12 September 2016

Week 2 : Concrete or Abstrahere

1. What is "Abstraction"? What makes an object qualify as abstract?

2. Rene Pellet defines abstraction as an "organization of the mind that passes beyond the concrete and has freed itself from it" (154), providing the conflict that abstraction in its purest state does not hold any bounds to reality. However, can it be argued that abstraction only exists from the concrete, not pure imagination? 
  • "The abstract objects of thought, such as numbers, law, or perfectly straight lines, are real parts of nature..." (156)
3. Henry Bergson stated that "In order to generalize one must first abstract, but in order to abstract use-fully one must already know how to generalize" (160). Can abstraction only be achieved through the association of objects by individual cases? (i.e a table being a flat surface to place items upon) Or does human perception/ creative thinking produce the same generalization/use of objects? 
  • Induction : The process of discovering principles by the observation and combination of particular instances (162)
4. Arnheim advocates that "dynamic concepts do not require an actual physical continuity of the phenomena for which they stand..." (184). Do you agree or disagree? Explain your reasoning. In order for the human mind to grasp a concept or abstraction, do we need rational or built evidence? 

5. The generalization vs abstraction argument seems to have roots buried within understanding and protecting what we consider as the truth (reality). Thus, abstraction exists as an outlet to a new realm of understanding the unattainable or unbuilt reality. If we as humans did not generalize objects or figurative concepts, then would abstract thought be nonexistent?
  

By : Jafar Amin

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