Abstraction Card C00057

RBF DEFINITIONS
Abstraction:

"What the mathematicians have been calling abstraction
is reality. When they are inadequate in their abstraction
then they are irrelevant to reality. The mathematicians
feel they can do anything they want with their abstraction
because they don't relate it to reality. And, of course,
they can really do anything they want with their abstractions
but, like masturbation, it is irrelevant to the propagation
of life.

"The only reality is the abstraction of the principles, the
eternal generalized principles. Most people talk of
reality as just the after-image effects--the realization
lags, which register superficially and are asymmetric and
off center. (The principles themselves have different lag
rates and different interferences.) When we get to reality
it's absolutely eternal."

"The inherent inaccuracy is what people call the reality.
Man's way of apprehending is always slow: ergo the superficial
and erroneous impressions of solids and things, which can
actually be explained only in principle."

Cite RBF to EJA, 3200 Idaho, 24 Feb 72
Incorporated in SYNERGETICS at Sec. 220.10, 15 Nov 72