abstract

“The more abstract we are from the body ... the more fit we shall be to behold divine light.”

“Her new film is an abstract piece, combining elements of magic realism, flashbacks, and animation but with very little in terms of plot construction.”

“During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, this commitment brought him into frequent critical confrontation with entrenched forms of conservative thinking (in academic areas from history and social science to the more abstract domains of ethical and political philosophy),[…]”

“The politician gave a somewhat abstract answer when asked about their plans to cut spending.”

“Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene.”

“A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name which stands for an attribute of a thing...”

“A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name which stands for an attribute of a thing.[…]A practice, however, has grown up in more modern times, which, if not introduced by Locke, has gained currency from his example, of applying the expression "abstract name" to all names which are the result of abstraction and generalization, and consequently to all general names, instead of confining it to the names of attributes.”

“Given their opposition to innate ideas, philosophers in the empiricist tradition have sought to explain how the rich and multifarious representational capacities that human beings possess derive from experience. A key explanatory strategy in this tradition, tracing back at least as far as John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is to maintain that the acquisition of many of these capacities can be accounted for by a process of abstraction. In fact, Locke himself claims in the Essay that abstraction is the source of all general ideas (1690/1975, II, xii, §1). Although Berkeley and Hume were highly critical of Locke, abstraction as a source of generality has been a lasting theme in empiricist thought.”

“Abſtract as in a tranſe methought I ſaw, abstract, as in a trance”

“White and abstract-looking, he sat and ate his dinner.”

“But his design is wonderful. He’s getting more and more abstract every day. He’d given up the third dimension when I was there and was just thinking of giving up the second. Soon, he says, there’ll be just the blank canvas. That’s the logical conclusion. Complete abstraction.”

“An analysis and abstract of every treatise he had read.”

“Man, the abstract Of all perfection, which the workmanship Of Heaven hath modeled.”

“Thus the concrete like has its abstract likeness; the concretes, father and son, have the abstracts, paternity and filiation.”

“He was incapable of forming any opinion or resolution abstracted from his own prejudices.”

“The lightning of the public burdens, which at present abstract a large proportion of profits and wages.”

“Von Rosen had quietly abstracted the bearing-reins from the harness.”

“The inlaid characters in diamond, and other precious stones, have been all abstracted away by the pelf-loving Jaut and Mahratta—leaving the walls defaced with the hollow marks of the chisel.”

“Poison from roses who could e'er abstract?”

“The young stranger had been abstracted and silent.”

“He was wholly abstracted by other objects.”

“To abstract the notions of time, of space, and of matter.”

“I own myself able to abstract in one sense.”

“He abstracted out the square root function.”