One of the silliest superstitions of traditional and personal philosohy concerns the thinkng process labeled "abstraction".

The German poet, novelist, dramatist, Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), says (translated), in his dramatic poem, Faust: "Gray is all theory, but green is the color of life." This is often quoted, particularly by demagogic politicians, to decry using abstractions in thoughtful discussion.

Folks sometimes speak about abstraction as if it were vivisection.

"Rippin a adjective offen a noun is like rippin a wing offen a purty butterfly! Shame! Shame! Shame!"

But no resonsible language-user does that -- in abstracting. Precisely the opposite occurs. For that's how it started in Eden.

Eve holds a rose by its stem. The surface of the flower -- tense with color, and plucked by photons of sunlight -- sings out: "Red rose! Red rose! Red rose!"

I admit that's not a direct quotation, rather a translation (perhaps not a very precise one) from flower-language to people-language. But it evokes an imaged response in Eve.

Next morning Eve lies in the dewy grass, in the arms of her lover, eyes mirroring the dawning day. The skyscape over the eastern horizon sings out (in sky-language): "Red sky! Red sky! Red sky!"

Later, while swimming with Adam -- skinny-dipping, of course (in Eden, the only way to go) -- Eve cuts her foot on a jagged rock. She sit weeping as blood oozes from her punctured big toe, the droplets singing its fluid-language: "Red blood! Red blood!"

And the image of Eve's lips in the pristine surface of the water sings back to her: "Red lips! Red lips!

The glossy coat of a male cardinal perched on a willow branch over the water fairly shouts: "Red feathers! Red feathers!"

Beside the river, Adam and Eve find and gobble wild strawberries, each flecked surface singing: "Red patchwork! Red patchwork!" Within hours, Eve's soft tawny skin erupts with rash, each little "measle" whimpering: "Red ow! Red bleah! Red brllzzt!"

Lying at dusk in the arms of her sleeping lover (easily sated with food and love), Eve -- praying for sleep's relief from torment of stinging flesh -- plays a favorite thought-game, summoning images of remembered past.

But, of many images flooding her memory, a few break from the time-sequence, coalescing in the center of "the screen": the rose, the dawn, the bleeding toe, her lips, cardinal feathers, a bumply strawberry, the itchy little measle.

And, without bidding, the images merge at "center-screen", closer and closer, until rose thorns, leaves, stem are no longer visible, not even petal outlines -- only an intense patch of color. The dawn: now only a patch of color. Droplets of blood: a colored patch. Sleek seriation of feathers: a patch of color. Straw flecks in the berry texture blur away, the rash nodules fade away -- now only colored patches. All these patches of color fuse, tensely, into a single intense image -- a TOGETHERNESS of experience which -- plucked by the tendrils of Eve's memory -- sings out: "Red! Red! Red! Red! Red! Red! Red!"

Next morning, awakened by prickly skin, Eve teases Adam awake with a riddle.

"Adam, what is it that's like a rose, and the dawn, and my big punctured toe, and my lips, and the cardinal's feathers, and a strawberry, and this itchy little bumple?"

However, in constructing this abstraction-riddle of "redness", Eve did not dissect birds, or flowers, or her own flesh! The images of REDNESS in Eve's thinking magnified into a celebration of togetherness, a "choir of voices recorded together", singing THE RED SONG.

Poetic writing distingushes a trope with similar structure: the metonymy (part taken for whole). Many of our most pedestrian terms are metonymies. We call weapons "arms", for the arms holding them. We speak of "the crown" for the king or queen wearing it. We count "heads" or "hands" for people.

Metonomy is ancient in lanuage. The Bible and "Homer" are replete with them. Yet no one charges vivesection in these cases.

By abstracting a single attribute (a.k.a. property, quality) from the togetherness of all observables or conceivables similar to a prototype, we may then employ this attribute (say, "redness") as the part invoking the memory of the whole of collected images: metonmy.

(Students of analytic geometry learn, for exmple, that points in the plane can be represented by Cartesian coordinates of the form (x, y). From this, they learn that fixing exactly one of the coordinates creates a PROJECTION onto a single point in the plane, as in (1, y) which includes (1,0), (1,2), ...., (1, 100), ..., (1, -7), ..... Do you see the homology with (red, rose), (red, dawn), (red, blood), (red, lips), (red, strawberry), (red, "measle") -- "projecting" REDNESS from these varied CONCRETIONS.?)

Repeating, abstraction is a togetherness bit. AND ABSTRACTIONS CAN ALWAYS BE REDUCED TO THE CONCRETIONS (in the second "coordinate" position, above) FROM WHICH THEY ARE DERIVED (PROJECTED, REDUCED).

Adam makes Eve play this REDUCTION game, when he comes to her with something in a bag.

"Is it big, Adam, big as that bag you're holding? Oh, small. Was it growing on the ground when you found it? Oh, then it was walking around? Is it cold and scaly?" (For Adam loves to tease her about the Serpent.) "Is it four-legged? Is it very young? Is it a barker?"

When Adam brushes the stiff fresh-smelling fur against her eyelids, Eve claps her hands and cries out, "A baby fox!"

Thus, the attributes which Eve abstracted by thinking about her observations of foxes playing in meadows or woods now reduce to these signals from the baby fox.

We watch our children play such games. Sometimes we condescend to play such games with them. But when we play similar games with adults, we label these games with pompous names; and we pretend these games are so serious they make our mouths pucker into a persimonny pout.

Have you ever wondered how different contemporary scientific and political and economic philosophies might be had they not jelled during the glaciation of a Puritan age? The consequence is that, as with the Party-faithful in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, these savants must "double-think".

Our scientists discover they must play such games to cope with their problems; but they must never admit this. Rather, they must pretend the task is as painful as a belly-ache, as boring as a banquet hosted by a one-eye potato, as recondite as a single lip (alone in space) kissing. Perhaps they believe that, upon admitting the truth, their mommas will suddenly enter their laboratories or lecture-halls to lead them home by the ear to do somethiing useful, such as washing dishes, or cleaning up their rooms.

But we -- WE ARE THE INCORRIGIBLES! admitting that THE GREAT EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IMPLICIT IN ABSTRACTION CONSITUTE A GAME OF TWENTY QUESTIONS!

Scorners of abstractions refuse to admit that they use abstractions every day in their talking: "dream"; "red"; "sincere"; "honor"; "objectivity"; etsettry.

Did you ever see a dream walking? or redness walking? Or happiness, or roundness, or sincerity, or honor, or objectivity -- see any of them suspended alone in space?

Before answering, I remind you of a "deadly" fallacy, which has "felled" many a philosopher or scientist. It's the substantival squint, which leaves the "infected" as bizarrely isolated as one of James Thurber's dog at point on nothing.

"Where there is adjective, there is substantive. Where there's substantive, there is substance." (Thus 18th century scientists reasoned the existence of a chemical element, labeled "caloric" or "phlogiston", to explain "hot" -- until Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) thought of explaining the phenomenon by molecular motion, which is properly labeled by a gerund, "heating".)

If, however we hedge that the substance may only be a concept or sense-image, we avoid The Substantival Squint, while noting that the abstraction can always be reduced to the concretion or the conception.

"Redness" is the answer to Eve's question: "What is it that's like a rose, and the dawn, and ...?"

AN ABSTRACTION IS THE ANSWER TO A RIDDLE