IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-1-4615-8519-0_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

What is an Abstraction?

In: 3.1416 And All That

Author

Listed:
  • Philip J. Davis
  • William G. Chinn

Abstract

MATHEMATICIANS play many roles. They may be puzzle solvers, computers, logicians, theorem provers. They are also abstractors, and this is perhaps fundamental to their other roles. The famous English physicist Paul Dirac once said, “Mathematics is the tool specially suited for dealing with abstract concepts of any kind, and there is no limit to its power in this field.” Now, just what does the word abstract mean? The dictionary tells us: abstract adj. 1. Considered apart from any application to a particular object. 2. Ideal. 3. In art. Characterized by non-representational designs. 4. In math. Used without reference to a thing or things, as the abstract number 2.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip J. Davis & William G. Chinn, 1985. "What is an Abstraction?," Springer Books, in: 3.1416 And All That, chapter 4, pages 20-26, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4615-8519-0_4
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4615-8519-0_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4615-8519-0_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.