Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Abstraktion als Weglassen des Unwichtigen; 3 Grade von Abstraktion

Kurzinhalt: materia individualis, materia designata, materia signata; time and place as such explain nothing; interessant: to know the past as past ... is the work of sense; wieder: Beispiel Kreis

Textausschnitt: As a second preliminary, we may explain that by a psychological account of abstraction we mean the elimination by the understanding of the intellectually irrelevant because it is understood to be irrelevant. That, we submit, is the very point of the celebrated three degrees of abstraction. What is variously termed materia individualis, materia designata, materia signata, the hic et nunc, cannot be an explanatory factor in any science; it is irrelevant to all scientific explanation; it is irrelevant a priori; time and place as such explain nothing, ... Intellect abstracts from the hic et nunc. ... Properly, intellect does not remember; to know the past as past, like knowing the present, is the work of sense.
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In other words, the 'here and now,' or the 'there and then,' as such are irrelevant to understanding, explanation, the assigning of causes; and from them intellect abstracts, inasmuch as and because it understands that irrelevance. The datum 'round' is understood as necessitated by equal radii in a plane surface; 'equal radii in a plane surface' is abstracted as common matter from phantasm and spoken in an inner word
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The second degree of abstraction is similar to the first: as all science prescinds from the 'here and now,' so all mathematics prescinds from all sensible qualities - from colors, sounds, tactile experiences, tastes, odors; the color of the geometrical figure, of the arithmetical or algebraic symbol, is never relevant to the mathematical theorem.
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Finally, the third degree of abstraction prescinds from all matter, individual and common, sensible and intelligible, to treat of 'ens, unum, potentia et actus, et alia huiusmodi.' It does so, because metaphysical theorems are valid independently of any sensible matter of fact and of any condition of imagination.