By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Within this widest concept of object, and specifically within the concept of individual object, Objects and phenomena stand in contrast with each other.
The idea is that the object has a language unto itself.
To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.
The first type of abstraction from objects I shall refer to as simple abstraction, but the second type I shall call reflective abstraction, using this term in a double sense.
What a thing is and what it means are not separate, the former being physical and the latter mental as we are accustomed to believe.
The perception of what a thing is and the perception of what it means are not separate, either.
On the one hand, there are individual actions such as throwing, pushing, touching, rubbing. It is these individual actions that give rise most of the time to abstraction from objects.
Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities.
The object of pure physics is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure mathematics that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.
To define a thing is to substitute the definition for the thing itself.