Examples of abstract thought

In various articles throughout this website we talked about the thought of abstract thought. Abstract thought could be the main tool that mathematicians used in exercising their particular art. Actually, you could reasonably state that math could be the art of pure abstract thought. The sole issue with this specific, but may be the possible circularity into the reasoning: mathematics is abstract idea, and abstract idea is the fact that which mathematicians do. Thus, we must try to strike abstract idea right. This might be no effortless task.

Generalizing: Operating your vehicle = skydiving

Abstract thought is extremely closely associated with the mental process of generalizing. Another way to think of this will be that abstract thought is that which explores just what some thing truly “is”.

Like, i will be currently consuming one glass of liquid. I am able to generalize this in enormous quantities various ways, but here are some: Im drinking tap water, I am ingesting water one way or another, i will be nourishing my human body, and I in the morning doing one thing. In each one of these cases, the declaration “i'm drinking tap water” is just a special situation. Particularly, if I am drinking water, I quickly was definitely drinking, I am nourishing my human body, Im eating water one way or another, and I also am doing one thing. The converse isn't always true. Including, i really could be consuming orange juice, whereby “Im drinking” does work, but “i'm drinking tap water” is not. Comparable counter instances are present when it comes to various other generalizations.

This generalization is nice because whatever i could say about ingesting, or nourishing my own body, or consuming liquid in some way, or performing one thing, is likewise true regarding normal water. If I state “drinking is good, ” then it will additionally be true that “drinking liquid is good”, because drinking tap water is a particular situation of ingesting. It is possible to come up with various examples, therefore’s generally pretty fun to do this.

More than just generalizing

Abstract idea also includes the act of appraising the worthiness of a particular generalization. Quite simply, you can “over-generalize” and attain a spot of generalization that's no more fruitful. In preceding examples, “I am performing one thing” is a point of over-generalization in my experience. Simply because easily need make a meaningful generalization of “Im normal water, ” however don’t wish to generalize to the stage that “drinking liquid” and “fighting a gorilla” tend to be both special situations of the identical thing.

This is, needless to say, a case of style in cases like this. In math, however, the level that a thought is generalized is immensely important in making meaningful development. For example, if we took an object that could be generalized to friends (which is an extremely unique kind of set, with a few added framework) and “over-generalized” it to a generic set (because friends is a collection, but countless sets are not teams), I quickly have lost most important details about the item. Yes, it is a fact that anything that I end up being true about a group is true about friends, but you can find probably many essential things that I can show about an organization that we can’t prove about a group, and I also therefore might not wish generalize everything to a collection.

This is the way abstract idea is more than simple generalization. Additionally it is the intangible understanding of when to stop generalizing. We shall frequently begin to see the power of the types of thought, and even its abstract believed that makes all math “go”. For now, however, it might-be fun to attempt to generalize every thing that you know to an almost comical degree. For example, driving your car is an unique instance of driving an automobile, which will be a particular instance of driving, which can be an unique instance of carrying yourself. Sky-diving is also a special instance of carrying yourself (moving yourself from a plane toward surface, quickly). Hence, driving and skydiving are, in specifically this way, the same!