Abstractions took us far.
They let us notice common features of objects,
throw away their differences and end up with
a general concept.
But now that you have that abstraction, tell
me, what are you going to do with it?
Once you see common properties and abstract
them, you aren't limited to applying your
abstraction to the original objects that sparked
it.
You can find those same properties in new
objects and in new situations.
This lets you learn.
It lets you gain knowledge.
We've used the abstract "round" to work out
formulas that apply to every round thing.
Let's say I tell you I have a new round thing
in my backpack that you've never seen before
in your life.
Since you don't know what it is, how could
you possibly be able to tell me anything about
it?
Well, my friend, once you've mastered abstract
thinking, you see right past this charade:
you can tell me the circumference or the area
of my round object.
We can use the same abstract thinking to pick
up on patterns in language.
There's something else in my backpack you've
never seen before.
It's a creature called a "shwuff".
But I bet you already know exactly what to
say when you see three of them, don't you?
When you do that, you're drawing on a past
pattern you've seen in English, abstracting
that pattern and applying it to this new instance.
You've never had to say that you've seen three
"shwuffs" before in your life, but by taking
a pattern from your source and applying it
to a target, the answer was obvious.
If you've taken your fair share of standardized
tests, you've come across comparisons like
this.
These puzzles are called analogies - more
specifically, this is a "proportional analogy",
and it tests how good we are at abstracting
the meaning of one pair of words and applying
it to the second pair.
But analogies like these might have even more
to teach us about language and thought.
Think about it - doesn't the shwuff:shwuffs
thing work a litttle like one of these analogies?
If so, just how far can we take analogies
in our quest to learn and think and create?
You'll see this pattern of recognizing a pattern,
abstracting the properties of that pattern
and applying that abstraction to a new instance
over and over again.
Ooh, we might even call this a pattern of
analogies.
But, how do we abstract that and analogize
those abstractions?
Thanks for taking the time to learn with me.
