Complete Definition of "abstraction"

wikipedia|Abstraction (disambiguation)|Abstraction
English

Etymology
Compare French #French|abstraction. See the adjective abstract.

Pronunciation
audio|en-us-abstraction.ogg|Audio (US)

Noun
en-noun

  1. The act of abstracting, separating, or withdrawing, or the state of being withdrawn; withdrawal.

#*1848: w:John Stuart Mill|J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy - The cancelling of the debt would be no destruction of wealth, but a transfer of it: a wrongful abstraction of wealth from certain members of the community, for the profit of the government, or of the tax-payers.

  1. philosophy The act of leaving out of consideration one or more properties of a complex object so as to attend to others; analysis.

#: Note: Abstraction is necessary to classification, by which organisms are grouped into genera and species according to the qualities they share.
#*Sir W. Hamilton - Abstraction is no positive act: it is simply the negative of attention.

  1. An idea or notion of an abstract, or theoretical nature; as, to fight for mere abstractions.
  2. A separation from worldly objects; a recluse life; as, a hermit's abstraction.
  3. Absence or absorption of mind; inattention to present objects.
  4. The taking surreptitiously for one's own use part of the property of another; purloining. - "[Modern]"
  5. chemistry A separation of volatile parts by the act of distillation. - Nicholson
  6. engineering Removal of water from a river, lake, or aquifer, typically for industrial or agricultural uses.
  7. computing Any generalization technique that ignores or hides details to capture some kind of commonality between different instances for the purpose of controlling the intellectual complexity of engineered systems, particularly software systems.
  8. computing Any intellectual construct produced through the technique of abstraction.

Derived terms
abstractional
abstractionism
abstractionist

Translations

Catalan: abstracció f
Dutch: abstractie f
French: abstraction f
German: Abstraktion f
Hebrew: �פש�� (hafshat'a) f
mid
Interlingua: abstraction
Italian: astrazione f
Novial: abstraktione
Polish: abstrakcja f
Spanish: abstracción f

References
R:Century 1911
R:Webster 1913
Glossary of Water Terms, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.


French

Noun
abstraction f
##English|abstraction

Category:French nouns

ar:abstraction
be:abstraction
de:abstraction
et:abstraction
fa:abstraction
fr:abstraction
io:abstraction
id:abstraction
it:abstraction
ru:abstraction
fi:abstraction
te:abstraction
vi:abstraction
tr:abstraction
zh:abstraction

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