last modified: 1/20/16
"ABSTRACT" in the Oxford English
Dictionary:etymology: "to draw away, to draw off “ {dag}; some of the
word's meanings:"2. Withdrawn, drawn away, removed, separate; = ABSTRACTED 3. Withdrawn from the contemplation of present objects;
= ABSTRACTED 4. a. Withdrawn or separated from matter, from material
embodiment, from practice, or from particular examples. Opposed to concrete.
b. Ideal. c. Abstruse. d. In the fine arts, characterized by lack of, or
freedom from, representational qualities.
"ABSTRACTION" in the Oxford English Dictionary:
"The result of abstracting: the idea of something which has no independent
existence; a thing which exists only in idea; something visionary." some
of the word's meanings: 5. A
state of withdrawal or seclusion from worldly things or things of sense. 6. The state of mental withdrawal; inattention to things
present; absence of mind."
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ABSTRACTIONS AS OBSTACLES TO COMMUNICATION: Most importantly perhaps, abstractions deceive us into thinking
we are communicating. Two people can have a long, long conversation about
"God" or "the Good" or "the Beautiful" and think they are communicating
but in reality they each have very different definitions, ideas, and experiences
of "God" or "the
Good" or "the Beautiful." Unless these differences are acknowledged
they are deceiving themselves about the quality of their communication. More
than likely rather than connecting, they are like two trains passing in the
night, each with only a fleeting glimpse of what is going on on the other
train.
Hence the instructions
for leading class discussion: "When vague abstractions are introduced,
the leader is expected to ask for definitions and examples immediately.
(Students who introduce vague abstractions should be prepared to supply
these definitions and examples.) Why? As perhaps the greatest writer of English prose put it, "Without a firm hold on
things, we shall waste ourselves in vague speculations'" (John Henry Newman). His arguments have been supported again and again by current research. For example, "most methods of analysis operate at so high a level of abstraction that the basic data of the meaning experience is slighted and/or obscured" (Fish 30). Indeed it may be agured that "abstraction, which masks differences of class, culture, race, and gender, is not a necessary concomitant of complex thought" (Roemer 920). Gender certainly makes a difference: as feminists have pointed out, what we learn can not always be easily generalized and "speaking in abstractions sometimes permits us to accept what we might not admit to on a personal level" (J. B. Miller, 55, 4).
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Avoiding abstractions is also a requirement of emotional intelligence: "One way to overcome the false dualism between reason and emotion is by moving out of the realm of abstraction and getting closer to the effects of our everyday actions." Hence, it is a requirement of emotive ethics: Denial, abstraction, pity, professional warmth, compulsive hyperactivity: these are a few of he ways in which the mind reacts to suffering and attempts to restrict or direct the natural compassion of the heart." Dass, 64
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WHY IS "ABSTRACT" A NEGATIVE TERM IN THE
HUMANITIES, ESPECIALLY IN TEACHING WRITING
Hence the usual advice for good writing is to avoid abstract
B.S. As R. Hunt put it, "in order
to get at the ground on which critical analysis is built, we must find
mechanisms for clearing away the abstractions. This is particularly difficult
because one of the things most students have learned most thoroughly is the art
of concealing that ground by creating a jungle of such critical abstractions.
Many teachers are even better at such horticulture. (What is most remarkable
about this jungle is that it often grows without any ground under it all)"
(348).
Recall the rubrics >for evaluating your writing:
3. Specificity : 2. Very
Poor: There is no concrete language. Vague abstractions abound, hiding the basic
stories and/or emotions behind the essay, if there are any. There is nothing that enables us to experience
the world through another’s perspective. 1.
Disastrous: The language is so vague that it is apparent that the writer, as
well as the reader, doesn’t know what s/he is talking about.
Advice: Abstract
arguments need examples and/or concrete images. Use “word pictures” like
“illustrations, analogies, vivid quotations, metaphors, similes” (76).
This helps your reader both understand and remember your argument. John
Trimble asks, "Are you being specific enough?" (Ex. “The character of
Hamlet displays the qualities of a tragic hero.” LIKE WHAT???)
W = Word Choice 2. The diction is mediocre, boring, at times vague:
lots of useless repetition, empty abstractions,....
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THE LOGIC OF THE HUMANITIES
In 1984, Peter Flawn, President of U.T. and Regents Professor
of Higher Education,
discussing the purpose of U.T. in his annual address to the faculty, said "In
thinking about this issue, I reread John Henry Newman's The Idea of
a University, a classic treatise familiar to all who are interested
in higher education."
Newman, considered by many to be the greatest writer of English prose, is also an
excellent guide to the logic of the humanities. Newman's Grammar of Assent (1870)
focuses on this “logic.” He notes that "science, working by itself,
reaches truth in the abstract,*
and probability in the concrete; but what we aim at is truth in the concrete" (223).
The word "concrete" is clearly a key to an ancient practical
logic of the arts: "the concrete exerts a force and makes an impression
on the mind which nothing abstract can rival" (49). Concrete "facts" and "things" not
only help us hold on to reality, they limit and test the validity of abstractions: "without
a firm hold on things, we shall waste ourselves in vague speculations.
However, real apprehension has the precedence, as being the scope and end
and the test of notional" (47). This is not merely the customary method
of the humanities; it is the most common logic of all: "our most natural
mode of reasoning is, not from propositions to propositions, but from things
to things, from concrete to concrete, from wholes to wholes.... This is
the mode in which we ordinarily reason, dealing with things directly, and
as they stand, one by one, in the concrete" (260-1, cf. 243).
When we focus on human questions especially we must be willing to suspend theoretical abstractions in order to focus on what
the person or object in front of us might teach us. Although thousands
of psychological theories have been generated in the century since Newman
wrote, sometimes a wise psychiatrist, like the mentor of Robert Coles,
is still willing to ask for "`more stories, less theory'," willing
to urge a young psychiatrist to "err on the side of each person's
particularity: offer that first, and only later offer `a more general statement'
-- adding as a qualifier, `if you want to, if you need to'" (1989,
The Call
of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination,27). Coles, the young
psychiatrist who received this advice, remembered flushing and thinking, "was
he implying that only some neurotic requirement made theory necessary?" (27).
The older psychiatrist was not, but was aware that theory can be a means
of "indoctrination" which
is then worn by its followers "as a badge of membership" while
they act like "sheep" (20-1), forgetting to think for themselves
and using their theories to explain away other people (28). The young psychiatrist
was asked to be willing instead to tell his own story (18) and to focus
on the personal stories of individual clients in all their rich detail
rather than rushing to interpretation and forcing them into "theoretical
constructs" (14). Coles was supported in this distrust of abstractions
by his readings of the poet, William Carlos Williams, who insisted on "no
ideas but in things" (192-3).
Persuasion: The logic of the humanities is
the mode of reasoning which can lead to "real" rather
than to merely "notional" assent to a proposition: "the
heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination,
by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by
history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue
us, deeds inflame us" (Newman 89, cf. Coles 127-8).
Hence one effective mode of persuasion
in the arts and humanities is the history of a person, for the history
of a few specific people may call forth more of a genuine reaction than
endless summaries of statistics about millions of people in general. In
questions of human nature, the emphasis in the arts and humanities often
remains on individuals. Lists, statistical summaries, and generalizations
result all too often in stereotypes, yet "there
is no such thing as a stereotyped humanity; it must ever be a vague, bodiless
idea, because the concrete units from which it is formed are independent
realities. General laws are not inviolable truths; much less are they necessary
causes" (Newman 224). In the humanities "individual" is
an even more important term to oppose to "abstraction" than is "concrete": "Let
units [individuals] come first, and (so-called) universals second; let
universals minister to units, not units be sacrificed to universals. John,
Richard, and Robert are individual things, independent, incommunicable" (223).
For those who believe this, only one method of the sciences
may be directly transferable to the arts and humanities: case studies of
particular individuals in all the rich complexity of their attendant circumstances: "the real and
necessary method is...the cumulation of probabilities, independent of each
other, arising out of the nature and circumstances of the particular case
which is under review; probabilities too fine to avail separately, too
subtle and circuitous to be convertible into syllogisms, too numerous and
various for such conversion, even were they convertible" (Newman 230).
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This danger of abstractions is most fully acknowledged perhaps in the philosphy of "Nominalism"
(except that that is an abstraction). Nominalism is "the doctrine in philosophy
that universals are merely names (Latin ‘nomina’) to which nothing corresponds
in reality except the individual entities referred to." Nominalists deny
the reality of abstract universal or generalized concepts. While many believe
"that there are universal concepts, such as roundness or dog, that are
referred to by the use of these terms, nominalists argue that such generalized
concepts cannot be known, and that the terms refer only to specific qualities
common to particular circles or dogs that have been encountered up to now."
In other words, "only particular objects exist, and properties, numbers,
and sets are merely features of the way of considering the things that exist" Oxford Reference Online
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