Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In philosophy and the arts, a fundamental distinction is between things that are abstract and things that are concrete.While there is no general consensus as to how to precisely define the two, examples include that things like numbers, sets, and ideas are abstract objects, while plants, dogs, and planets are concrete objects. [1]
Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (real or concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" is the outcome of this process — a concept that acts as a common noun for all subordinate concepts and connects any related ...
The ontology of concepts determines the answer to other questions, such as how to integrate concepts into a wider theory of the mind, what functions are allowed or disallowed by a concept's ontology, etc. There are two main views of the ontology of concepts: (1) Concepts are abstract objects, and (2) concepts are mental representations. [8]
Abstraction is an ongoing process in mathematics and the historical development of many mathematical topics exhibits a progression from the concrete to the abstract. For example, the first steps in the abstraction of geometry were historically made by the ancient Greeks, with Euclid's Elements being the earliest extant documentation of the ...
While within concrete concepts there is still a level of abstractness, concrete and abstract concepts can be seen on a scale. Some ideas like chair and dog are more cut and dry in their perceptions but concepts like cold and fantasy can be seen in a more obscure way. Examples of abstract concept learning are topics like religion and ethics.
Paradigmatically, universals are abstract (e.g. humanity), whereas particulars are concrete (e.g. the personhood of Socrates). However, universals are not necessarily abstract and particulars are not necessarily concrete. [3] For example, one might hold that numbers are particular yet abstract objects.
Similarly, concepts can remain abstract or can be operationalized. Operationalizing a sociological concept takes it to the concrete level by defining how one is going to measure it. Thus, with the concept of social class one could operationalize it by actually measuring people's income. Once operationalized, you have a concrete representation ...
These concrete objects facilitate children's understanding of important math concepts, then later help them link these ideas to representations and abstract ideas. For example, there are manipulatives specifically designed to help students learn fractions, geometry and algebra. [3]