Surely each of us at least once in a lifetime came across such a concept as abstraction. It is often applicable in everyday life, when you should look at the surrounding things a little differently. How exactly is “otherwise”? What is meant by this and what is abstraction, let's try to figure it out further.
General view
This concept is rooted in Latin and is literally translated as “distraction." Most often it is not a change in occupation or activity, but a change in thinking, the ability to look at things from the other side, from a different angle, including when the analyzed object seems unusual. In this way, our mind combines all the available ideas about this object and considers it as if it did not possess individual properties, connections, phenomena. Ultimately, there is a selection of regular, understandable and essential features of the object. What is abstraction? This is a separation or separation of one from the other. Subsequent recognition is optional. Abstraction can be used temporarily, at a certain moment, returning ideas about the subject to its original level or, conversely, discovering its new properties. In a narrower sense, the result of abstraction, that is, of any distraction, is a generalization of the obtained (investigated) theoretical features.
A different view of one object
Each person comprehends something in his life. His consciousness analyzes many factors, looking for individual elements that may have an influence, for example, to make a decision or develop an opinion about a particular object. In such a comprehension, the abstraction method plays an important role. Its purpose is the study of objects, as a rule, possessing much greater properties, relationships, connections, which, by virtue of perception and thinking, a person cannot fully realize. As a universal method of cognition, abstraction helps highlight features. Comprehending an object, a person has the right to simplify it, to pay attention to the obvious sides, while forgetting, that is, ignoring, the rest.
Are you familiar with concepts such as analysis, synthesis, abstraction? They are widely used in areas such as logic and philosophy, can exist separately from each other, but are more interconnected. By synthesis is meant the process of combining isolated, disparate concepts; its purpose is to reduce them into a single whole or group. Synthesis is an important stage in the activity of human consciousness, in which a cognitive function is formed. In other words, having several parts, synthesis also serves to collect them.
On the contrary, analysis seeks to disassemble an existing whole into its component parts. Together, both concepts give rise to ideas about the connections that occur between the individual elements of the object of study.
Exploring reality
From day to day, human consciousness is engaged in the search for new components, objects, and concepts that have not been studied before, which indirectly helps abstraction. The method of cognition in this case is a set of methods by which new knowledge, methods of solution and research, as well as systematization, data correction are discovered. This should include conclusions, principles of reasoning, forecast. So, observing an object, a person puts forward hypotheses and theories that serve as a form of assumption. Later, they can be supported by scientific evidence, experiments or by collecting additional facts.
Cognition, as a method of abstraction, has distinctive features from the method of comparison. It is expressed in qualitative, quantitative forms of abstraction, when significant (indisputable) signs are distinguished. To make a decision, a person is often based on a comparison method that allows you to evaluate the possible (desired) indicators with real indicators. All the pros and cons are put on the scales, which subsequently affect the final choice.
Cogs of our internal gear
So what is abstraction? Undoubtedly, this is a complex mechanism that we resort to, sometimes without even realizing it. Mentally, a person separates the existing from the non-existent, isolating individual elements from the multitude. It can be a chain of events, a series of processes, a group of objects. So, referring to the individual characteristics of a person, psychology is able to abstract general properties from specific ones applicable to a given individual. This once again proves the indisputable argument that each person, like his mind and consciousness, is unique.
Application - in everything
The method of scientific abstraction is used in many areas: politics, mathematics, logic. We have already learned that under the general concept of abstraction lies a distraction from external phenomena in order to highlight irrelevant details or the essence of the subject itself. Thanks to such a “view from the side”, scientific concepts are born that, in turn, form single properties and relationships that are combined into categories.
So, scientific abstraction can be traced in economics. In the world there are millions of diverse food commodities and non-food groups that a person needs daily. All of them differ in many signs and properties. But, moving away from their endless comparisons, a person involuntarily combined them into a single category - goods as products intended for sale.
Scientific abstraction is noticeable in construction. Every structure includes a detailed calculation, taking into account the features of the future building. But exact geometric correspondences, as well as the strict interaction of all its individual components, are not always completely feasible - this is either theoretically impossible or practically unacceptable due to excessive complexity. Because of this, the structure is schematized using the method of scientific abstraction. The alleged secondary factors are excluded, which, in turn, does not affect the accuracy and reliability of the calculations.
To think abstractly is the ability of every person
Summing up the topic, we now definitely know what abstraction is - a mental, conscious distraction from the properties of an object, due to which a new idea of it appears or a logical concept is formed.
The ability to apply abstraction in everyday life is inherent in a person from birth. In many respects, a large role is played by language skills and the development of the language itself. So, when thoughts “flow” in an abstracted order, consciousness does not focus on individual features of the object, characterizing it according to general indicators (for example, “fruit”). In contrast to the abstract, science makes the case for the concrete - in this case, consciousness expands the boundaries of understanding by looking for additional properties (not just “fruit”, namely “orange” or “sweet-sour apple”).