diagram graph 1 identifies only three boxes, two ellipses, and four arrows (and their six labels), whereas the picture 1 shows much more pictorial detail, with the scores of implied relationships as implicit in the picture rather than with the nine explicit details in the graph.

Graph 1 details some explicit relationships between the objects of the diagram. For example, the arrow between the agent and CAT:Elsie depicts an example of an is-a relationship, as does the arrow between the location and the MAT. The arrows between the gerund SITTING and the nouns agent and location express the diagram's basic relationship; "agent is SITTING on location"; Elsie is an instance of CAT.



(1) a publication
(2) a newspaper
(3) The San Francisco Chronicle
(4) the May 18 edition of the Chronicle






It is not sufficient, however, to define abstract ideas as those that can be instantiated and to define abstraction as the movement in the opposite direction to instantiation. Doing so would make the concepts "cat" and "telephone" abstract ideas since despite their varying appearances, a particular cat or a particular telephone is an instance of the concept "cat" or the concept "telephone". Although the concepts "cat" and "telephone" are abstractions, they are not abstract in the sense of the objects in graph 1 above.






Abstraction used in philosophy


Ontological status

The way in which physical objects, like rocks and trees, have being differs from the way that properties of abstract concepts or relations have being. For example, the way the concrete, particular, individuals pictured in picture 1 exist differs from the way the concepts illustrated in graph 1 exist. That difference accounts for the ontological usefulness of the word "abstract". The word applies to properties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, they do not exist in space or time, but that instances of them can exist, potentially in many different places and times.

Perhaps confusingly, some philosophies refer to tropes (instances of properties) as abstract particulars. E.g., the particular redness of a particular apple is an abstract particular. Akin to qualia and sumbebekos.

In linguistics

If an abstract concept, such as "society" or "technology" is treated as if it were a concrete object, that is a fallacy (an error). In linguistics, it may happen that abstract concepts are used as if they were nouns that signify concrete objects:

1805: Horatio Nelson (Battle of Trafalgar) – "England expects that every man will do his duty"

This is called metonymy. It can blur the distinction between abstract and concrete things.






This conceptual scheme entails no specific hierarchical taxonomy (such as the one mentioned involving cats and mammals), only a progressive exclusion of detail.

The neurology of abstraction

A recent meta-analysis suggests that the verbal system has greater engagement for abstract concepts when the perceptual system is more engaged for processing of concrete concepts. This is because abstract concepts cause greater brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus, compared to concrete concepts when concrete concepts cause greater activity in the posterior cingulate, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus.[4]

Other research into the human brain suggests that the left and right hemispheres, of the brain, differ in their handling of abstraction. For example, one meta-analysis reviewing human brain lesions has shown a left hemisphere bias during tool usage.[5]

Abstraction in art

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 the visible world[6]—it can, however, refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art. Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory.[7] Later still, abstraction was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freed from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs.[8]

In music, the term abstraction can be used to describe improvisatory approaches to interpretation, and may sometimes indicate abandonment of tonality. Atonal music has no key signature, and is characterized the exploration of internal numeric relationships.[9]

Abstraction in psychology



Abstraction in computer science

Computer scientists use abstraction to understand and solve problems, such as organizing data to be stored in a database.

Abstraction in mathematics

Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying essence of a mathematical concept, removing any dependence on real-world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena.

The advantages of abstraction in mathematics are:

  • it reveals deep connections between different areas of mathematics
  • known results in one area can suggest conjectures in a related area
  • techniques and methods from one area can be applied to prove results in a related area

The main disadvantage of abstraction is that highly abstract concepts are more difficult to learn, and require a degree of mathematical maturity and experience before they can be assimilated.

Related pages


  1. Abstract Engravings Show Modern Behavior Emerged Earlier Than Previously Thought
  2. Ancient Engravings Push Back Origin of Abstract Thought
  3. 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 Scribner's Sons. 431 pages, index.
  4. Jing Wang, Julie A. Conder, David N. Blitzer, and Svetlana V. Shinkareva "Neural Representation of Abstract and Concrete Concepts: A Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies" Human Brain Mapping (2010). https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20950
  6. Encyclopaedia Britannica
  7. Catherine de Zegher and Hendel Teicher (eds.), 3 X Abstraction. NY/New Haven: The Drawing Center/Yale University Press. 2005.

    Template-specific style sheet:

    ISBN 0-300-10826-5
  8. National Gallery of Art: Abstraction.
  9. Washington State University: Glossary of Abstraction.

Other websites