“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.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

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Leon Trotsky 106

Marxist revolutionary from Russia 1879–1940

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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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(1) ab(u) = ba (u),
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(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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That these are the laws employed in the demonstration of the principal theorems in Algebra, a slight examination of the processes will easily shew ; but they are not confined to symbols of numbers ; they apply also to the symbol used to denote differentiation.
p. 237 http://books.google.com/books?id=8lQ7AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA237; Highlighted section cited in: George Boole " Mr Boole on a General Method in Analysis http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA225-IA15&id=aGwOAAAAIAAJ&hl," Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 134 (1844), p. 225; Other section (partly) cited in: James Gasser (2000) A Boole Anthology: Recent and Classical Studies in the Logic of George Boole,, p. 52
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“The whole task of psychology can therefore be summed up in these two problems : (1) What are the elements of consciousness? (2) What combinations do these elements undergo and what laws govern these combinations?”

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

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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 Trotsky 106

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