Abstraction 1

There are no circular objects in the real world, and no rectangular (of course, one can give a new definition of "circular" that includes some, probably mathematical rules. That's not what I mean here; I mean "circular" as used by common people, or by people from say 10000 B.C.). But of course, we can and do label some objects as being (or appearing) circular, or rectangular, like the sun as seen in the sky, or the basement of my house looked down from above. Is this labelling a language thing, or something pre-language? As far as I know, some animals can reliable distinguish circles from rectangles, so it's a pre-language thing. Might it, then, not be something in nature itself, i.e., is the sun's image on the sky circular?

Question: Are there sharply distinguishable things in nature? Yes, there are: Liquids and rigid bodies are "just different". Of course, there are things like hot wax that are somehow both or in-between. But that doesn't mean that there aren't many things that are liquid; or that are rigid.

Being circular gets more and more cloudy if one looks at more and more details. Being a liquid doesn't—down to a microscopic level beyond the reach of non-scietnific exploration, it is always clear whether a patch of something is liquid, or rather the rigid container of the liquid. Similar to the wax example, in some situations, this isn't true: Water in a puddle is usually not clearly separatable from the non-water mud. But again, in many, and many typical, situations, the boundary is absolutely clear. So nature itself can create sharp macroscopically and easily observable boundaries.

However, for the moment, I go with the assumption that this is a coincidence. There are many more natural boundaries that are hard to understand. We know now that on Earth, the boundary between life and non-life for easily observable objects is very specific: Life is that which is equipped with DNA and a working energy supply, non-life is all the rest. This was not clear for thousands of years. Still, life and non-life were clearly separated in thought and language.

And we know that many observable species are actually separated from each other perfectly, i.e., they cannot create offspring. But the reasons for this are quite intricate (and therefore, some different species can create common offspring that is of a third kind). But is interesting that while mice and rats had their distinct names at all times, other similarly distinct species got common names and were mixed up by most people and languages (examples missing here).

But, as I said, I consider the (many) obvious natural boundaries just an input to evolution. And leave the examination whether this is ok open = open question 1.

The next question, then, is: Are all abstractions omparable to those we share with other species; which would, for example, mean that they need only little rational thinking, and no language at all. Or are many abstractions, in their way of being, evolutions only of human thought? I would like to start from a stance that also abstractions that we humans share with some other species (like being circular) are a coincidence, i.e., that I can argue about all abstractions as if they were human-only (like being married, or being king). But I have not yet argued that this is the case = open question 2.

So, for abstractions that are human-only (or, as said above, all abstractions viewed as human-only): It's obviously not a language-thing: There are abstractions for certain dance patterns, and certain musical ideas, and certain mathematical counter-examples even before anyone has a word for the respective abstractions. Reading treatises on music theory even from the 18th century, and listening to even a simple piece of Mozart shows that language lagged behind the actual knowledge of composers about abstractions lagged by millions of miles, so-to-speak.

And writing down, or even discussing, in language thinking about abstractions creates its own paths of thought, because language is , on the whole metaphorical. So the abstractions found in written documents, and even in discussions, are a mixture of absurd and agreeable ones.

But how, then, can one usefully characterize abstractions, and humans' use of them?