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some author activity: Robinson, Shirley, mclennan, Davis, Heroux + Burgoyne,
Elizabeth Robinson has new work up at dialogist ; Vik Shirley has both poem and prompt as part of Benjamin Niespodziany's Sunday poem + prom...
![ABSTRACT ENTITIES
FRENCH
GERMAN
GREEK
LATIN
abstraction, abstrait Abstraktion, Entbildung aphairesis [apaígeoiç)
abstractio, ablatio, absolutio, abnegatio; separata, abstracta
• CATEGORY, EPOCHE, ESSENCE, FICTION, IMAGINATION, INTELLECTUS, INTENTION, NEGATION, NOTHING, REALITY, RES, SEIN, SUBJECT, UNIVERSALS
While the meaning of the term "abstraction" is not a problem in formal logic, where it refers to the operation that makes it possible to construct, using an "abstractor," a so-called "abstract" expression on the basis of another expression containing one or more free variables, the term's semantic field in philosophy and the theory of knowledge is more difficult to organize. When Condillac (L'Art de penser l.viii) denounces "the abuse of constructed abstract notions," and "in order to avoid this problem" asks that we look back to "the generation of all our abstract notions,....a method that has been unknown to philosophers,... who have sought to make up for it by means of definitions, his aim is dit-ferent from that of Aristotle when the latter mentions, under the rubric "abstract entities" or "things that exist in the abstract [t EL, ởpaıgéow], the forms that mathematical science deals with "by abstracting from their inherent matter" (Aristotle, De anima, 431b.13-17), and from that of Dionysius the Areopagite when he asks to be raised by thought to the superessential "through the aphairesis [apaípeoç] of all beings." Thus when speaking of "abstraction" we must distinguish the problem of the generation of abstract ideas insofar as it involves that of universals, that of the existence or nonexistence of general objects, and that of the practice of abstractive negation in the diverse fields-logical, epistemological, theological-where it occurs. The broad range of the term "abstraction" is well illustrated by the modern English usage of the terms "abstracta" and "abstract entities," which are more or less synonymous with "universals," and whose extension includes …](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:n35noure2xqn5pptdvnt2o4h/bafkreigsue65bi5vg2s2djxpgprdpdz2zhna3fw4ayu3ccw6bkgnpx27ri)
![the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitute a single experience. From experience again—i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its entirety within the soul, the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all-originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science, skill in the sphere of coming to be and science in the sphere of being.
(trans. G.R.G. Mure, Posterior Analytics, II.919)
The second model is that of mathematical (chiefly geometrical abstraction, which consists not in "bring-ing together" (epagein [náyeıv]) similar elements and grouping them under a single concept, but in "stripping" (aphaireisthai [acarpzĩo0a1]) the image or representation of a thing of its individualizing characteristics (essentially material).
The conflict between these two models is a structural given, a major tendency in Aristotelianism, whose effects made themselves felt throughout the Middle Ages. Philosophers have never ceased to vacillate between the registration of resemblances (the basis of "resemblance nominalism") and the neutralization of individualizing characteristics that are not pertinent for the type, though some have sought to find unlikely compromises between these poles.
• See Box 1.
II. The Peripatetic Theory of Aphairesis and Its Medieval Extensions: "Abstractionism"
A. The classification of the sciences
In his treatise De caelo (III.$1.299a 15-17), Aristotle uses the term "abstraction" to distinguish between "mathematical objects" (ta ex aphaireseôs [tà ₺E, ‹paigéœewç], lit. "proceeding
from a subtraction") and "physical objects" (ta ek prostheseôs [tà En nooPowç], lit. "proceeding from an addition"). None-theless, it is only in De anima (III.S7.431b.12-16) that Aristotle explains how the intellect conceives abstractions:
As for so-called "abstractions" (ta en aphairesei lego-mena [tà Ẻv paıgéder deyóueva]), the intellect thinks
of them as one would think of the snub-nosed (simon [oluv]: qua snub-n…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:n35noure2xqn5pptdvnt2o4h/bafkreiaa7wpa4de4r2cpeb3mcxzrlqr52pdbogkxjcu2h2qv3ain3iuxwq)
