Please explain abstraction.

Take a look at your computer. Now close your eyes. Is the computer still there? How do you know?

The computer does not cease to exist when you cease to see it. The image of the computer is not what exists. What makes your computer exist is the fact that it's possible to know that it does. Knowledge is the essence of reality, not sensations.

Abstraction is knowledge. And if you don't know what knowledge is, I can't possibly explain it to you.

In addition, if our senses are a creation of our minds, then how does mathematics express something that does not exist?

Because the relationships of mathematics can be applied to anything you can count, including creations of your mind. That's why you can know that five apples plus three apples equals eight apples without having to count real apples. 5 + 3 = 8 applies to real apples just as well as it does to imaginary ones.

Or how does something explain nothing?

Simply put, because "nothing" can always be explained. It's the human mind's natural tendency to believe that nothingness is the natural state, out of which everything comes, to which everything must return.

"0 = 0". That's what math is all about. We believe in mathematical explanations as strongly as we believe in nothingness itself. They are, after all, one and the same thing.

• universe and man - eventhorizen - July 17, 2003 - 18:29 UTC
• free association - dolphin - July 20, 2003 - 12:34 UTC