Why Barclays Abstraction

Abstraction exists as a psychical form in western history of philosophy, and philosophy in each era all have reached the peak because of abstraction. From the history’s aspect, abstraction has been supporting the development and evolution of philosophy as its framework. From ancient Greek to Middle Ages, philosophers have been seeking truths on the path of abstraction. Parmenides, Plato, Tertullian and so many philosophers have endowed abstraction with sacredness, and constructed absolute truths with the worship of abstraction. Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas et al. have been abstracting things with the rationality that human being has, therefore obtained a general truth. Different from former pure theoretical constructions, modern philosophers seeks truths more from reality, and build their philosophy system based on their knowledge and understandings. This kind of systems contain no longer praise or worship, but refute and criticism of abstraction. And George Berkeley’ theories is the most representative criticism of abstraction. Berkeley lived in an era that promoted sensory experience, and he questioned the cognitive objects and cognitive ability of which some philosophers worshiped within the atmosphere of scientific sprits, and therefore he proposed the necessity of destructing abstract ideas. Berkeley considers that abstraction has cause a dilemma between theory and practice. Abstraction firstly didn’t make people wiser, but more confused. People become to doubt things that they convinced once they get into speculation areas. Followed, abstraction theorists are more focused on metaphysical thinking patterns. They dogmatically deduced new conclusions from the previous theories using abstraction. And the knowledge generated is still based on the same theories, which means that there has been no actual expansion or growth of knowledge. Moreover, abstraction is essentially a falsehood, that it lacks basis of existence. At last, because of the self-righteous abstraction ability that some philosophers have, many strange and unconvincing theories were created and harmed science because of people’s excessive obsession and fanaticism of them. Besides these clearly stated reasons, one other reason why Berkeley disagree abstraction is that abstraction is based on idealism, but not materialism, and that all theories returned to God, as for practicing followers’ mission. Berkeley inherited the tradition of Nominalism and absorbed Ockham and other philosophers’ theories, criticized abstraction from Aristotle’s era with the entry point of that human don’t have the ability of abstraction.