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120-461: Külpe studied as a doctoral student and assistant to Wundt at the University of Leipzig , though his ideas differed from Wundt as he developed his own research (Boring, 1961). Külpe made significant contributions to the field of psychology, some of which are still relevant, including the systematic experimental introspection, imageless thoughts, mental sets, and abstraction. In August 1862, Oswald Külpe

240-728: A concept of that feature. The notion of abstraction is important to understanding some philosophical controversies surrounding empiricism and the problem of universals . It has also recently become popular in formal logic under predicate abstraction . Another philosophical tool for the discussion of abstraction is thought space. John Locke defined abstraction in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding : 'So words are used to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas, which are taken from particular things; but if every particular idea that we take in had its own special name, there would be no end to names. To prevent this,

360-592: A consortium of five European universities: Leipzig University, the London School of Economics , University of Vienna , University of Wroclaw and Roskilde University . In the field of anthropology, the university is cooperating with the Leipzig Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology . In 1995, the Leibniz-Institute for Jewish History and Culture named after Simon Dubnow was formed as

480-453: A detective or philosopher/scientist/engineer might seek to learn about something, at progressively deeper levels of detail, to solve a crime or a puzzle. In philosophical terminology , abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects . But an idea can be symbolized . Typically, abstraction is used in the arts as a synonym for abstract art in general. Strictly speaking, it refers to art unconcerned with

600-516: A devoted teacher and administrator. In fact, most of his prestige comes from his dedication to his students and the hard work he directed towards his teaching duties. Though he published many of his own personal works, Külpe never penned any of the traditional Würzburg papers, so it is difficult to specify his personal interpretation of the work of the school. However, in many of his personal works he often anticipated notions that were later discussed by his students. Külpe managed to exert his influence on

720-416: A first prize was not awarded by the jury. A lobby with partial support of the provincial government called for the rebuilding of St. Paul's Church and Augusteum . This caused the resistance of the university leadership, the majority of the students and population of Leipzig. On 24 March 2004 a jury chose a design by Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat , which was well received by almost all parties. He recalls

840-531: A foundation for imageless thought research that is still relevant and debated within the field of psychology today. In the early 1900s Külpe performed experiments on the concept of abstraction at the Würzburg School. Külpe defined abstraction as a process in which one focuses on certain aspects of reality while ignoring others. In one famous experiment Külpe instructed participants to observe a display of numbers, letters, colors, and shapes. For example, if he told

960-639: A founder of modern physical chemistry ) taught at Leipzig. Leipzig University was one of the first German universities to allow women to register as "guest students". At its general assembly in 1873, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein  [ de ] thanked the University of Leipzig and Prague for allowing women to attend as guest students. This was the year that the first woman in Germany obtained her JD, Johanna von Evreinov . During

1080-565: A framework (categorical concepts related to computing problems) from specific instances which implement details. This means that the program code can be written so that code does not have to depend on the specific details of supporting applications, operating system software, or hardware, but on a categorical concept of the solution. A solution to the problem can then be integrated into the system framework with minimal additional work. This allows programmers to take advantage of another programmer's work, while requiring only an abstract understanding of

1200-472: A general name that is applicable to any existing thing that fits that abstract idea.' (2.11.9) Carl Jung 's definition of abstraction broadened its scope beyond the thinking process to include exactly four mutually exclusive, different complementary psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. Together they form a structural totality of the differentiating abstraction process. Abstraction operates in one of these functions when it excludes

1320-618: A manuscript of 16th century music, is housed in the Leipzig University library, as well as the Papyrus Ebers . The Leipzig University Library also owns parts of the Codex Sinaiticus , a Bible manuscript from the 4th century, brought from Sinai in 1843 by Constantin von Tischendorf . Papyrus Ebers is the longest and oldest surviving medical manuscript from ancient Egypt, dated to around 1600 BC. The Codex contains large parts of

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1440-448: A material process. Alfred Sohn-Rethel (1899–1990) asked: "Can there be abstraction other than by thought?" He used the example of commodity abstraction to show that abstraction occurs in practice as people create systems of abstract exchange that extend beyond the immediate physicality of the object and yet have real and immediate consequences. This work was extended through the 'Constitutive Abstraction' approach of writers associated with

1560-488: A particular place and time. However, in the secondary sense of the term 'abstraction', this physical object can carry materially abstracting processes. For example, record-keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in containers. According to Schmandt-Besserat 1981 , these clay containers contained tokens,

1680-551: A particular property (e.g., good ). Questions about the properties of things are then propositions about predicates, which propositions remain to be evaluated by the investigator. In the graph 1 below , the graphical relationships like the arrows joining boxes and ellipses might denote predicates. Abstractions sometimes have ambiguous referents . For example, " happiness " can mean experiencing various positive emotions, but can also refer to life satisfaction and subjective well-being . Likewise, " architecture " refers not only to

1800-562: A research institution related to the university. Since 2008 the university is also home to one of Germany's few Confucius Institutes . The institute is based on an agreement of June 2006 between the university administration and representatives of the Chinese Embassy to establish a Confucius Institute in cooperation with the Renmin University and the "National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language". Leipzig University has been

1920-461: A result of his experiment, Külpe determined that visual perception is determined not only by external stimulation but also by Aufgabe , which is another word for the task or directive. Since he varied the Aufgabe (task) slightly in each session of the experiment, he was able to find a correlation between the range of attention and degree of consciousness. He found that the wider one's span of attention,

2040-439: A specific cat, to semantic abstractions such as the "idea" of a CAT, to classes of objects such as "mammals" and even categories such as " object " as opposed to "action". Non-existent things in any particular place and time are often seen as abstract. By contrast, instances, or members, of such an abstract thing might exist in many different places and times. Those abstract things are then said to be multiply instantiated , in

2160-449: A student of Georg Elias Müller , where it is said he received the idea for his doctoral dissertation. Following his time with Müller, he returned to Leipzig to study under Wundt as his assistant in the autumn of 1886. On 12 October 1887 Külpe was awarded his PhD. He titled his thesis “Zur Theorie der sinnlichen Gefühle”, or in English, The Theory of Sensual Feeling. This is a topic that Külpe

2280-468: A thriving student life with a large number of student run bars, sports clubs and recreational facilities for students. The student body in Leipzig is diverse, not only due to the broad spectrum of subjects at the university but also because of the other higher education institutions in the city. The Moritzbastei is the largest student club in Germany, it is part of the historic city fortifications of Leipzig and

2400-554: Is an elementary methodological tool in several disciplines of social science. These disciplines have definite and different concepts of "man" that highlight those aspects of man and his behaviour by idealization that are relevant for the given human science . For example, homo sociologicus is the man as sociology abstracts and idealizes it, depicting man as a social being. Moreover, we could talk about homo cyber sapiens (the man who can extend his biologically determined intelligence thanks to new technologies), or homo creativus (who

2520-620: Is another notable idea born from the Würzburg school that is still relevant and widely accepted in psychology today. Perhaps the most famous psychological contribution to come out of the Würzburg Laboratory was related to Külpe's beliefs in philosophical realism. The work focused on the idea of imageless thought, which is the belief that there is an objective significance that can be found within experiences that are not necessarily associated with specific words, symbols or signs. Külpe anticipated

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2640-472: Is critical. Külpe believed that contents, on the other hand, are analyzable in consciousness, observable in introspection, and relatively stable. He also cautioned against speculating about what is occurring physiologically at the time of thinking. Instead, Külpe encouraged the finding and improving of facts on the subject. That is, ignore the physiological processes occurring as part of the thinking process but instead introspect upon what you know has occurred. As

2760-532: Is famous for its atmosphere and large number of cultural events. The university is home to the Leipzig Academic Orchestra and the University Choir of Leipzig. There are numerous courses offered in performing arts every semester and a dance festival is organised by students once a year. In the field of sports, the university offers training opportunities and courses in almost all disciplines. During

2880-469: Is now constitutively and materially more abstract than at the time when princes ruled as the embodiment of extended power'. The way that physical objects, like rocks and trees, have being differs from the way that properties of abstract concepts or relations have being, for example the way the concrete , particular , individuals pictured in picture 1 exist differs from the way the concepts illustrated in graph 1 exist. That difference accounts for

3000-426: Is simply creative). Abstraction (combined with Weberian idealization ) plays a crucial role in economics - hence abstractions such as "the market" and the generalized concept of " business ". Breaking away from directly experienced reality was a common trend in 19th-century sciences (especially physics ), and this was the effort which fundamentally determined the way economics tried (and still tries) to approach

3120-471: Is that highly abstract concepts are more difficult to learn, and might require a degree of mathematical maturity and experience before they can be assimilated. In music, the term abstraction can be used to describe improvisatory approaches to interpretation, and may sometimes indicate abandonment of tonality . Atonal music has no key signature, and is characterized by the exploration of internal numeric relationships. A recent meta-analysis suggests that

3240-418: Is the outcome of this process — a concept that acts as a common noun for all subordinate concepts and connects any related concepts as a group , field , or category . Conceptual abstractions may be made by filtering the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon , selecting only those aspects which are relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to

3360-500: Is the principal conclusion I would draw from my experiments. In connection there with I define abstraction as the process by which the logically or psychologically effective is separated from the logically or psychologically ineffective. The effective partial contents are positively abstracted for thinking and ideation. The ineffective are those from which the abstraction is made. For our consciousness, therefore, there are abstract ideas, for psychical reality there are only concrete ideas. At

3480-439: Is the ultimate and common feature of all bodies. Neoclassical economists created the indefinitely abstract notion of homo economicus by following the same procedure. Economists abstract from all individual and personal qualities in order to get to those characteristics that embody the essence of economic activity. Eventually, it is the substance of the economic man that they try to grasp. Any characteristic beyond it only disturbs

3600-468: The University of Vienna as well. By 1896 Külpe had founded a laboratory at the University of Würzburg and remained there for fifteen years. He received a private endowment and he managed to make it one of the foremost psychological institutes second only to the University of Leipzig. At the Würzburg school , a key area of focus was the development and formation of concepts. Külpe and his students expanded

3720-462: The agent and CAT:Elsie depicts an example of an is-a relationship, as does the arrow between the location and the MAT . The arrows between the gerund / present participle SITTING and the nouns agent and location express the diagram 's basic relationship; "agent is SITTING on location" ; Elsie is an instance of CAT . Although the description sitting-on (graph 1) is more abstract than

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3840-408: The commodity abstraction recognizes a parallel process. The state (polity) as both concept and material practice exemplifies the two sides of this process of abstraction. Conceptually, 'the current concept of the state is an abstraction from the much more concrete early-modern use as the standing or status of the prince, his visible estates'. At the same time, materially, the 'practice of statehood

3960-467: The decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and first decade of 20th century together with some other German universities Leipzig University turned into one of the centers of higher education for state administrations and elites of newly independent Balkan states ( Romania , Greece , Bulgaria and Serbia ) educating over 5,500 students from the region in 1859–1909 period. Until

4080-407: The human brain suggests that the left and right hemispheres differ in their handling of abstraction. For example, one meta-analysis reviewing human brain lesions has shown a left hemisphere bias during tool usage. Abstraction in philosophy is the process (or, to some, the alleged process) in concept formation of recognizing some set of common features in individuals , and on that basis forming

4200-409: The ontological usefulness of the word "abstract". The word applies to properties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, they do not exist in space or time, but that instances of them can exist, potentially in many different places and times. A physical object (a possible referent of a concept or word) is considered concrete (not abstract) if it is a particular individual that occupies

4320-491: The themes below . Thinking in abstractions is considered by anthropologists , archaeologists , and sociologists to be one of the key traits in modern human behaviour , which is believed to have developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. Its development is likely to have been closely connected with the development of human language , which (whether spoken or written) appears to both involve and facilitate abstract thinking. Abstraction involves induction of ideas or

4440-587: The 1912 publication of Psychologie und Medizin and Philosophie der Gegenwart. University of Leipzig Leipzig University (German: Universität Leipzig ), in Leipzig in Saxony , Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Elector of Saxony and his brother William II, Margrave of Meissen , and originally comprised

4560-844: The 19th century. Like many European universities, the University of Leipzig was structured into colleges ( collegia ) responsible for organising accommodation and collegiate lecturing. Among the colleges of Leipzig were the Small College, the Large College, the Red College ( Rotes Kolleg , also known as the New College), the college of our Lady ( Frauenkolleg ) and the Pauliner-College ( Pauliner Kolleg ). There were also private residential halls ( bursen , see English 'bursaries'). The colleges had jurisdiction over their members. The college structure

4680-465: The Christmas of 1915, Külpe suffered a bout of influenza. He recovered to the point where he was able to return to his university teachings. He was, however, suffering from a heart infection, which he succumbed to on 30 December, after a few days of illness. It was said that had he lived longer, Külpe likely would have accepted the request to succeed Friederich Jodl and establish a psychological laboratory at

4800-593: The Far East are strong as well, e.g. there are cooperations with leading institutions such as Moscow's Lomonosov University and Renmin University in Beijing. There are several International Master's programs: American Studies, Global Studies, Sustainable Development Studies, SEPT (MBA in SME Promotion) and one Bachelor/Master's/Ph.D. program (International Physics Studies Program ) taught in English. American Studies Leipzig

4920-468: The Gestalt school. Distinct from the view of Wundt, the Würzburg school developed an innovational, holistic view, where the focus was on studying both act and content. This research established a strong foundation for the Gestalt psychologists who were to come. This research was not the only notable contributions to psychology made by the Würzburg school. The emphasis on motivation, and the role that it plays in

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5040-834: The Journal Arena . Two books that have taken this theme of the abstraction of social relations as an organizing process in human history are Nation Formation: Towards a Theory of Abstract Community (1996) and an associated volume published in 2006, Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In . These books argue that a nation is an abstract community bringing together strangers who will never meet as such; thus constituting materially real and substantial, but abstracted and mediated relations. The books suggest that contemporary processes of globalization and mediatization have contributed to materially abstracting relations between people, with major consequences for how humans live their lives . One can readily argue that abstraction

5160-599: The Modern Psychology of Thinking . In this book, he was looking back upon his focus on the systematic experimental introspection method. He believed that before systematic experimental introspection existed, research on thought was incomplete. He also believed that having the subject report only on sensations, feelings, and presentations in thought research was severely limiting in that it did not provide an acceptable opportunity to identify what could be considered neither sensation, feeling, nor presentation. Once they were given

5280-622: The Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2022. The university was modelled on the University of Prague , from which the German-speaking faculty members withdrew to Leipzig after the Jan Hus crisis and the Decree of Kutná Hora . The Alma mater Lipsiensis opened in 1409, after it had been officially chartered by Pope Alexander V in his Bull of Acknowledgment on (9 September of that year). Its first rector

5400-703: The Old Testament and a complete New Testament in ancient Greek, and is one of the most important known manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament. It is the oldest fully preserved copy of the New Testament. Some of the University Library locations in Leipzig are: In addition to the university library, one of the two centers of the German National Library is based at Leipzig,

5520-671: The Würzburg laboratory, Külpe also established first-rate psychological institutes at the University of Bonn and the University of Munich . It was his innovative experimental psychology methods and success in establishing these psychological institutes that led to Külpe being referred to as the second founder of experimental psychology on German soil. Though Külpe and Wundt differed on matters of principle, Külpe regarded Wundt highly and published three tributes to him. In his later years, Külpe began to focus less on psychological issues and more on his interests in philosophical problems such as esthetics, where it seemed his true passion lay. Just before

5640-412: The abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient. This is true for all verbal/abstract communication. For example, many different things can be red . Likewise, many things sit on surfaces (as in picture 1 , to the right). The property of redness and the relation sitting-on are therefore abstractions of those objects. Specifically,

5760-608: The actual task, instead of the stimulus directs the thinking process. This mechanism became known as the mental set . Specifically the mental set refers to an innate tendency to respond a certain way. Eventually the mental set was seen as a factor that could account for a large portion of the variation in the ways that people solve problems. Oswald Külpe's books and published works cover a variety of subject matter, which impacted his interest in psychology . Examples of his publication topics include logic , aesthetics , philosophy, and epistemology . His first major book, published in 1893,

5880-508: The annual Leipzig book fair, the university library and other university institutions organise public events for authors. Leipzig University has produced many notable individuals and noble laureates. Some famous people affiliated with Leipzig include: Abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal ( real or concrete ) signifiers, first principles , or other methods. "An abstraction"

6000-563: The approach of abstraction (going from particular facts collected into one general idea). Newton (1642–1727) derived the motion of the planets from Copernicus ' (1473–1543) simplification, that the Sun is the center of the Solar System ; Kepler (1571–1630) compressed thousands of measurements into one expression to finally conclude that Mars moves in an elliptical orbit about the Sun; Galileo (1564–1642) repeated one hundred specific experiments into

6120-574: The beginning of the Second World War , Leipzig University attracted a number of renowned scholars and later Nobel Prize laureates , including Paul Ehrlich, Felix Bloch, Werner Heisenberg and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Many of the university's alumni became important scientists. Under Nazi rule many degrees of Jews were cancelled. Some were later reinstated as Karl-Marx University degrees by the GDR. Noteworthy Nazis, such as Max Clara (chair of anatomy) taught at

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6240-480: The collections of which are open to use for academic research. The original four facilities were the Faculty of Arts, Theology, Medicine, and Law. As of November 2021, the university comprises the following 14 faculties with institutes and centers associated with each one. Today, the university has 14 faculties. With over 29,000 students, it is Saxony's second-largest university. There are now more than 150 institutes and

6360-427: The color red . That definition, however, suffers from the difficulty of deciding which things are real (i.e. which things exist in reality). For example, it is difficult to agree to whether concepts like God , the number three , and goodness are real, abstract, or both. An approach to resolving such difficulty is to use predicates as a general term for whether things are variously real, abstract, concrete, or of

6480-514: The colors. The participant that was unable to visualize the colors had no cognitive deficits, which lead Külpe to his conclusion that recognition is independent of remembrance Külpe believed that the research on thought processes up to that point, including Wundt's study on the associations between thoughts and images, had been incomplete. Influenced by his interest in philosophy, Külpe believed that there were certain sensations, feelings, or presentations that could neither be described nor associated in

6600-561: The concept "cat" or the concept "telephone". Although the concepts "cat" and "telephone" are abstractions , they are not abstract in the sense of the objects in graph 1 below . We might look at other graphs, in a progression from cat to mammal to animal , and see that animal is more abstract than mammal ; but on the other hand mammal is a harder idea to express, certainly in relation to marsupial or monotreme . Perhaps confusingly, some philosophies refer to tropes (instances of properties) as abstract particulars —e.g.,

6720-454: The concept of thought in his book is interesting because the Würzburg school greatly researched mental set and imageless thought. He once wrote to a colleague , however, that the concepts behind the book were, “the source of the investigations in the psychology of thinking.” So, he had anticipated the idea of imageless thought in this publication. Külpe was still under the shadow of Wundt during this time. In fact, only one of his distinctive views

6840-414: The conceptual diagram graph 1 identifies only three boxes, two ellipses, and four arrows (and their five labels), whereas the picture 1 shows much more pictorial detail, with the scores of implied relationships as implicit in the picture rather than with the nine explicit details in the graph. Graph 1 details some explicit relationships between the objects of the diagram. For example, the arrow between

6960-418: The contents are the thoughts themselves, whereas the acts or functions are the thinking process. To Külpe, function and content are different and independently variable. He proposed that the acts or functions are not analyzable in consciousness, are relatively unstable, and can only be observed and known after an event has occurred. In order to observe them, Külpe's process of systematic experimental introspection

7080-456: The design of safe, functional buildings, but also to elements of creation and innovation which aim at elegant solutions to construction problems, to the use of space, and to the attempt to evoke an emotional response in the builders, owners, viewers and users of the building. Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in

7200-411: The destruction of most of the buildings and the majority of its libraries, this kernel is represented by the professoriate alone. This is what must be preserved as the great repository of value in the university. By the end of the war 60 per cent of the university's buildings and 70 per cent of its books had been destroyed. The university reopened after the war on 5 February 1946, but it was affected by

7320-442: The distinction between "abstract" and " concrete ". In this sense the process of abstraction entails the identification of similarities between objects, and the process of associating these objects with an abstraction (which is itself an object ). Chains of abstractions can be construed , moving from neural impulses arising from sensory perception to basic abstractions such as color or shape , to experiential abstractions such as

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7440-452: The economic aspects of social life. It is abstraction we meet in the case of both Newton's physics and the neoclassical theory, since the goal was to grasp the unchangeable and timeless essence of phenomena. For example, Newton created the concept of the material point by following the abstraction method so that he abstracted from the dimension and shape of any perceptible object, preserving only inertial and translational motion. Material point

7560-481: The elementary thinking method. For example, in situations where participants were asked to provide a superordinate category, or superior group within a classification system, for birds, they were more likely to respond by saying, ‘Animal’ than a specific bird such as a ‘hummingbird.’ As a result, Külpe and the students at the Würzburg laboratory concluded that behavior such as the above example could not be explained according to associationistic logic. They determined that

7680-462: The field of psychology via his students. Max Wertheimer , the founder of Gestalt psychology was undoubtedly his most famous student. However other noteworthy students include Narziß Ach and Henry Watt , both of whom worked on the concept of mental set; Robert Morris Ogden , who played a major role in introducing Gestalt psychology to the United States; and Kurt Koffka , one of the founders of

7800-464: The four scholastic faculties. Since its inception, the university has engaged in teaching and research for over 600 years without interruption. Famous alumni include Angela Merkel , Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Leopold von Ranke , Friedrich Nietzsche , Robert Schumann , Richard Wagner , Tycho Brahe , Georgius Agricola . The university is associated with ten Nobel laureates , most recently with Svante Pääbo who won

7920-630: The graphic image of a cat sitting on a mat (picture 1), the delineation of abstract things from concrete things is somewhat ambiguous; this ambiguity or vagueness is characteristic of abstraction. Thus something as simple as a newspaper might be specified to six levels, as in Douglas Hofstadter 's illustration of that ambiguity, with a progression from abstract to concrete in Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979): An abstraction can thus encapsulate each of these levels of detail with no loss of generality . But perhaps

8040-518: The group, Herbert Belter , was executed in 1951 in Moscow. The German Democratic Republic was created in 1949, and in 1953 for Karl Marx Year the university was renamed by its government the Karl Marx University, Leipzig after Karl Marx . In 1968, the partly damaged Augusteum , including Johanneum and Albertinum and the intact Paulinerkirche , were demolished to make way for a redevelopment of

8160-543: The home of the first German chair for Chinese and East Asian Languages in the 19th century, which later became the Institute of East Asian Studies, which still exists today (see Georg von der Gabelentz ). Leipzig University is recognized in several university ranking systems. In the 2024 QS World University Rankings , the university was ranked 479th globally, placing it within the top 30 (29th) nationally. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), for 2023, positioned

8280-579: The implementation of another's work, apart from the problem that it solves. Abstractions and levels of abstraction play an important role in the theory of general semantics originated by Alfred Korzybski . Anatol Rapoport wrote "Abstracting is a mechanism by which an infinite variety of experiences can be mapped on short noises (words)." Francis Fukuyama defines history as "a deliberate attempt of abstraction in which we separate out important from unimportant events". Researchers in linguistics frequently apply abstraction so as to allow an analysis of

8400-427: The law of falling bodies. An abstraction can be seen as a compression process, mapping multiple different pieces of constituent data to a single piece of abstract data; based on similarities in the constituent data, for example, many different physical cats map to the abstraction "CAT". This conceptual scheme emphasizes the inherent equality of both constituent and abstract data, thus avoiding problems arising from

8520-464: The lectures of Wilhem Wundt . In these he became familiar with the blossoming field of psychology, the area upon which his life work eventually would be focused. In between 1882 and 1883, Külpe studied at the University of Berlin , where he attended the lectures of Heinrich von Treitschke, a nationalist German historian. Following his studies in Berlin, he transferred to Göttingen, where he spent two years as

8640-577: The literal depiction of things from the visible world—it can, however, refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art. Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory. Later still, abstraction

8760-462: The lower one's degree of consciousness is to any specific aspect, and vice versa. He concluded that there is a limited amount of energy driving attention and that this limitation is constant. He also concluded that the abstraction process is based on apprehension, rather than sensational differences in presentation, and that these two concepts are distinct. Külpe and his Würzburg associates also used his abstraction experiments to reject associationism as

8880-493: The meaning and saw connections without receiving any real help from occasionally occurring imagery.” Die Realisierung, a three-volume text composed of Külpe's lectures, was published from 1912 through 1923. Other notable publications include the publication of a monograph , Zur Katagorienlehre , which was presented in the year of his untimely death, 1915, before the Bavarian Academy of Science. Other books by Külpe include

9000-432: The mind makes particular ideas received from particular things become general; which it does by considering them as they are in the mind—mental appearances—separate from all other existences, and from the circumstances of real existence, such as time, place, and so on. This procedure is called abstraction. In it, an idea taken from a particular thing becomes a general representative of all of the same kind, and its name becomes

9120-409: The mind with an image. Once they were given the opportunity to objectively self-observe and describe what was neither sensation, feeling, nor presentation, yet was still a thought process Külpe and his colleagues identified the need for new definitions and concepts aside from those that already exist. For example, Külpe and his students, A.M. Mayer and J. Orth identified that following the presentation of

9240-408: The more general idea of a ball selects only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, excluding but not eliminating the other phenomenal and cognitive characteristics of that particular ball. In a type–token distinction , a type (e.g., a 'ball') is more abstract than its tokens (e.g., 'that leather soccer ball'). Abstraction in its secondary use is a material process , discussed in

9360-420: The most difficult hour of its more than five-hundred-year history has bonded the professors with each other and with the students. The special task of repairing the damage caused by air attacks has now broadened out to the more general duty to save the continuity of our university and preserve its substance, at the very least its indestructible kernel, through the crisis that has now reached its fullest stage. After

9480-499: The notion of imageless thought in his early work as evidenced in Grundriss der Psychologie . He used an experiment to demonstrate that our ability to recognize something one has seen before is unrelated to whether or not we can remember an image of it. In his demonstrative experiment he took participants into a darkened room and asked them to visualize colors as he called them out. In all situations but one participants were able to visualize

9600-463: The opportunity to objectively self-observe and describe what was neither sensation, feeling, nor presentation, yet was still a thought process; Külpe and his colleagues identified the need for new definitions and concepts aside from those that already exist. As Külpe wrote: “The subjects began to speak in the language of life and assign less importance to the presentations for their inner world. They knew and thought, they judged and understood, they grasped

9720-460: The outer form of the St. Paul's Church (today called Paulinum ) and Augusteum, and abstracted the original building complex. Renovations began in the summer of 2005. In 2008 the university was able to prevail in the nationwide "Initiative of Excellence" of Germany and it was granted the graduate school " BuildMoNa : Leipzig School of Natural Sciences – Building with Molecules and Nano-objects". In addition,

9840-458: The participants beforehand to report on the numbers observed, then they were unable to describe the letters, colors, or shapes with any accuracy after the experiment. If he told participants to describe the colors, then with subsequent questioning they were unable to describe the letters, numbers, or shapes. The item people could describe with the highest level of accuracy was always the item they were instructed to observe. These results indicated that

9960-426: The particular redness of a particular apple is an abstract particular . This is similar to qualia and sumbebekos . Still retaining the primary meaning of ' abstrere ' or 'to draw away from', the abstraction of money, for example, works by drawing away from the particular value of things allowing completely incommensurate objects to be compared (see the section on 'Physicality' below). Karl Marx 's writing on

10080-503: The phenomena of language at the desired level of detail. A commonly used abstraction, the phoneme , abstracts speech sounds in such a way as to neglect details that cannot serve to differentiate meaning. Other analogous kinds of abstractions (sometimes called " emic units ") considered by linguists include morphemes , graphemes , and lexemes . Abstraction also arises in the relation between syntax , semantics , and pragmatics . Pragmatics involves considerations that make reference to

10200-545: The possibility of what he refers to as a mind substance. He theorized that both matter and mind are abstractions from thought experience. He believed that if matter required the idea of substance, why would mind not require substance as well. The book is less than 350 pages and went through seven editions and four translations, including into English by W. B. Pillsbury and Titchener under the title Introduction to Philosophy . In 1912, Külpe published Über die moderne Psychologie des Denkens , which translates into English as On

10320-423: The rational, logical qualities ... Abstract feeling does the same with ... its feeling-values. ... I put abstract feelings on the same level as abstract thoughts. ... Abstract sensation would be aesthetic as opposed to sensuous sensation and abstract intuition would be symbolic as opposed to fantastic intuition . (Jung, [1921] (1971): par. 678). Social theorists deal with abstraction both as an ideational and as

10440-525: The renovation project is 140 million euros. The new buildings were scheduled to be completed in 2009/2010, in time for the university's 600th anniversary celebrations. Besides the faculties and other teaching institutions, several other bodies serve the university: the University Library, a university archive and administration, numerous museums (e.g. the Museum for Music Instruments and the Museum of Ancient Egypt) and

10560-412: The results of thinking was stressed at the school and is still relevant today. Today, it is still a widely accepted principle that motivation is a variable that affects thinking outcomes. Another contribution from the school was the theory that the behaviour of the ‘id’ depended not only on the element within the thinker's consciousness, but that there were unconscious determinants of behaviour as well. This

10680-403: The same time the old controversy between nominalism and realism approaches its solution." In another letter, Külpe identified a key distinction in his ideas as compared to Wundt's ideas. Külpe differentiates 'thought' from 'thinking'. Thoughts are 'contents’, he argues, whereas thinking in its various forms such as meaning, judging, and concluding can be considered acts or functions. In this case,

10800-411: The sense of picture 1 , picture 2 , etc., shown below . It is not sufficient, however, to define abstract ideas as those that can be instantiated and to define abstraction as the movement in the opposite direction to instantiation. Doing so would make the concepts "cat" and "telephone" abstract ideas since despite their varying appearances, a particular cat or a particular telephone is an instance of

10920-496: The simultaneous influence of the other functions and other irrelevancies, such as emotion. Abstraction requires selective use of this structural split of abilities in the psyche. The opposite of abstraction is concretism . Abstraction is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types . There is an abstract thinking , just as there is abstract feeling , sensation and intuition . Abstract thinking singles out

11040-435: The stimulus word “meter”, an indescribable conscious process occurred that led to the subject responding with the word “trochee”. This, they proposed, indicated that Wundt was wrong in his belief that all events in the thought process have either associated or direct images. Their research, although imperfect, using the systematic experimental introspection methods that Külpe and the students had developed and refined, established

11160-423: The subjects of the experiment would abstract the requested features, while at the same time remaining “unconscious” to all of the other present features. Külpe wrote in a letter about the conclusions from these experiments: "The old doctrine of an inner sense with the involved idea of a distinction between the reality of consciousness and objectivity must now have its opportune renewal in the domain of psychology. This

11280-542: The synthesis of particular facts into one general theory about something. It is the opposite of specification , which is the analysis or breaking-down of a general idea or abstraction into concrete facts. Abstraction can be illustrated by Francis Bacon 's Novum Organum (1620), a book of modern scientific philosophy written in the late Jacobean era of England to encourage modern thinkers to collect specific facts before making any generalizations. Bacon used and promoted induction as an abstraction tool; it complemented but

11400-412: The time, and a basic text for German university students of not just general philosophy, but psychology, logic, ethics, and aesthetics as well. In the book, Külpe also looks at the relations of the body and the mind, and in doing so, takes a dualistic position. Külpe also gives a clearly describes the relationship between physical and psychical, or in other words natural science and psychology. He identifies

11520-577: The total of which were the count of objects being transferred. The containers thus served as something of a bill of lading or an accounts book. In order to avoid breaking open the containers for the count, marks were placed on the outside of the containers. These physical marks, in other words, acted as material abstractions of a materially abstract process of accounting, using conceptual abstractions (numbers) to communicate its meaning. Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experiences, like

11640-566: The uniformity imposed on social institutions in the Soviet occupation zone . In 1948 the freely elected student council was disbanded and replaced by Free German Youth members. The chairman of the Student Council, Wolfgang Natonek , and other members were arrested and imprisoned, but the university was also a nucleus of resistance. Thus began the Belter group, with flyers for free elections. The head of

11760-416: The university and were appointed to positions with great authority. The university was kept open throughout World War II, even after the destruction of its buildings. During the war the acting rector, Erich Maschke , described the continuation of the university in a memo on 11 May 1945, announcing the vote for a new rector: Since 4 December 1943 a fixed determination not to abandon the Leipzig University in

11880-503: The university hospital. The university's Leipzig Botanical Garden , the second-oldest botanical garden in Europe. was established in 1542. The university's Musical Instrument Museum includes one of the world's three surviving pianos built by Bartolomeo Cristofori , the piano's inventor. Five other Cristofori instruments are included in the museum's collections. Key Central institutions of the university are The University Library of Leipzig

12000-496: The university in the range of 201–300 on the global scale and somewhere between 10th and 19th within the country. The university is ranked 18th in Germany, 98th in Europe, and 264th in the world by the web-based Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, a ranking evaluating universities' scientific online publications. Leipzig university has a large body of international students. In winter term 2017, out of its 28,797 students about 11% (3,174) were foreign students. Leipzig has

12120-418: The university is spread across 38 locations in Leipzig. The main buildings in the city center (district Mitte ) are still located on the same land plots as the earliest university buildings in 1409. The university's buildings in the center of Leipzig underwent substantial reconstruction from 2005, the new university's main building being drafted by Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat . The estimated total cost for

12240-582: The university offers 190 study programs leading to Bachelor's degrees , Master's degrees, Staatsexamen , Diplom (equivalent to master's degree) and Ph.D.s . The university offers a number of courses in English and other foreign languages, and there are several programs which have been specially designed for foreign students. Exchange partner universities include the universities of Arizona , Oklahoma , Houston , Alberta , Ohio , and Edinburgh . Traditionally contacts to universities in Eastern Europe and

12360-572: The university was able to receive grants from the Saxon excellence initiative for the "Life" project – a project that tries to explore common diseases more effectively. Also in 2008 the "Bach Archive" was associated with the university. In 2009, the Leipzig University celebrated its 600th anniversary with over 300 scientific and cultural lectures and exhibitions, reflecting the role of the university's research and teaching from its beginning. The university's urban campus comprises several locations. All in all,

12480-464: The university, carried out between 1973 and 1978. The dominant building of the university was the University Tower (now City-Hochhaus Leipzig ), built between 1968 and 1972 in the form of an open book. In 1991, following the reunification of Germany , the university's name was restored to the original Leipzig University ( Alma mater lipsiensis ). The reconstruction of the University Library, which

12600-574: The use of introspection and were the first to research thought processes using experimental methods (Watson, 1978). In doing so, they developed and improved the process of what became known as systematic experimental introspection, which was the retrospective reporting of the experiences of a subject after performing a complex task involving thinking, remembering, or judging. Abstraction experiments were especially important in distinguishing relevant features of objects for individuals in differing stages of development. Throughout his time at Würzburg he acted as

12720-677: The user of the language; semantics considers expressions and what they denote (the designata ) abstracted from the language user; and syntax considers only the expressions themselves, abstracted from the designata. Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying structures, patterns or properties of a mathematical concept or object, removing any dependence on real-world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena. The advantages of abstraction in mathematics are: The main disadvantage of abstraction

12840-424: The verbal system has a greater engagement with abstract concepts when the perceptual system is more engaged in processing concrete concepts. This is because abstract concepts elicit greater brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus compared to concrete concepts which elicit greater activity in the posterior cingulate, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Other research into

12960-540: The years he devoted an immense amount of time to his work. It was said that Külpe would joke that science was his bride. He learned Russian during his training at the Gymnasium in Libau , where he graduated in 1879. He then taught history and other subjects at a boys’ school for a year and a half before relocating to Leipzig. In 1881 he enrolled in the University of Leipzig. He focused his studies mostly on history, however he attended

13080-411: Was Grundriss der Psychologie . The handbook summarized a comprehensive amount of experimental research at the time, including new research on reaction time, contributions to psychophysics, Carl Stumpf's research into tonal fusions, and Hermann Ebbinghaus’ research on memory. He defined psychology as, “the facts of experience," as the book concerned itself strictly with scientific fact. The lack of focus on

13200-565: Was Johannes Otto von Münsterberg . From its foundation, the Paulinerkirche served as the university church. After the Reformation , the church and the monastery buildings were donated to the university in 1544. In order to secure independent and sustainable funding, the university was endowed with the lordship over nine villages east of Leipzig (university villages). It kept this status for nearly 400 years until land reforms were carried out in

13320-505: Was abandoned later and today only the names survive. During the first centuries, the university grew slowly and was a rather regional institution. This changed, however, during the 19th century when the university became a world-class institution of higher education and research. At the end of the 19th century, important scholars such as Bernhard Windscheid (one of the fathers of the German Civil Code) and Wilhelm Ostwald (viewed as

13440-638: Was awarded three international professorships: The Fulbright-Leipzig Chair for American Studies, the DAAD Professorship for American and International Studies, and the Picador Guest Professorship for Literature. It is also the home of Aspeers – Emerging voices in American Studies , a graduate-level peer-reviewed scholarly journal for American studies . Erasmus Mundus Global Studies is an interdisciplinary, research-based Master offered by

13560-625: Was born in Kandau, Courland , one of the Baltic providences of the Russian Empire. However, his father, a notary, and his mother were German. Consequently, Külpe's native tongue was German. He had a brother, Alfons Külpe who was a clergyman, and a sister who was a nurse. He lived a large portion of his life with his older, unmarried cousins, Ottillie and Marie Külpe, at their residences in Leipzig, Würzburg, Bonn, and Munich. He never married either and throughout

13680-462: Was distinct from the ancient deductive -thinking approach that had dominated the intellectual world since the times of Greek philosophers like Thales , Anaximander , and Aristotle . Thales ( c.  624 –546 BCE) believed that everything in the universe comes from one main substance, water. He deduced or specified from a general idea, "everything is water," to the specific forms of water such as ice, snow, fog, and rivers. Modern scientists used

13800-653: Was established in 1543. It is one of the oldest German university libraries and it serves as a source of literature and information for the Leipzig University as well as the general public in the region. Its extensive historical and special collections are nationally and internationally recognized. The library consists of the main building "Bibliotheca Albertina" and forty branches situated near their respective academic institutions. The current stock comprises 5 million volumes and about 7,700 periodicals. Collections range from important medieval and modern manuscripts to incunabula, papyri, autographs, ostraka and coins. The Apel Codex ,

13920-558: Was heavily damaged during the war and in the GDR barely secured, was completed in 2002. With the delivery of the University Tower to a private user, the university was forced to spread some faculties over several locations in the city. It controversially redesigned its historical centre at the Augustusplatz . In 2002, Behet Bonzio received the second prize in the architectural competition;

14040-404: Was here in 1896 that Külpe founded a psychological laboratory. He was able to increase the size and improve the equipment until the Würzburg laboratory became the most outstanding institute of psychology in Germany aside from Leipzig. Here, he trained numerous influential psychologists including the likes of Max Wertheimer, Kaspar Ach, and Henry Watt. Following fifteen years of service at the lead of

14160-405: Was included, which was his criticism of the subtractive procedure on reaction time. Two years later, Grundriss der Psychologie was translated into English by Edward Titchener under the title Outlines of Psychology. In 1895, Külpe published a handbook called Einleitung in die Philosophie (which translates to Introduction to Philosophy ). This book was a guide to both past and present philosophy at

14280-411: Was interested in over the course of his life, and especially influenced his later studies and lectures on esthetics. He then became Privatdozent at the University of Leipzig , before being promoted to a professorship extraordinarius in 1894. In October 1894, he attended Würzburg as professor ordinarius, the highest obtainable rank as a professor at a German university, for both philosophy and esthetics. It

14400-590: Was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freedom from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs. Computer scientists use abstraction to make models that can be used and re-used without having to re-write all the program code for each new application on every different type of computer. They communicate their solutions with the computer by writing source code in some particular computer language which can be translated into machine code for different types of computers to execute. Abstraction allows program designers to separate

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