“The concrete is a combination of abstractions — not an arbitrary or subjective combination but one that corresponds to the laws of the movement of a given phenomenon.”

Source: In Defense of Marxism (1942), p. 147

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Leon Trotsky106

Marxist revolutionary from Russia 1879–1940

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“Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The way out lies, not in attempting to prevent such combinations, but in completely controlling them in the interest of the public welfare.”

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“The recognition of the light of reality within the darkness of abstraction is a contradiction – both the affirmation and the negation of the real at one and the same time. The new philosophy, which thinks the concrete not in an abstract but a concrete way, which acknowledges the real in its reality – that is, in a way corresponding to the being of the real as true, which elevates it into the principle and object of philosophy – is consequently the truth of the Hegelian philosophy, indeed of modern philosophy as a whole.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

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“We will find abstract equivalents for all the forms and elements of the universe, and then well will combine them according to the caprice of our inspiration,”

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“There are a number of theorems in ordinary algebra, which, though apparently proved to be true only for symbols representing numbers, admit of a much more extended application. Such theorems depend only on the laws of combination to which the symbols are subject, and are therefore true for all symbols, whatever their nature may be, which are subject to the same laws of combination. The laws with which we have here concern are few in number, and may be stated in the following manner. Let a, b represent two operations, u, v two subjects on which they operate, then the laws are
(1) ab(u) = ba (u),
(2) a(u + v) = a (u) + a (v),
(3) am. an. u = am + n. u.
The first of these laws is called the commutative law, and symbols which are subject to it are called commutative symbols. The second law is called distributive, and the symbols subject to it distributive symbols. The third law is not so much a law of combination of the operation denoted by a, but rather of the operation performed on a, which is indicated by the index affixed to a. It may be conveniently called the law of repetition, since the most obvious and important case of it is that in which m and n are integers, and am therefore indicates the repetition m times of the operation a.”

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Source: An Introduction to Psychology (1912), p. 44; Cited in: Stephen Kosslyn. Image and Mind. 1980, p. 438

“My life is a combination of combinations of music and emotions.”

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Original: (it) La mia vita è un insieme di combinazioni tra musica ed emozioni.
Source: prevale.net

“The concrete is a combination of abstractions — not an arbitrary or subjective combination but one that corresponds to the laws of the movement of a given phenomenon.”

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Leon Trotsky106

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