“One great lesson that we can learn from its systematic absence in the work of the grand theorists is that every self-conscious thinker must at all times be aware of — and hence be able to control — the levels of abstraction on which he is working. The capacity to shuttle between levels of abstraction, with ease and with clarity, is a signal mark of the imaginative and systematic thinker.”

— C. Wright Mills , book The Sociological Imagination

The Sociological Imagination (1959)

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C. Wright Mills 55

American sociologist 1916–1962

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“There are opposing forces in all living things. My work reflects this and stirs up a contrast of emotions in the viewer… perception versus annoyance. To the viewer who has reached that level of awareness, my work is no longer abstract, but very real.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Direct Art Magazine, "In Memoriam - Eugene James Martin", Fall-Winter 2006,Vol. 13, p. 86, http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist/details.php?id=791 and http://afonline.artistsspace.org/view_artist.php?aid=3883

“[This book] is intended as a text from which the student can learn and the teacher can teach the methods and results of economic analysis. It also seeks to be a contribution to the development and systematization of the body of economic analysis itself. These purposes are not separate. The task of presenting a systematic, orderly, and accurate account of economic analysis is identical with the task of preparing the material for teaching. It must be emphasized, however, that the purpose of this work is not primarily to entertain the student, or to enable him to regurgitate appropriate material into examination books, or to learn a few pat phrases, or to indoctrinate him with an abstract discipline which he will never use. Economics is like photography in this respect, that under-exposure is less desirable than no exposure at all.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. xv

“The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty; he is conscious of the fact that the emotion of beauty is cosmic, universal. This conscious recognition has for its corollary an abstract plasticism, for man adheres only to what is universal.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

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“It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Appeal to Youth: Intoxication-Disintoxication (1934).

“The growing complexity of software is the motivation behind work on industrializing software development. In particular, current research in the area of model driven engineering (MDE) is primarily concerned with reducing the gap between problem and software implementation domains through the use of technologies that support systematic transformation of problem-level abstractions to software implementations. The complexity of bridging the gap is tackled through the use of models that describe complex systems at multiple levels of abstraction and from a variety of perspectives, and through automated support for transforming and analyzing models. In the MDE vision of software development, models are the primary artifacts of development and developers rely on computer-based technologies to transform models to running systems.”

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Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

Jack Woehr. An interview with Donald Knuth http://www.drdobbs.com/an-interview-with-donald-knuth/184409858. Dr. Dobb's Journal, pages 16-22 (April 1996)

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“The entire history of software engineering is that of the rise in levels of abstraction.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

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“[Concerning all painters] working in what is known as the abstract style: [the abstract form] is a living thing…. a carrier of the awesome feelings he felt before the unknowable [common quote of Barnett Newman, Clifford Still, and Mark Rothko, 1947]”

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Source: the catalogue of the 'Ideographic Picture' show, New York, 1947

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Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 202

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C. Wright Mills 55

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