The abstract contains the concrete

[Ostronomos]

1. In my Physics textbook it states that "to understand motion, we need to be able to make quantitative measurements: we need to use numbers." It then goes on to talk about how we need three pieces of information before we locate an object, one of which is time. Followed by the fact that we are free to choose the origin's position. Where certain points are more convenient "choices" than others. In order to specify the position of the object, we lay down an imaginary axes along the object's line of motion.

2. In my other science book, on quantum physics, it says that a quantum technology was responsible for the well-known company, Kodak's, bankruptcy. It says that there are two approaches to digital photography: CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) and CCD (Charged coupled device). The more common and cheaper CMOS contains light-sensitive circuits (the light is passed through the red-green-blue filter and separated into different colors for each pixel). Whereas though the CCD also contains color filters, it used a so-called "electron bucket" that collects electrons within each pixel. The photons displace each electron building up a picture.

The former suggests that reality is like a set of points that can be translated into mathematics. The latter that reality is information that can be captured in a two-dimensional image not unlike the holographic principle.

My question is: Can we thus conclude that the abstract contains the concrete? I don't see why not.

[Magical Realist]

"The map is not the territory." The question is, what do we lose about reality when we translate it into an abstract model or metaphor? What, iow, cannot be mapped about it? And how can we describe that?

[Ostronomos]

"The map is not the territory." The question is, what do we lose about reality when we translate it into an abstract model or metaphor? What, iow, cannot be mapped about it? And how can we describe that?

That's a common misconception. The map and the territory can be converted into each other because they share a common reality.

[C C]

My question is: Can we thus conclude that the abstract contains the concrete? I don't see why not.

Generalizations always(?) subsume specific items, as well as refined levels of subclassifications. The problem is that when a broad concept is reified like a precise member, the question may sometimes arise of: "Where is it? I see the dog Rover, but not the abstraction of mammal." Thus evoking the "immaterial" word, or the ancient speculation that some components of language (description) reference objects existing beyond or prior-in-rank to space/time.

The genius of Kant was discovering the role of abstract concepts in cognition. They provide a "big picture" of understanding (or a principle) that the particular, empirical thing fits into or plays a role in.

Category: Humanity
Sub-category: Humans
Sub-category: A population group (British-Canadians)
Sub-category: Non-binary
Concrete entity/person with a spatiotemporal location: Dominique Provost-Chalkley

[Magical Realist]

A map or abstraction can only explain or model the territory by not being the territory--by standing in for it and representing it as other than itself. If they were identical the map would be of no use:

"Of Exactitude in Science"

…In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.

—From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda

The piece was written by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. English translation quoted from J. L. Borges, A Universal History of Infamy, Penguin Books, London, 1975.

From Wikipedia:

"The story elaborates on a concept in Lewis Carroll‘s Sylvie and Bruno Concluded: a fictional map that had “the scale of a mile to the mile.” One of Carroll’s characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that “we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”

[Ostronomos]

A map or abstraction can only explain or model the territory by not being the territory--by standing in for it and representing it as other than itself. If they were identical the map would be of no use:

"Of Exactitude in Science"

…In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.

—From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda

The piece was written by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. English translation quoted from J. L. Borges, A Universal History of Infamy, Penguin Books, London, 1975.

From Wikipedia:

  "The story elaborates on a concept in Lewis Carroll‘s Sylvie and Bruno Concluded: a fictional map that had “the scale of a mile to the mile.” One of Carroll’s characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that “we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”

At the risk of sounding self-righteous, I never said the map is the territory. I said that they share the same reality. By sharing the same reality, they bear many similarities. Including physical composition. A description does not exist in some alien reality, divorced from everything. There is difference in sameness.